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Gone with the Mind
- Narrated by: Mark Leyner, Muriel Leyner, Peter Ganim, Tommy Harron
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's summary
The blazingly inventive, fictional autobiography of Mark Leyner, one of America's "rare, true original voices" (Gary Shteyngart).
Dizzyingly brilliant and raucously funny, Gone with the Mind is the story of Mark Leyner's life, told as only Mark Leyner can.
In this utterly unconventional autobiographical novel, Mark Leyner gives a reading in the food court of a mall. Besides Mark's mother, who's driven him to the mall and introduces him before he begins, and a few employees of fast food chain Panda Express who ask a handful of questions, the reading is completely without audience.
The action of Gone with the Mind takes place exclusively at the food court, but the territory covered in this audio has no bounds. Existential, self-aware, and very much concerned with the relationship between a complicated mother and an even more complicated son, Leyner's story - with its bold, experimental structure - is a moving work of genius.
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- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wildflower is a portrait of Drew's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross-country road trip, saying good-bye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today.
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Hold the shrieking !
- By Dawne on 11-27-15
By: Drew Barrymore
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Miss Fortune
- Fresh Perspectives on Having It All from Someone Who Is Not Okay
- By: Lauren Weedman
- Narrated by: Lauren Weedman
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Lauren Weedman is not okay. She's living what should be the good life in sunny Los Angeles. After a gig as a correspondent with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she scored parts in blockbuster movies, which led to memorable recurring roles on HBO's Hung and Looking. She had a loving husband and an adorable baby boy. In these comedic essays, she turns a piercingly observant, darkly funny lens on the ways her life is actually not okay.
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Good
- By Ajules29 on 04-02-16
By: Lauren Weedman
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I Can Barely Take Care of Myself
- Tales from a Happy Life Without Kids
- By: Jen Kirkman
- Narrated by: Jen Kirkman
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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"You'll change your mind." That's what everyone says to Jen Kirkman - and countless women like her - when she confesses she doesn't plan to have children. But you know what? It's hard enough to be an adult. You have to dress yourself and pay bills and remember to buy birthday gifts. You have to drive and get annual physicals and tip for good service. Some adults take on the added burden of caring for a tiny human being with no language skills or bladder control.
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Funny. Not fall down laughing funny, but funny
- By david on 05-22-13
By: Jen Kirkman
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Hey Mom
- By: Louie Anderson
- Narrated by: Louie Anderson
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Louie Anderson has been channeling his beloved mom in his iconic stand-up comedy for decades - but she passed away before getting to see him reach new heights with his breakout role. Hey Mom is Louie's way of catching Ora Zella Anderson up on everything that has been going on in his life, including his continued struggles with food and family, but also how so much has changed for the better. He also has plenty of laugh-out-loud stories about his incredibly resilient mother and his 10 siblings, as well as observations on the absurdities of life.
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I love Louie even more now
- By Candace on 05-02-18
By: Louie Anderson
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Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
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Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
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True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness
- A Feminist Coming of Age
- By: Christine Lahti
- Narrated by: Christine Lahti
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades, actress and director Christine Lahti has captivated the hearts and minds of her audience through iconic roles in Chicago Hope, Running on Empty, Housekeeping, And Justice for All, Swing Shift, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, God of Carnage, and The Blacklist. Now, in True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness, this acclaimed performer channels her creativity inward to share her own story for the first time.
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Christine Lahti, Actress, Activist and A+ Author!
- By L. Cat Schultz on 10-26-18
By: Christine Lahti
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A Necessary End: A Novel
- By: Holly Brown
- Narrated by: Khristine Hvam, James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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At nineteen Leah bears a remarkable resemblance to the young woman Adrienne once was. Which is why Adrienne knows the baby Leah is carrying is meant to be hers. But Leah's got ideas of her own: Her baby's going to get a life in California; why shouldn't she? All she wants is to live in Adrienne's house for a year after the baby's born and get a fresh start. It seems like a small price for Adrienne to pay to get their baby. And with Gabe suddenly onboard, what could possibly go wrong?
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Long time audible listener.
- By Cherith DuBois on 07-11-15
By: Holly Brown
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Disgruntled
- By: Asali Solomon
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she calls her father - a housepainter-slash-philosopher - "Baba" or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations "from the Creator, for the Martyrs" and discuss "the community".
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Loved It!!!
- By ayodele higgs on 05-20-15
By: Asali Solomon
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Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
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Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
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Liner Notes
- On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & a Few of My Other Favorite Things
- By: Loudon Wainwright III
- Narrated by: Loudon Wainwright III
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A memoir by the influential Grammy Award-winning singer and actor - son of journalist Loudon Wainwright, former husband of Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche, and father of Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Lexie Kelly Wainwright - a captivating meditation on relationships and creativity from the patriarch of one of America's great musical families. With a career spanning more than four decades, Loudon Wainwright III has established himself as one of the most enduring singer-songwriters who emerged from the late '60s.
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Best ever book for listening
- By Jeff Bernhardt on 10-29-17
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Young Hearts Crying
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.
By: Richard Yates
What listeners say about Gone with the Mind
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- ewreirct
- 03-10-16
Most interesting man in the world, and his mother.
Hilarious, profound, puzzling, inane, touching, tedious, and lyric, all at the same time. If you're familiar with Leyner, this is certainly Leyner-esque, but with a level of intimacy and tenderness that I haven't seen in his work before.
If you're new to his work, this is a great place to start. It's certainly an unconventional book, but please give it a chance. It doesn't really go anywhere, while simultaneously going pretty much everywhere. His writing is endlessly digressive, even rambling, but the performances by Leyner and his mother are so straightforward, that you feel as if you're listening into the interior monologue of the most interesting man in the world, and his mother.
I really, really loved it.
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- Joe Kraus
- 06-23-16
A Postmodern Parody of the Disease of Self
What made the experience of listening to Gone with the Mind the most enjoyable?
The narration is fantastic. This is likely even better as an audiobook than as a paper version because we get to hear Leyner's own voice -- and his mother's voice.
Any additional comments?
I have three completely different (and favorable) reactions to this bizarre and funny book.
1) I don’t think I’m the only one who’s irritated by a tendency in some contemporary post-modern work to deal with what I like to call “the disease of the self.” That is, we get major works that confront self-ness in ways that almost put Proust to shame. There’s a lot to enjoy in Karl-Ove Knausgaard, for instance, and the ambition in David Foster Wallace is impressive, but after a while, I’m frustrated by the unspoken premise: “If you pay attention to me in all my microscopic contradictions and discomforts, you’ll be more aware of your own hypocrisies and inconsistencies. Dive with me into the depths of my self, and you’ll get insight into all of us.” For all its brilliance, I can’t help seeing it as the equivalent of literary selfies.
The trouble with that, I can’t help feeling, is that, for all that we do have in common, we are also very different. I tend to admire fiction that puts our differences into conversation. In fact, that’s how my father and the great critic Mikhail Bakhtin define it: the collision between two or more perspectives through the specific narrative of the story. I’m not arguing for a glib superficiality; stories about multiple perspectives need to excavate those perspectives as full and meaningful selves. And I’m not rejecting the idea that great literature can be obsessed with the self – think of a lot of what Joyce did. Instead, I’m just saying that, for some of the literature earning praise in our moment, there’s too much emphasis on the individual self of the writer.
In that context, Mark Leyner is absolutely brilliant. This weird and wonderful book parodies disease-of-the-self narratives by presenting us with someone who writes a post-modern autobiography – complete with excerpts of various personality inventories and testimony from his mother – with the presumed expectation that others will want to read it. Instead, when he appears at the local mall food court for his part in the “Nonfiction at the Food Court Reading Series,” no one comes. Or, rather, two employees on their break sit at tables in the back and serve as reluctant listeners.
And yet, despite no one’s caring, Leyner (putting himself forward as his own character) keeps on reading. Or, without quite reading, he gives a five or six hour prologue to the work he tells us he’ll read. No one sits waiting for this work, yet it consumes his every bit of energy and creativity. In the loneliness of writing the book, he’s invented an “imaginary intern,” an invisible friend who helps him conceive of and research the autobiography – and who himself eventually tires of the project and leaves Mark entirely alone.
If all that sounds like an easy joke, Leyner is brilliant enough to pull it off. He twists and turns his narrative so often, and he brings new and bizarre lines of inquiry in so skillfully, that the concept never gets old. The spectacle of Mark’s navel-gazing is both pitiful and inspiring. This brilliant, neurotic, clever and (ultimately) humane thinker, never gets old. He really is fascinating, and the book leaves that irony twisting: our journey into his needy self is both a glimpse at someone craving attention and a reminder that none of us has the attention to give to another. It’s a parody of one postmodern impulse, and, in its humanizing of the need for one man’s wanting to be seen, it really does invite the rest of us into a fresh new conversation.
2) The trope of the Jewish mother as ‘smother has been done. Whether you locate its roots in Philip Roth, Bruce Jay Friedman, or Woody Allen, you have to recognize it as a cliché: the Jewish mother can see no wrong in her little boy and, as a consequence, she’s responsible for everything that’s gone wrong with him. Far less skilled writers have kept it going, and we’re left with awful examples of it in, say, Howard Wolowitz’s mother in The Big Bang Theory, or Evelyn Harper of Two and a Half Men (who, not Jewish, is written by the Jewish Chuck Lorre).
Here, though, Leyner, revisits that trope. Instead of demonizing his mother, he explores her sacrifices on his behalf. He finds her his best friend and, slowly but beautifully, his best critic. They may have impeded each other throughout their lives, each keeping the other from developing in other independent ways, but they have also built something together.
In what I think of as the climax of the book, the two of them find themselves in a bathroom, looking for faces in the cracks on the floor. She wants to see his imaginary intern, wants to enter that fully into his imagination, but she can’t. Or he won’t let her. Either way, the two genuinely embrace each other, and he discovers that his voice is largely hers; he discovers (as he’s talked of in his imaginary video game) that his ideal is to be united with her, but to be united in his own, full self. He doesn’t want to erase his life, and he doesn’t blame her for his failings. He just flat out loves her. And that’s a refreshing take on a now too easy cliché.
3) Or, I can say flat out that this is one of the funniest books I’ve read in ages. Forget context if you want: this book never goes more than a handful of pages without offering something profoundly funny, without making you laugh out loud. It’s a stand-up routine so smart, so well-conceived, that you could probably pick a random page and find yourself fully entertained.
Leyner knows what he’s doing, and it’s absolutely worth checking out.
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