
Good Soil
The Education of an Accidental Farmhand
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Narrated by:
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Jeff Chu
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By:
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Jeff Chu
About this listen
A profound meditation on nature, heritage, and belonging, from an accomplished journalist who left New York City for life on a working farm
“I needed this book. I think you need it, too.”—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
In his late thirties, Jeff Chu left his job as a magazine writer and found himself at Princeton Theological Seminary’s “Farminary”—a twenty-one-acre working farm where students learn to cultivate the earth while examining life’s biggest questions. Now, he unpacks what he learned about creating “good soil,” both literally and figuratively, drawing lessons from the rhythms of growth, decay, and regeneration that define life on the land.
In gorgeous, transporting reflections, Chu introduces us to the cast of characters, human and not, who became his teachers. While observing the egrets that visit the pond, the worms that turn waste into fertile soil, and the Chinese long beans that get passed over in the farm’s CSA, Chu considers our desire to belong, the story behind the food on our plate, and the significance of his own roots. What is the earth trying to tell us, if we’ll only stop and listen?
Good Soil helps listeners connect to the land and to one another at a time when we seem drawn most to the phones in our hands. For nature lovers, foodies, and anyone who has daydreamed about a more fulfilling life, this book is a tribute to friendship, to the sacredness of our bond with the natural world, and to how love can grow from the unlikeliest of places.
©2025 Jeff Chu (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
“A big-hearted meditation on belonging, compassion, and the transformative power of friendship . . . I needed this book. I think you need it, too.”—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
“By turns wrenching and funny, heartbreaking and hope-filled, Jeff Chu’s Good Soil teaches us how to keep going despite our own gravest doubts, and how to keep loving when love has already failed us too many times. By whatever name you may call it—God, family, partnership, community, the whole living world—love is what this book is about. At its true heart, this is a book about love.”—Margaret Renkl, New York Times bestselling author of The Comfort of Crows
“A beautiful book on the growth that we spark when we tend to our soil.”—Katherine May, New York Times bestselling author of Wintering and Enchantment
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A future world
- By AprilG on 01-24-25
By: Eiren Caffall
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Memorial Days
- A Memoir
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Geraldine Brooks
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz–just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy–collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.
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Uninspired, mediocre writing.
- By C. Tyler on 03-04-25
By: Geraldine Brooks
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Deep Cuts
- A Novel
- By: Holly Brickley
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy—who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it—can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night. Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs—and the results kick off a partnership that will span years.
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Boring and drawn out
- By Andrea Simmons on 03-19-25
By: Holly Brickley
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Nobody's Fool
- By: Harlan Coben
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts—and then he runs. Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna.
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So Good
- By Lulu Dx on 03-27-25
By: Harlan Coben
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Wild Dark Shore
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte McConaghy
- Narrated by: Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.
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Stunning
- By MrsForbes1120 on 03-27-25
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Here Be Dragons
- Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma
- By: Melanie Shankle
- Narrated by: Melanie Shankle
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In medieval times, uncharted waters were marked on maps as Here Be Dragons to signify that no one knew what dangers might lie ahead. Melanie Shankle quips that the years spent raising our teenage daughters could be labeled the same due to the uncertainties before us. Filled with personal stories and written in the same whimsical and honest style Melanie is known for, Here Be Dragons will have you both laughing out loud and crying—as you confront the challenges of raising your own strong, independent daughter while fighting dragons along the way.
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Hilarious tear jerker
- By Davonte Bryson on 03-27-25
By: Melanie Shankle
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Good Dirt
- A Novel
- By: Charmaine Wilkerson
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart, that's exactly what they get.
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Moments of brilliance
- By MyLastRomanceNovel on 03-01-25