Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Anthony Swofford
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By:
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Anthony Swofford
About this listen
Following the success of Jarhead, Anthony Swofford assumed he had exorcised his military demons - but as every veteran knows, that isn't exactly how it works. In these searing, courageous pages, Swofford struggles to make sense of what his military service meant and to decide - after nearly ending it - what his life can and should become.
Consumed by drugs, booze, fast cars, and the wrong women, Swofford almost lost everything and everyone that mattered to him. Embarking on a series of RV trips with his dying father, a Vietnam vet, in an attempt to heal their difficult relationship, and meeting a like-minded woman (who will become his wife) in a chance encounter, Swofford begins to grapple with his volatile past and forge a path toward redemption.
Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails is a memoir that raises essential questions about masculinity, about fathers and sons, and about love.
©2012 Anthony Swofford (P)2012 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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This is his story, or, rather, stories - lots of them, and all gut-punchingly hilarious, from that first far reach into a girl's tight jeans to turning forty with a cataclysmic party. In between you’ll hear about acid trips, threesomes, Nazi skinheads, his band Anal Chinook (Inuit for “warm wind”), Martians in northern Canada, throwing pedophiles in jail, dinner with the Clash, what happens when you crash Bill Maher's show wasted, and the true story of Vice magazine.
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if you don't buy this book, the terrorists win
- By Kelsey Gholi on 04-03-17
By: Gavin McInnes
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Army Wives
- The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage
- By: Tanya Biank
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Army Wives goes beyond the sound bites and photo ops of military life to bring listeners into the hearts and homes of today's military wives. Biank tells the story of four typical Army wives who, in a flash, find themselves in extraordinary circumstances that ultimately force them to redefine who they are as women and wives.
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True life, not the TV Show
- By M. Hill on 06-16-10
By: Tanya Biank
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The Reason You're Alive
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Quick
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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After 68-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard - that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline. David decides to return something precious he long ago stole from the man he now calls Clayton Fire Bear.
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Kinda like Gran Torino..
- By H Harris on 06-02-18
By: Matthew Quick
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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Thank You for Your Service
- By: David Finkel
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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No journalist has reckoned with the psychology of war as intimately as David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they carried out the infamous surge, a grueling fifteen-month tour that changed all of them forever. Now Finkel has followed many of those same men as they’ve returned home and struggled to reintegrate - both into their family lives and into American society at large.
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Wrenching
- By Scott on 01-03-14
By: David Finkel
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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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This Might Get a Little Heavy
- A Memoir
- By: Ralphie May, Nils Parker
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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There was a time when Ralphie May was one of the biggest stand-up comedians in the country, both by ticket sales and by tonnage. While some things changed - Ralphie lost half his body weight - others did not: He will be remembered as one of the most successful comics of his time. Completed just months before his untimely passing, in This Might Get a Little Heavy, Ralphie takes listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of his life and career, one that winds across the country, over obstacles, beyond heartbreak, and through the golden age of stand-up.
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brilliant and tragic
- By Timothy Trujillo on 08-12-18
By: Ralphie May, and others
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Stories I'd Tell in Bars
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jen Lancaster, John Fletcher
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older, but not wiser, Lancaster goes back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting high with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she'd tell if she met you in a bar... if she weren't too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she's you, only louder.
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self absorbed
- By D D H on 06-15-19
By: Jen Lancaster
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May We Be Forgiven
- By: A. M. Homes
- Narrated by: Andy Paris
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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May We Be Forgiven, a darkly comic novel of 21st-century domestic life, stars Harold Silver, a historian who's always been jealous of his successful brother, George. But when the hot-tempered George is institutionalized for committing a violent act, Harold finds himself comforting his brother's wife and children. What follows is a scathing examination of a family so fractured it may never be whole again.
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Give this one a try!
- By JWB on 02-13-13
By: A. M. Homes
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The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
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Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
What listeners say about Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael Willis
- 11-15-12
Very interesting, with nothing hidden or held back
What made the experience of listening to Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails the most enjoyable?
I was very impressed that Anthony Swofford held nothing back, including his own negativity. It would have been easy for him to write about what everyone else has done wrong while ignoring his own faults. Instead, he tells of his own misdeeds, along with those of others around him, with no attempt to gloss over or rationalize them. I rarely hear (or read) such honesty. There were many times throughout the book where I thought the author might be the most miserable bastard I've ever read a book from. He literally seemed completely miserable and completely detached from caring about others. Most people would try to hide these types of things, or maybe they'd be blind to them, but he was not blind nor did he try to hide anything.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails?
The author has a couple of epiphanies that change the course of his life. He didn't dwell on them very much but it's clear that these decisions were turning points.
Have you listened to any of Anthony Swofford’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I also listened to Jarhead. I would say this compares similarly, and for the same reasons.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No, I would never listen to an 8 hour book in one sitting. Besides, I listen while driving to/from work and I don't have an 8 hour commute.
Any additional comments?
If you liked Jarhead there's a good chance you'll like this book as well, but keep in mind it's not focused on Swofford's military experience at all. So if that's what you liked about his first book, you may not find what you're looking for here.
Also, another reviewer mentioned they didn't like Swofford's reading, I couldn't disagree more. Not to say he is a great reader and should go into reading audio books as a career, but he's reading his own memoir. Who better to convey whatever emotion he had about an event, than he himself? The emotion I got from most of the book was misery, and maybe that's exactly the emotion Swofford felt through most of these events. Or maybe that's just how he speaks. In either case, I'd still much rather hear his story from him than from a professional reader. If it was a novel then I might have felt differently, but this was not a novel.
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- kelli cracknell
- 02-13-24
I love these books.
Thats a very basic title to describe a enjoyment from an author that quickly became my favorite. I did discover Anthony Swafford through Jar Head. I am sorry Mr. Stafford, I am sure you've been told that a million times too many. however that book delivered the raw perspective I had looked for through many books. This book delivers another raw perspective into a man's life with everything exposed. That's respectable and inspiring to me. These titles are amongt some of my favorites and often repeated in both physical and digital forms, I highly encourage any to listen or read these.
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- Steph R
- 06-24-17
Intimate and Dark
I enjoyed the book immensely and, as a 32 year old veteran and having a father that passed away recently, I found many parallels. I like how Anthony exposes his own flaws and shows how events in his life changed him as a man. I recommend this book to anyone and especially veterans that face similar struggles in life daily.
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- carla
- 11-14-12
A HUMAN STORY
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
If this friend was in a similar situation, I would recommend it.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
Becoming famous does not hold the key to happiness.
What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?
I had to get used to the flat staccato of his voice, but then realized that not many other people could have been the voice of this book. The author himself HAD to narrate.
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- Dan Bruce
- 06-24-12
Nothing new here about the human condition
What disappointed you about Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails?
The author reads the book- a mistake. Writing and reading are different talents and being good at one doesn't indicate you'll be good at the other. He writes about events which range far and wide in emotion, and yet the entire read is monotone.
What could Anthony Swofford have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Write something worth reading. He writes on nothing new to the human condition. People are reading/listening to this book because the author is famous.
How could the performance have been better?
Different reader. Write something with insight. Give us a reason for dedicating 8 hours of our life to listening to him.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disappointment. Nothing new in the human condition - no insight, no take away, just shitty (as he said numerous times) writing (all short sentences but not pithy or interesting) dull.
Any additional comments?
Writes about the human condition - everyone has a story like this and if that is what we wanted to read with no valuable conclusion- than we all are writers of this book, we just didn't spend the time telling the world or particular story in the gray sad monotone view he did.
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