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Humboldt's Gift
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
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- By: Mordecai Richler
- Narrated by: David Julian Hirsh
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Duddy - the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family in Montreal - is combative, amoral, scheming, a liar, and totally hilarious. From his street days tormenting teachers at the Jewish academy to his time hustling four jobs at once in a grand plan to "be somebody", Duddy learns about living - and the lesson is an outrageous roller-coaster ride through the human comedy.
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OK but a bit disappointing; weak narration
- By Merlin on 05-12-17
By: Mordecai Richler
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
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Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
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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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Journey to the End of the Night
- By: Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.
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Miserable Ride with Cynic Supreme
- By W Perry Hall on 03-15-17
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The Forgery of Venus
- By: Michael Gruber
- Narrated by: Eric Conger
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Chaz Wilmot makes his living cranking out old-master parodies for ads and magazine covers. When he's offered a job restoring a Venetian palace fresco, he is at first, skeptical - he immediately sees it is more a forgery than a restoration. But he is soon seduced by the challenge and throws himself into the work, doing the job brilliantly.
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More fun with Gruber
- By IVAL on 02-06-13
By: Michael Gruber
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The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable, Pulitzer Prize-winning comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter". His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures.
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Well Done
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What listeners say about Humboldt's Gift
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-21-18
Christopher Hurt
The narrator, in an otherwise excellent performance, tends to swallow his words occasionally and therefore a word here and there becomes inaudible.
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1 person found this helpful
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- James
- 09-27-11
#1 Classic
Wait... you do know who wrote this right? This is Saul Bellow. There's no way you're not going to read this, even if it IS with your ears.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Pip
- 02-11-13
That fellow Bellow
Where does Humboldt's Gift rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
In terms of the quality of the reader, very good, but the book is long winded and repetitive.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
An elegant conclusion left a feeling of satisfaction.
What about Christopher Hurt’s performance did you like?
He had a pleasant voice which suited the narrator.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Navel gazing galore!
Any additional comments?
Bellow's hero is a mid twentieth century author not too dissimilar from himself. His quest for truth requires introspection rather than action, but a glorious list of writers and philosophers are bit players in the story.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Jordan Gaines
- 05-06-09
Humbolt's Gift, Saul Bellow
The pace of this book is pedestrian at best with the main character rather self absorbed and brooding. The relationships tend to be self serving and hedonistic. I found the reading experiance left me depressed and hollow. While the main character, Charlie, had many redeeming qualities he seemed to have no spiritual foundation or sense of where these moral imperatives came from. Even with all his introspective broodings he was clueless about why he acted the way he did or was offended by the actions of the other characters when they crossed certain moral boundries.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- R. Bellerose
- 03-31-08
Masterful language
Thickly spread with self-reflection, this story seems to move slowly, but each aside engrosses the reader and moves the story along. Filled with social commentary that will sparkle for decades.
The reader is tireless and without error. He renders the first-person Charlie in a believable and consistent voice.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Scott
- 05-10-08
Great Book, Great Reader
This is a wonderful and compelling reading of a very good book: one that would be very easy to ruin with an unintelligent interpretation.
No, there is not a lot of "plot" per se and it is highly discursive: welcome to Bellow's world! There's a passage of several pages where Charlie considers the subject of productive inactivity from every possible angle, which struck me as almost a manifesto for the technique of the novel itself. Events in the outside world mainly serve to prompt ruminating, reflecting, and reminiscing.
But make no mistake: there is in fact a story, it features great, colorful characters, it's told in beautiful language, and it's very entertaining all the way through. It made me laugh out loud all the time. And finally, countless little plot threads that have meandered through the text for hours all get neatly tied up into a satisfying screwball ending.
But the book is not really about the destination. It's about the journey. The book is drenched with warm-hearted nostalgia, and a comprehensive generosity of spirit that is hard to find anywhere in the world, at any time. Charlie Citrine makes the world a bigger and friendlier place to be.
And again, this reader is probably the best possible reader they could have chosen for the part. I plan to give this book a second and third listen in the future. This definitely ranks up there with Ron Silver's reading of American Pastoral, George Guidall's reading of Zorba the Greek, and Donal Donelly's reading of Dubliners as one of the best audiobook performances I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
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22 people found this helpful
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Overall
- John
- 08-23-08
Not so great.
This is one of the very few aduiobooks I haven't enjoyed. I nearly stopped partway through, because the story is so tedious. I'm surprised it's so highly regarded. I found it indulgent and pompous. The reader, as I recall -- it's been some time now since I read it -- was neither great nor terrible, just sort of okay. One recognizes the erudition of the author, but wishes he had reined it in some to develop characters we could care more about.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Eric Miller
- 01-25-15
Some people write in a way that is captivating
I really enjoyed this book. Journey into his mind. Much to digest over time. The writing was truly mesmerizing, no matter what he was talking about, no matter how gross or how lofty, I was captivated.
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2 people found this helpful
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- The idiot
- 05-26-15
A thought provoking work of art
Brilliant, moving and epic!
A masterpiece and read to perfection!
A book that I read because it was the one both my parents agreed was great...
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- Maria E.
- 10-13-17
A Master Piece
Super performance by Hurt. A must be heard by all american literature buffs. Humboldt’s Gift is a gift to mankind. Get it!
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