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Narrated by:
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Julianne Moore
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By:
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Joan Didion
About this listen
An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights
In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne.
For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood—misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe—and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, “what it’s been worth.” The analysis would continue for more than a decade.
Didion’s journal was crafted with the singular intelligence, precision, and elegance that characterize all of her writing. It is an unprecedently intimate account that reveals sides of her that were unknown, but the voice is unmistakably hers—questioning, courageous, and clear in the face of a wrenchingly painful journey.
©2025 Joan Didion (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Sara Kehaulani Goo
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family’s land in Hawai‘i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui’s east side—given by King Kamehameha III in 1848—extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past. When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire.
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Poets Square
- A Memoir in Thirty Cats
- By: Courtney Gustafson
- Narrated by: Courtney Gustafson
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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When Courtney Gustafson moved into a rental house in the Poets Square neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, she didn’t know that the property came with thirty feral cats. Focused only on her own survival—in a new relationship, during a pandemic, with poor mental health and a job that didn’t pay enough—Courtney was reluctant to spend any of her own time or money caring for the wayward animals.
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Quite Frankly, Life Changing
- By Rocki Vassalino on 05-03-25
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Where I Was From
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.
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California belongs to Joan Didion.
- By Darwin8u on 11-04-15
By: Joan Didion
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Democracy
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Denise Poirier
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.
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Exquisite
- By Adam Burke on 04-17-23
By: Joan Didion
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We All Want to Change the World
- My Journey Through Social Justice Movements from the 1960s to Today
- By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Raymond Obstfeld
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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For many, it can feel like change takes too long, and it might seem that we have not moved very far. But political activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar believes that public protest is a vital part of affecting change, even if that change doesn’t come “right now.” In We All Want to Change the World, he examines the activism of people of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds that helped change America, documenting events from the Free Speech Movement through the movement for civil rights, the fight for women’s and LGBTQ rights, and, of course, the protests against the Vietnam War.
By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and others
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Let Me Tell You What I Mean
- An Essay Collection
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Hilton Als
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. With a forward by Hilton Als, these 12 pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure.
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Didion deserves a better narrator
- By Pamela on 02-03-21
By: Joan Didion
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How to Lose Your Mother
- A Daughter's Memoir
- By: Molly Jong-Fast
- Narrated by: Molly Jong-Fast
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of a famous woman, writer Erica Jong, whose sensational book Fear of Flying launched her into second-wave feminist stardom. She grew up yearning for a connection with her dreamy, glamorous, just out of reach mother, who always seemed to be heading somewhere that wasn’t with Molly. When, in 2023, Erica was diagnosed with dementia just as Molly’s husband discovered he had a rare cancer, Jong-Fast was catapulted into a transformative year.
By: Molly Jong-Fast
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Accidentally on Purpose
- By: Kristen Kish
- Narrated by: Kristen Kish
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Accidentally on Purpose dives into Kristen Kish’s childhood as a Korean adoptee in the Midwest, finding purpose in kitchens, and becoming the season 10 winner of—and now host—of Top Chef all the while navigating life in the spotlight, coming out in her adult years, and all the life lessons in between.
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Enjoyable listen for fans…
- By NMwritergal on 04-23-25
By: Kristen Kish
What listeners say about Notes to John
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- Laura Borealis
- 04-24-25
This autobiography discusses notes from therapy regarding Joan’s daughter’s addiction. Very insightful!
The struggles of a mother who wants to get her daughter sober are brutally honest and very well written. Joan’s willingness to dive into her her own psyche in effort to maintain a good relationship with her alcoholic/drug addicted daughter are incredibly brave and painful as she traces behavioral coping mechanisms passed on from generation to generation. Julianne Moore’s performances are outstanding.
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- VF
- 04-29-25
Julianne Moore’s sensitive narration
The truthful, vulnerable experience Didion had navigating her daughter’s alcoholism as well as the intelligence of the psychiatrist
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- Sandra
- 04-26-25
Not what I expected
I love Joan Didion, but this book was pretty repetitious as well as depressing. Didion and her husband were in such a difficult time in their lives with their daughter Quintanna that it seemed as though things would never get any better. And, as it turned out, they didn't. I almost wish I hadn't read it.
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