Sting-Ray Afternoons
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Greg Baglia
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By:
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Steve Rushin
About this listen
A wild and bittersweet memoir of a classic '70s childhood.
It's a story of the 1970s. Of a road trip in a wood-paneled station wagon, with the kids in the way-back, singing along to the Steve Miller Band. Brothers waking up early on Saturday mornings for five consecutive hours of cartoons and advertising jingles that they'll be humming all day. A father - one of 3M's greatest and last eight-track-salesman fathers - traveling across the country on the brand-new Boeing 747, providing for his family but wanting nothing more than to get home.
It's Steve Rushin's story: of growing up within a '70s landscape populated with Bic pens, Mr. Clean and Scrubbing Bubbles, lightsabers, and those oh-so-coveted Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. Sting-Ray Afternoons paints an utterly fond, psychedelically vibrant, laugh-out-loud-funny portrait of an exuberant decade. With sidesplitting commentary, Rushin creates a vivid picture of a decade of wild youth, cultural rebirth, and the meaning of parental, brotherly, sisterly, whole lotta love.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Steve Rushin (P)2017 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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The Flood Girls
- A Novel
- By: Richard Fifield
- Narrated by: Kathleen Early
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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This snappy, sassy redemption story set in small-town Montana is "a wild and crazy debut novel by a talented young writer" (Jackie Collins), filled with an uproarious and unforgettable cast of characters you won't want to leave behind.
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WOW! Just WOW.
- By chamilton on 07-09-16
By: Richard Fifield
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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Rats Saw God
- By: Rob Thomas
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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By his senior year, Steve York has come through the worst two years of his life. His parents have divorced, and his girlfriend has betrayed him. Worse yet, after running away to live with his mother in San Diego, forays into the drug culture have turned his A-average into a thing of the past. Steve's only hope to graduate on time and avoid summer school is to write a 100-page paper for his guidance counselor. Unfortunately, he has to write about something he knows, and all he knows well are the last two years of his life.
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Real
- By Mary on 06-26-09
By: Rob Thomas
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Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
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Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
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I'll Be There
- By: Holly Goldberg Sloan
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Emily Bell believes in destiny. To her, being forced to sing a solo in the church choir - despite her average voice - is fate: because it's while she's singing that she first sees Sam. At first sight they are connected. Sam Border wishes he could escape, but there's nowhere for him to run. He and his little brother, Riddle, have spent their entire lives constantly uprooted by their unstable father. As Sam and Riddle are welcomed into the Bells' lives, they witness the warmth and protection of a family for the first time.
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Needs to be a film!
- By TreasureHunter on 06-25-16
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Too Close to the Falls
- A Memoir
- By: Catherine Gildiner
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the childhood of Catherine McClure Gildiner. It is the middle of the 1950s in Lewiston, New York, a small and sleepy American town very near Niagara Falls. No one is divorced. Mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and children pop Pez candy and swing from vines over a local gorge. But at the tender age of four, it becomes clear to her Cathy's parents that their rambunctious daughter is no ordinary child and they soon put her "to work" at her father's pharmacy.
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Brilliant and funny and touching.
- By Kindle Customer on 11-07-19
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A Girl Named Zippy
- Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana
- By: Haven Kimmel
- Narrated by: Haven Kimmel
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of 300 people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period - people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
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Beautifully written, beautifully read.
- By shopgirl on 03-06-08
By: Haven Kimmel
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After Visiting Friends
- A Son's Story
- By: Michael Hainey
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone.
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Son's Search for Father Brings on Self-knowledge
- By sheila kehoe on 08-15-13
By: Michael Hainey
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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What's So Funny?
- My Hilarious Life
- By: Tim Conway, Jane Scovell, Carol Burnett - foreword
- Narrated by: Tim Conway, Carol Burnett, Dick Hill, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Six-time Emmy Award-winning funnyman Tim Conway, best known for his characters on The Carol Burnett Show, offers a straight-shooting and hilarious memoir about his life on stage and off as an actor and comedian. In television history, few entertainers have captured as many hearts and made as many people laugh as Tim Conway. There's nothing in the world that Tim Conway would rather do than entertain - and in his first-ever memoir, What's So Funny?, that's exactly what he does.
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Not narrated by Tim
- By Bob Murdock on 05-05-14
By: Tim Conway, 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
What listeners say about Sting-Ray Afternoons
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John
- 08-21-17
memory lane
Enjoyed this book immensely, it was almost as if I was looking into a mirror of my own childhood. I will treasure this book for a long time to come. And listen to it many times over, especially when I want to take a, stroll down memory lane.
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- Skippy
- 05-01-22
Perfect Gen-X time capsule.
This might not be for everyone - there is definitely a heavy dose of nostalgia. So if you didn’t live it, you might struggle. But it is perfectly written by someone who knows how to craft a story – seems to be an oddity nowadays. And while no Gen-X version of “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ – Rushin doesn’t have Bryson’s wit - it is genuine and often funny snapshot of life growing up in middleclass, nowhere special, 1970s America.
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- B. Bingham
- 03-18-19
WOW!
Amazing! It's like Steve knows me..... what a fantastic book if you grew up in the 1970's, or ever wondered what it was like. Fantastic Book Steve !!
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- Steve Adams
- 09-13-19
Brilliant Reflections on Childhood in 70's /early
I have always liked Steve Rushin's work with Sports Illustrated. The Chicago born, Minnesota raised writer packs a lot of nostalgia, humor, warmth and some interesting trivia in the ode to life in Suburban Minneapolis in the 70's -to early 80's. You don't have to come from the Midwest or be a sports fan to appreciate this book. I think for a lot of American kids who grew up in that time, this book will resonate with them. I really enjoyed this book and plan on telling some of my other baby boomer and post baby boomer friends about this book.
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- Kindle Customer
- 02-05-24
Loved the memories. I also lived through much of that period.
Narrator was good except for mispronouncing some names important to the story such as the prestigious suburb of Edina. It’s not Ed ee na. It’s Edina with a long I. Some of the hockey names incorrect also. Kind of picky but still important.
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- MEC
- 04-24-18
enjoyable book
it brought me back...relived some memories. Good book....some interesting facts I Didn't know. laughed out loud at times
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- Harvey Miller
- 11-12-18
Sting-Ray Afternoons
This novel takes be back to simpler time when I was growing up with very little to worry about and all the time in the world. #tagsgiving, #sweepstakes
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- LMHeft
- 11-20-17
great trip down memory lane
a light humorous book to listen to or read at anytime when you need to smile!!
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- Mark B
- 02-24-18
Brought me back to my childhood!
I had so much in common with the narrator/ author that I started wondering how he captured my memories.
I waited to review this book, because I wanted to do it justice. If you grew up in the ‘70’s, you will love this book I was age 2-11 in the ‘70’s and the author was just a little older. If you are from Minnesota you will also appreciate it (I’m not!)
Great credit purchase.
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- Sharlotte
- 07-06-17
Nostalgic--A Compendium of Throwbacks!
If you were born in the fifties or sixties, you might enjoy this review of all the trivia you grew up with. It will bring make memories, and remind you how far we've come, for better or worse. Find a spot in your backyard and settle in for an enjoyable ride back to your past. It seems a lot of our lives across America during this time were extremely similar, despite no Internet and limited television. Uncanny, actually. I could relate to everything in this book despite growing up in a different state.
I LOVED THIS BOOK! Perfect narration, too.
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9 people found this helpful