Summerland
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $26.09
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Michael Chabon
-
By:
-
Michael Chabon
About this listen
From Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Chabon comes this best-selling novel for listeners of all ages that blends fantasy and folklore with that most American coming-of-age ritual: baseball. Now in a new edition, with an original introduction by the author.
Ethan Feld is having a terrible summer: His father has moved them to Clam Island, Washington, where Ethan has quickly established himself as the least gifted baseball player the island has ever seen. Ethan's luck begins to change, however, when a mysterious baseball scout named Ringfinger Brown and a 765-year-old werefox enter his life, dragging Ethan into another world called the Summerlands. But this beautiful, winterless place is facing destruction at the hands of the villainous Coyote, and it has been prophesized that only Ethan can save it.
In this cherished modern classic, the New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author brings his masterful storytelling, dexterous plotting, and singularly envisioned characters to a coming-of-age novel for listeners of all ages.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2012, 2016 Michael Chabon (P)2016 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
-
-
Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
Moonglow
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather". It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact - and the creative power - of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies.
-
-
Wonderful novel, terrible narrator
- By Joyce M. Bernheim on 12-30-16
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
-
-
A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
-
-
A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
-
Gentlemen of the Road
- A Tale of Adventure
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Andre Braugher
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950.
-
-
Jews with Swords
- By Darwin8u on 08-25-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
-
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
-
-
Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
Moonglow
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather". It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact - and the creative power - of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies.
-
-
Wonderful novel, terrible narrator
- By Joyce M. Bernheim on 12-30-16
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
-
-
A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
-
-
A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
-
Gentlemen of the Road
- A Tale of Adventure
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Andre Braugher
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950.
-
-
Jews with Swords
- By Darwin8u on 08-25-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
-
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Colson Whitehead
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
-
-
Who spoke for the black boys?
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Art of Fielding
- A Novel
- By: Chad Harbach
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A disastrous error on the field sends five lives into a tailspin in this award-nominated tale about love, life, and baseball. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths.
-
-
Don't buy into the hype
- By Arnold on 10-05-11
By: Chad Harbach
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
Fairy Tale
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Seth Numrich, Stephen King
- Length: 24 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a horrific accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from that shed.
-
-
A Boy and his Dog at the end of the World
- By Victor @ theAudiobookBlog dot com on 09-06-22
By: Stephen King
-
It
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Steven Weber
- Length: 44 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real. They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made 28 years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children.
-
-
A Classic with a Top-Notch Performance!
- By Nicole - Audible on 06-19-17
By: Stephen King
-
The Soul of Baseball
- A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Soul of Baseball is as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. Driven by a relentless optimism and his two great passions - for America's pastime and for jazz, America's music - O'Neil played solely for love. In an era when greedy, steroid-enhanced athletes have come to characterize professional ball, Posnanski offers a salve for the damaged spirit: the uplifting life lessons of a truly extraordinary man who never missed an opportunity to enjoy and love life.
-
-
Buck O’Neil fan!!
- By scott on 04-24-20
By: Joe Posnanski
-
All We Ever Wanted
- A Novel
- By: Emily Giffin
- Narrated by: Dorothy Dillingham Blue, Milton Bagby, Catherine Taber
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville's elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton. Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she's strayed from the person she once was. Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville's most prestigious private school.
-
-
Narrator choice for Tom is bizarre!
- By R. Cornelius on 06-28-18
By: Emily Giffin
-
Keeper of the Lost Cities
- By: Shannon Messenger
- Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fit into her life. She’s skipped multiple grades and doesn’t really connect with the older kids at school, but she’s not comfortable with her family, either. The reason? Sophie’s a Telepath, someone who can read minds. No one knows her secret - at least, that’s what she thinks.... But the day Sophie meets Fitz, a mysterious (and adorable) boy, she learns she’s not alone. He’s a Telepath too, and it turns out the reason she has never felt at home is that, well...she isn’t. Fitz opens Sophie’s eyes to a shocking truth....
-
-
Amazing!
- By Anonymous User on 11-26-18
-
Unspeakable Things
- By: Jess Lourey
- Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cassie McDowell’s life in 1980s Minnesota seems perfectly wholesome. She lives on a farm, loves school, and has a crush on the nicest boy in class. Yes, there are her parents’ strange parties and their parade of deviant guests, but she’s grown accustomed to them. All that changes when someone comes hunting in Lilydale. One by one, local boys go missing. One by one, they return changed - violent, moody, and withdrawn. What happened to them becomes the stuff of shocking rumors. The accusations of who’s responsible grow just as wild, and dangerous town secrets start to surface.
-
-
Oof
- By Derek Brown on 01-07-20
By: Jess Lourey
-
Boy's Life
- By: Robert R. McCammon
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson - a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake - and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible, haunting vision of death. As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that surround him.
-
-
Remember when the Waltons made you feel good?
- By Marie on 04-03-18
Related to this topic
-
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
The Trees
- By: Ali Shaw
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins. There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed.
-
-
Post apocalypse with a little bit of magic
- By Tam on 09-20-16
By: Ali Shaw
-
Sometimes a Great Notion
- By: Ken Kesey
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 30 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A literary icon sometimes seen as a bridge between the Beat Generation and the hippies, Ken Kesey scored an unexpected hit with his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His successful follow-up, Sometimes a Great Notion, was also transformed into a major motion picture, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Here, Oregon’s Stamper family does what it can to survive a bitter strike dividing their tiny logging community. And as tensions rise, delicate family bonds begin to fray and unravel.
-
-
Sometimes a Great Novel Pops up out of Nowhere
- By Mr. Eyuz on 06-07-19
By: Ken Kesey
-
The Fireman
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
-
-
GOD'S WAITING ROOM; AKA FLORIDA
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-25-17
By: Joe Hill
-
The Iron Dragon's Daughter
- By: Michael Swanwick
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Named a New York Times notable book of 1994, The Iron Dragon's Daughter tells the heartrending story of a changeling child who is kidnapped to a realm of malls and machines and enslaved in a vast, infernal factory. Ultimately, she escapes and attempts to educate herself about this alien world, while being tormented by visions of the life she was denied.
-
-
Inconsistent story and makes for a poor experience
- By Martin Smith on 07-10-15
By: Michael Swanwick
-
NOS4A2
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.
-
-
Gripping performance by Kate Mulgrew....
- By Leslie on 05-06-13
By: Joe Hill
-
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
The Trees
- By: Ali Shaw
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins. There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed.
-
-
Post apocalypse with a little bit of magic
- By Tam on 09-20-16
By: Ali Shaw
-
Sometimes a Great Notion
- By: Ken Kesey
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 30 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A literary icon sometimes seen as a bridge between the Beat Generation and the hippies, Ken Kesey scored an unexpected hit with his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His successful follow-up, Sometimes a Great Notion, was also transformed into a major motion picture, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Here, Oregon’s Stamper family does what it can to survive a bitter strike dividing their tiny logging community. And as tensions rise, delicate family bonds begin to fray and unravel.
-
-
Sometimes a Great Novel Pops up out of Nowhere
- By Mr. Eyuz on 06-07-19
By: Ken Kesey
-
The Fireman
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
-
-
GOD'S WAITING ROOM; AKA FLORIDA
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-25-17
By: Joe Hill
-
The Iron Dragon's Daughter
- By: Michael Swanwick
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Named a New York Times notable book of 1994, The Iron Dragon's Daughter tells the heartrending story of a changeling child who is kidnapped to a realm of malls and machines and enslaved in a vast, infernal factory. Ultimately, she escapes and attempts to educate herself about this alien world, while being tormented by visions of the life she was denied.
-
-
Inconsistent story and makes for a poor experience
- By Martin Smith on 07-10-15
By: Michael Swanwick
-
NOS4A2
- A Novel
- By: Joe Hill
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.
-
-
Gripping performance by Kate Mulgrew....
- By Leslie on 05-06-13
By: Joe Hill
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
-
-
Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
The Keepers: The Box and the Dragonfly
- By: Ted Sanders
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the moment Horace F. Andrews sees the sign from the bus - a sign with his own name on it - everything changes. The sighting leads him underground, to the House of Answers, a hidden warehouse full of mysterious objects. But there he finds only questions. What is this curious place? Who are the strange, secretive people who entrust him with a rare and immensely powerful gift? And what is he to do with it?
-
-
Amazing story!
- By coldcereal on 04-25-18
By: Ted Sanders
-
Vampires in the Lemon Grove
- Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Joy Osmanski, Kaleo Griffith, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.
-
-
Stylish modern magic realism
- By Ryan on 04-10-13
By: Karen Russell
-
Oz Reimagined
- New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond
- By: Douglas Cohen - editor, John Joseph Adams - editor
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl, Tanya Eby
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When L. Frank Baum introduced Dorothy and friends to the American public in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became an instant, best-selling hit. Today the whimsical tale remains a cultural phenomenon that continues to spawn wildly popular books, movies, and musicals. Now, editors John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen have brought together leading fantasy writers such as Orson Scott Card and Jane Yolen to create the ultimate anthology for Oz fans.
-
-
The Many Faces of Dorothy or Dot
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 07-19-14
By: Douglas Cohen - editor, and others
-
The Stolen Child
- By: Keith Donohue
- Narrated by: Andy Paris, Jeff Woodman
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped and renamed "Aniday" by changelings, ageless beings who inhabit the woods near his home. The changelings also leave behind one of their own, who flawlessly impersonates Henry except for one noteworthy detail: the new Henry is a prodigiously talented pianist.
-
-
Not Anything Close to the Hype
- By Jon on 06-20-06
By: Keith Donohue
-
The Book of Magic
- By: Gardner Dozois - editor, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, and others
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Sile Bermingham, Maxwell Caulfield, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.
-
-
some stinkers mostly good
- By M.T. on 12-11-18
By: Gardner Dozois - editor, and others
-
Sister Mine
- By: Nalo Hopkinson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"We'd had to be cut free of our mother's womb. Abby and I were fused, you see. But here's the real kicker; Abby had the magic, I didn't." Now adults, Makeda and Abby still share their childhood home. The surgery to separate the two girls left Makeda with what feels like an even worse deformity: no mojo. The daughters of a celestial demigod and a human woman, Makeda and Abby were raised by their magical father. Today, Makeda has decided it's high time to move out and make her own life.
-
-
Narrator saves this story
- By Denis A. on 03-21-14
By: Nalo Hopkinson
-
The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, Book 1)
- By: Maggie Stiefvater
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive. Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them - not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain.
-
-
Predictable Prep Boy Meets Witchy Girl
- By FanB14 on 01-29-13
-
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
- By: David Wroblewski
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 21 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Filled with breathtaking scenes, the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a meditation on the limits of language and what lies beyond, a brilliantly inventive retelling of an ancient story, and an epic tale of devotion, betrayal, and courage in the American heartland.
-
-
Devastatingly Dark Story
- By Knitme23 on 02-07-15
By: David Wroblewski
-
The Natural
- A Novel
- By: Bernard Malamud
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first - and some would say still the best - novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material - the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era - and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.
-
-
Hidden Audio Gem
- By Todd T. Castillo on 08-17-20
By: Bernard Malamud
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Moonglow
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather". It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact - and the creative power - of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies.
-
-
Wonderful novel, terrible narrator
- By Joyce M. Bernheim on 12-30-16
By: Michael Chabon
-
Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
-
-
A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
-
Telegraph Avenue
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Clarke Peters
- Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there - longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed, between them, more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart - half tavern, half temple - stands Brokeland Records.
-
-
26,784 sq in (and 4.5 miles) surrounded by REALITY
- By Darwin8u on 09-11-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
Gentlemen of the Road
- A Tale of Adventure
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Andre Braugher
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950.
-
-
Jews with Swords
- By Darwin8u on 08-25-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
-
-
Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
-
-
A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
Moonglow
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather". It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact - and the creative power - of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies.
-
-
Wonderful novel, terrible narrator
- By Joyce M. Bernheim on 12-30-16
By: Michael Chabon
-
Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
-
-
A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
-
Telegraph Avenue
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Clarke Peters
- Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there - longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed, between them, more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart - half tavern, half temple - stands Brokeland Records.
-
-
26,784 sq in (and 4.5 miles) surrounded by REALITY
- By Darwin8u on 09-11-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
Gentlemen of the Road
- A Tale of Adventure
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Andre Braugher
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950.
-
-
Jews with Swords
- By Darwin8u on 08-25-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
-
-
Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
-
-
A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Chabon masterfully renders the funny, tender, and captivating first-person narrative of Art Bechstein, whose confusion and heartache echo the tones of literary forebears like The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield and The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh incontrovertibly established Chabon as a powerful force in contemporary fiction, even before his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an essential milestone in American fiction.
-
-
Disappointing
- By George S. Pichon Jr. on 04-13-18
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Final Solution
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael York
- Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Retired to the English countryside, an 89-year-old man, rumored to be a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African gray parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out-a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts? Or do they hold a significance both more prosaic and far more sinister?
-
-
Fun Listen!
- By My account was compromised. on 03-03-21
By: Michael Chabon
-
Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
-
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
-
Pops
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the September 2016 issue of GQ, Michael Chabon wrote a piece about accompanying his son Abraham Chabon, then 13, to Paris Men's Fashion Week. Possessed with a precocious sense of style, Abe was in his element chatting with designers he idolized and turning a critical eye to the freshest runway looks of the season; Chabon Sr., whose interest in clothing stops at "thrift-shopping for vintage western shirts or Hermès neckties," sat idly by, staving off yawns and fighting the impulse that the whole thing was a massive waste of time.
-
-
Manhood for Amateurs, Part Deux
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-18
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Long Ships
- By: Frans G. Bengtsson, Michael Meyer, Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 20 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bengtsson's hero, Red Orm-canny - courageous and above all lucky - is only a boy when he is abducted from his Danish home by the Vikings and made to take his place at the oars of their dragon-prowed ships. Orm is then captured by the Moors in Spain, where he fights for the Caliph of Cordova. Escaping from captivity, Orm washes up in Ireland, where he marvels at those epicene creatures, the Christian monks, and from which he then moves on to play an ever more important part in the intrigues of the various Scandinavian kings and clans and dependencies.
-
-
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful story
- By Kindle Customer on 08-28-18
By: Frans G. Bengtsson, and others
-
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons
- By: Peter S. Beagle
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dragons are common in the backwater kingdom of Bellemontagne, coming in sizes from mouse-like vermin all the way up to castle-smashing monsters. Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax (who would much rather people call him Robert) has recently inherited his deceased dad’s job as a dragon catcher/exterminator, a career he detests with all his heart in part because he likes dragons, feeling a kinship with them, but mainly because his dream has always been the impossible one of transcending his humble origin to someday become a prince’s valet.
-
-
A fun read, and slightly frustrating listen.
- By Zealous Moogle on 06-27-24
By: Peter S. Beagle
What listeners say about Summerland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amanda Mercier
- 09-04-24
Not as good as Angels in Outfield
At best there was baseball, at worse there was a pretty horrendous appropriating of Native story elements. A big hodgepodge.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Andrew L. Carter
- 05-29-20
Kid friendly but lacking
Begins with an interesting plot. Gets long and anticlimactic in stretches. Too many unaddressed holes.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Daddy
- 07-17-19
Love Chabon but this one lost me
I loved the intro chapters about why he pivoted into youth fantasy more than the book itself. The baselines of the story are great and maybe this type of fantasy just isn't my thing. It's still written with Chabon's wordsmith mastery, just lost me through most of the middle of the book. I'm a sucker for anything baseball and found myself liking those parts and the connection between Ethan and his father and mother who passed much more than the fantasy aspects. Will continue to adore Chabon though
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John Proctor
- 06-10-22
I love Michael Chabon, his vulnerability, and his
This book is like listening to a story by a campfire late at night on a summer camping trip. It reminded me of roasting marshmallows and making smores. There is such an interesting balance between the "boy" being the protagonist and recognizing the "girl" as having as significant a role in this story - but it's still a story about a boy (from boy perspective). I loved it and it's nice to see the author balance and recognize "others" in the telling of this story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- K. Gentry
- 06-12-19
Crazy, but charming.
The author has a crazy imagination, but the combination of humor, fantasy, love seems to work.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tres
- 05-10-18
Nostalgic and Fun
Listening to this book reminded me what it was like to play baseball as a kid, all the good and bad that that entails. Chabon really captures the heart of what it is to be a child; forced to put up with the expectations of a world which increases in seriousness and complexity every day while still maintaining a foot in the realm of fantasy and dark legend. Themes of loss and survivor's guilt trickle through the story in realistic and heartfelt ways, without overshadowing the lighthearted and dark whimsy of giants, wear-foxes, and thunderbirds that carry the pained protagonists across the 3 realms. The writing trends purposfuly towards a YA reading level, but strikes a good balance and would likely have suffered from being any more or less complex. Pretty gr8. 8/8
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- CatEater McCommie
- 06-20-19
a beautiful book for any age
simply one of the most engaging books I've "read" in a long time. Di not make the mistake of skipping it because it says "Young Adult" - it's a heart tending story of triumph and growing up for anyone. pay close attention to the preface before you dig in; it will break your heart and put the whole take in.perspective.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michael McDonnell
- 07-24-23
Great summertime fantasy
A great summer time fantasy and dip into American mythology. Enjoyable by all ages. Play ball.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lynn E. Rhodes
- 05-26-24
Be immersed in a magical world and enjoy!
From the beginning to the end, the world created by Michael Chabon in Summerland had me entranced and entertained. I found that his narration was absolutely delightful—acting out each character seamlessly. I find that the narration absolutely makes or breaks an audiobook. Even the best book can be spoiled when the narrator makes me cringe with a bad attempt at an accent or a male narrator fails at voicing a female character. I fully accepted Chabon’s characters as individuals, not even thinking about a narrator.
The story was fun and gripping and exciting. A love of baseball is helpful but truly not necessary. An appreciation of a fantasy world, populated by an array of creatures and characters that sprang from Chabon’s imagination is essential. Enjoy!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gillian
- 04-18-16
5-Star Narration Elevates 3.25-Star Story
I know, I know. How can I say the much-loved Michael Chabon put out a 3.25 story... for kids at that?
Hear me out...
First, yes, if you listen to the Introduction, the man is coming from an emotional and heartfelt place--totally touching (which by the way, you might listen to without the kids unless you want to explain to an 8-yr old what pregnancy termination entails).
Second, his narration of his own work is flawless and enjoyable; it's the best part of the book. When you, and your kids, listen to it, you have the feeling that he is there in the room reading to you, giving it his all, just as though he were reading to his own children (and when you listen to it, you start wishing that you were his own kids because obviously the guy puts a lot of love into performance). Each character is wonderfully voiced, emotion and drama conveyed brilliantly.
But that's it. The Publisher's Summary says the book is for all ages, but I have a feeling parents will be nodding off during this one, despite Chabon's fantastic performance. This is for 10 and much, much younger. The main character is 11, but eleven-year olds will see things coming a mile away, plus they demand excitement, suspense, big pay-offs.
As it is, "Summerland" has sweet, quirky characters who go from one minor adventure to another minor adventure, nothing building to anything, and each (short) adventure is solved oh so quickly and oh so successfully. Period.
There is no failure to be found. Items that are needed magically appear; bad guys are tripped up right when they need to be, nothing, not a thing--from information that is conveniently and lengthily conveyed in a speech, to food on a journey that should be hard to find but isn't (actually, a character turns up who just so happens to cook impossibly well)--is difficult. The characters don't struggle, with evil, with each other, they don't even struggle with themselves. Okay, so Ethan isn't much of a batter, always strikes out--even that isn't much of anything and you ALWAYS know how that's going to turn out from one at-bat to the next.
I wish I could say that I loved this, and I did love some of the writing (a giant clearing his throat sounds "like bricks tumbling in a dryer," and a queen is "like a cold, tiny moon") but similes aside, there's not much here to engage anyone older than 7 or 8.
Your younger kids might like this, if they like stories that have no suspense, no breathless cliffhanger chapter endings, and ultra-easy character interactions without spice, but you and your older kids might be dozing.
Most every dilemma is solved by baseball, whether by a game thrown out as a challenge, or by a book the group carries that just happens to have all the answers in it... Sweet. But after a while, you realize that nobody, not even Michael Chabon can bat a thousand all the time.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
10 people found this helpful