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The Beautiful Room Is Empty
- A Novel
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
When the narrator of White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is "a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday." That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising - and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink - The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.
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When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
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High Dive
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Doyle Gerard
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
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Humor? Not Funny.
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By: Jonathan Lee
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Smashed
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- By: Koren Zailckas
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
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From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, 24-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual". With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at 14, alcohol poisoning at 16, blacked-out sexual experience at 19, and total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at 22.
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Smashed
- By John Riggs on 07-14-05
By: Koren Zailckas
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Herzog
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
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Family Secrets
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Though Diane Randall’s jewelry business is a great success, her marriage is not, and she finds herself growing lonely as her children near adulthood. Meanwhile, her eighteen-year-old daughter Julia is falling dangerously in love, and Diane’s mother, Jean, is relishing her newfound freedom as a single woman in Europe. Distracted by their individual concerns, the three women are ill-prepared for the crisis that suddenly appears on Diane’s doorstep in the form of a handsome FBI agent asking about an explosive secret that’s laid buried for decades.
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Nancy! Is there a sequel? What?
- By PattieLynn on 12-02-22
By: Nancy Thayer
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Outside Looking In
- A Novel
- By: T. C. Boyle
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- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology PhD student, and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a freewheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living.
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STORYTELLING AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
- By Christopher Meeks on 05-25-19
By: T. C. Boyle
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Chelsea Girls
- A Novel
- By: Eileen Myles
- Narrated by: Eileen Myles
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
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In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.
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fascinatingly skanky
- By Megon J. Walker on 07-15-16
By: Eileen Myles
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Notes on a Banana
- A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression
- By: David Leite
- Narrated by: David Leite
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Reminiscing about the people and events that shaped him, David looks back at the highs and lows of his life, from his rejection of being gay and his attempt to "turn straight" through Aesthetic Realism, a cult in downtown Manhattan, to becoming a writer, cookbook author, and web publisher, to his 23-year relationship with Alan, known to millions of David's readers and listeners as "The One", which began with (what else?) food.
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Finished it in a day!
- By Kathryn on 08-23-17
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City of Night
- By: John Rechy
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When John Rechy's explosive first novel appeared in 1963, it marked a radical departure in fiction, and gave voice to a subculture that had never before been revealed with such acuity. It earned comparisons to Genet and Kerouac, even as Rechy was personally attacked by scandalized reviewers. Nevertheless, the book became an international best seller, and 50 years later, it has become a classic. Bold and inventive in style, Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one hustling "youngman" and his search for self-knowledge.
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A seminal classic
- By Robert Simmons on 09-22-19
By: John Rechy
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Edmund White is one of our most celebrated novelists. He is also a brilliant journalist and cultural commentator on the arts, contributing to publications as varied The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Washington Post, House and Garden, and The New York Review of Books. In Sacred Monsters, White collects more than 20 of his most recent writings on artists and authors, including John Cheever, Patti Smith, Henry James, Mary Cassatt, and many others.
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What listeners say about The Beautiful Room Is Empty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Pablo
- 03-28-23
Amazingly honest memoir/"novel". Best narrator.
Loved this book! Edmund White's narrative power is through the roof. The actual voice narration is also superb.
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- CostarK
- 04-08-22
Great Book!
Tipical life of a gay man with wonderful sex scenes and very well written.
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- Mrchuck2000
- 10-08-23
Edmund White is a Bearer of Gifts
Edmund White is a great, great writer (I’m reading everything he’s written now, after kind of forgetting about him for about twenty-five years). Odd that I can feel the greatness easier in an audiobook than I had done when reading his words in a book.
He is the smart, kind, generous gay uncle that I like to pretend I had to guide, explain, accept and welcome me as I grew up. He’s a witness.
The narrator is remarkably good, no small feat with this kind of eclectic writing style. He perfectly serves the writing.
I am now moving into The Farewell Symphony, and I’m already in tears.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-26-21
Socialist are pro Socialist until it hit them in the pocketbook
This was a good book mostly because it shows how realistic Socialist are until it hit them in the pocketbook.. the strongest storyteller I have heard in many months, had it not been for the teller I would have turned off the book.
I would recommend this to young men to read.
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- Andrei
- 07-01-19
Well written
Why a good quasi-Christian like me would read a novel like this? I am sure that most of my co-religionists would be greatly confused and may be even disappointed in me (:. Plus take into account White's somewhat hostile attitude towards Christianity. To begin with...language. White's mastery of language is totally superb. Read it just for that. Honesty- this is a very honest book. This is what I am, White tells us- deal with it. May be occasionally too much of it but still kudos to White for doing so (I would not be able to write a book like this; sometimes however I wish- and if I were what would exactly happen to me? would I be disowned?). Compassionate treatment of people of different sexual orientation (I feel like I am on shaky ground right now- forgive me if I offend anyone). When I read the novel I was within a different world of different existence (different from mine, I mean). White, like Nabokov and Tolstoy (two of his favorites), knows how to write about complex matters with a light, exhilarating and humorous tone. He also manages to convey that being gay is a painful experience in the society that does not accept homosexuality. To his credit he is not in any way didactic about it. White has been called the voice of gay America. Is it the voice only for the gays? I doubt. All of us need to hear this voice. I enjoyed very much Backman's reading (contrary to some). It has a touch of neuroticism and urgency about it. He sings through the novel. Strongly recommended on all counts.
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14 people found this helpful
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- escoocoo
- 03-09-18
ENJOYED IT!!
Very good book by a fine author. I didn’t realize that this is the second book in a trilogy, but I don’t think it matters what order they are read/listened to as I had no trouble following the story. I do plan on listening to the other books in the trilogy as well as a worthwhile endeavor. I think I recall a number of people “dissing” the narrator, but I thought the narrator was great(!!), and a good part of what made listening to this book so enjoyable.
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about the authentic gay male experience during the years prior to the explosion of the gay rights movement by someone who knows (the author, not me!) because he was there and actually went through it.
There are quite a few very graphic sexual scenes in this book. However, this was not the main thrust (so to speak!) of the book and, I thought, very much in context with the rest of the telling of the story.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about this topic by an intelligent and talented writer.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Christopher
- 02-19-16
Awful Narration
Would you try another book from Edmund White and/or George Backman?
Yes for Edmund White ... No for George Backman
Do you think The Beautiful Room Is Empty needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
Yes it needs a follow up, but I know what it will focus on. That will be AIDS unfortunately, for that was the gay communities plague in the US.
Any additional comments?
I had to end up playing this on 1.25 speed just to get to the end. The narrator is so slow and over the top it's extremely annoying.
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2 people found this helpful
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- lazario
- 02-01-22
great book
narrator was good but he did stumble on a few possible words here and there
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- R.J. Schmigel
- 10-28-23
The Beautiful Room is Merely Pretty
I am a big Edmund White fan. I own many of his works; and now, because I am nearing 80, I wanted to hear them read aloud. This edition is good, but being the 2nd book in the trilogy, I find it to be more of a placeholder, than a standout. Still enjoyable, of course, because it’s Edmund White.
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- TDNYNJFL
- 10-30-23
not what i expected but great
wow totally unfiltered. reminded me of similar and now impossible situations of my past and city
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