The Cookbook Collector
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Ariadne Meyers
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By:
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Allegra Goodman
About this listen
Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times best-selling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.
Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, 23-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much - as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.
Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: Love that stays.
©2010 Allegra Goodman (P)2010 Random HouseListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers.
Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.
Together again in the house they grew up in, the Waverley sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy - if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom - or with each other.
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I so want to give it 5 stars...!!!!
- By Joihelene on 10-09-10
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Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Very Valentine
- A Novel (Valentine Trilogy, Book 1)
- By: Adriana Trigiani
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The adventures of an extraordinary and unforgettable woman as she attempts to rescue her family’s struggling shoe business and find love at the same time, Very Valentine sweeps the listener from the streets of Manhattan to the picturesque hills of Italy.
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Meh... that's all I can say
- By Tammie on 08-17-23
By: Adriana Trigiani
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The Vine of Desire
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Anju and Sudha formed an astounding, almost psychic connection during their childhood in India. When Anju invites Sudha, a single mother in Calcutta, to come live with her and her husband, Sunil, in California, Sudha foolishly accepts, knowing full well that Sunil has long desired her. As Sunil's attraction rises to the surface, the trio must struggle to make sense of the freedoms of America - and of the ties that bind them to India and to one another.
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Vine of desire
- By Mz Shantay on 03-27-21
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Lost Lake
- By: Sarah Addison Allen
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future. That was half a lifetime ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband, George, is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone.
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Pure Sarah Addison Allen
- By tooonce72 on 01-27-14
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The Ramblers
- A Novel
- By: Aidan Donnelley Rowley
- Narrated by: Erica Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the most magical parts of Manhattan - the Upper West Side, Central Park, Greenwich Village - The Ramblers explores the lives of three lost souls bound together by friendship and family. During the course of one fateful Thanksgiving week, a time when emotions run high and being with family can be a mixed blessing, Rowley's sharply defined characters explore the moments when decisions are deliberately made, choices accepted, and pasts reconciled.
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Lovely Portrait of The City
- By Dingo27 on 02-19-16
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An Available Man
- A Novel
- By: Hilma Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Fred Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When Edward Schuyler - a modest and bookish 62-year-old science teacher - is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching.
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Lovely book, easy read, wonderful characters
- By Molly-o on 02-17-12
By: Hilma Wolitzer
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The Finishing School
- A Novel
- By: Joanna Goodman
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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One spring night in 1998, the beautiful Cressida Strauss plunges from a fourth-floor balcony at the Lycée Internationale Suisse with catastrophic consequences. Loath to draw negative publicity to the school, a bastion of European wealth and glamour, officials quickly dismiss the incident as an accident, but questions remain. Was it a suicide attempt? Or was Cressida pushed? It was no secret that she had a selfish streak and had earned as many enemies as allies in her tenure at the school.
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this book was just ok
- By Josh Fields on 02-26-20
By: Joanna Goodman
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To See the Moon Again
- By: Jamie Langston Turner
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The first step to letting go of the past is forgiving it …Every day of her life Julia Rich lives with the memory of a horrible accident she caused long ago. In the years since, she has tried to hide her guilt in the quiet routine of teaching at a small South Carolina college, avoiding close relationships with family and would-be friends. But one day a phone call from Carmen, a niece she has never met, disrupts her carefully controlled world.
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Beautiful Story of Forgiveness and Selfless Love
- By sharon on 09-20-14
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The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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Boy, Snow, Bird
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, Carra Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
What listeners say about The Cookbook Collector
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ivi Robonson
- 10-11-19
Wonderful , and Captivating
loved it.! very detailed. loved the narrator. wasn't what I thought but loved the book anyway
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- gwt80
- 01-17-13
Slight & souless, although well witten
Is there anything you would change about this book?
While there are important themes touched upon here, there is almost nothing at stake for the characters, minimal interesting conflict (even between distinctly different sisters) and virtually no memorable insights.
Could you see The Cookbook Collector being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
It would play best in animation, a Saturday morning cartoon of "lost girls finds themselves."
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- Debra Johnson
- 08-04-12
I really wanted to like this book.
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
I enjoyed the plot, although the climax of the novel can be seen from many miles away.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Ariadne Meyers?
The narration had a negative effect on my enjoyment of this book. To be specific, it was the voices for the male characters. The vocal placement was unnecessarily dropped and scratchy for one character, while Emily's friend with a degree from MIT sounded like a surfer dude.
Was The Cookbook Collector worth the listening time?
Sadly, not really. Parts are extremely engaging.
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- Birdy
- 12-10-22
Predictable
Every single character felt like a trope, predictable and with just enough character depth to thing “oh the author googled that.”
Despite that I did enjoy the story!
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- Anonymous User
- 07-17-12
Loved this story!
This book has a cast of very contrasting characters with opposite stories and lives that eventually interweave and come together for a very satisfying read. I had a very hard time getting used to the narrator as she made the lead female characters sound like they were whiney thirteen year olds. Enjoyable from start to finish.
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- D. Evans
- 09-28-11
Enjoyed the story, the narrator - not as much
I enjoyed the story overall. It was a story of love and loss. It also included a fictionalized history of the dot com boom and crash, and it's a love letter to antique books. As a computer person and lover of antique and classic books myself, it kept my interest. The description of the books made me want to find an antique book store!
The narrator was ok. She did a pretty good job creating different voices for the characters, however her voice sounded somewhat young girlish, and it was distracting to me at some points.
It's always a little strange when a male narrator tries to create a female character and a female tries to create a male, but in this case, it was a bit more annoying because of her voice in general.
She wasn't as good as Martin Jarvis when he reads Dickens, but she wasn't terrible either.
I'd recommend this audiobook to anyone interested in a good love story
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Overall
- Pamela Harvey
- 08-16-10
Just MAHvelous!
I remember Allegra Goodman from "Intuition", which I thought was a darker, more deeply layered novel than "The Cookbook Collector". I thought Goodman's first novel had more mystery and more seriously conflicted characters, and the core group was science-based instead of the technology startup boom in 2000, not that the latter observation is enough in itself to blame or praise a novel. However, I found this novel overdone with "stuff" - overstuffed? - just way too filled up with things: technology, money, cars, rare books, clothes, food, "happiness", whatever that means, and of course all the brand names that go with all the stuff. The pairing of the "hot" old wealthy guy (loaded with brilliance, musical and culinary talent in addition to dollars) with the naive young girl with no visible means of support is just another 2010 version of an old, tired cliche. I also thought the old guy seemed a bit shallow - and of course he's toned and fit because of his daily runs - in spite of his diverse interests. The only thing that really saves the ending from terminal triteness is that no-one ends up pregnant to celebrate their new romance. But I could not give the book anything less than a five just because reading it felt like eating too much chocolate cake, despite the story line that deals sensitively with the pain and losses of 9/11. It's still really well-done. I just liked "Intuition" better.
The narrator has a quirk which takes some getting used to. I guess in an effort to add authenticity to dialogue, she pauses a bit, hesitates after reading the first word of a spoken sentence, as though the person is unsure of what he/she is saying, or is thinking out loud. It seems that too many of the characters speak this way, and after I noticed it, of course it bothered me even more. There is one character with severe anxiety and here perhaps the tic is appropriate, but for the most part the verbal patterns did not need to be there.
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17 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Freida
- 08-19-10
An engaging read
I have never taken time to review an Audible selection, but The Cookbook Collector really kept me listening and as the end approached it left me wanting more. Ms. Goodman interweaves multiple storylines with luminous writing. Well worth the expenditure of a credit and the investment of time to listen.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Beatriz
- 09-01-10
Love the book... nice written and read
Love the book.., although it was sometime predictable.., the characters and the story are well written.., a lot of romance and computers but it also reflects the dot com era that was lived by my generation
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2 people found this helpful
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- Brooks Smith
- 08-19-12
Good story; TERRIBLE "male" voices by female reade
What did you like best about this story?
characters; antiquarian book context.
If you could take any character from The Cookbook Collector out to dinner, who would it be and why?
George and Jess
Any additional comments?
The female reader's voice was very good for female characters; but was HORRIBLE for male characters!! This detracted from getting to know the male characters.
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