The Financial Lives of the Poets
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Narrated by:
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Jess Walter
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By:
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Jess Walter
About this listen
In the winning and utterly original novels Citizen Vince and The Zero, Jess Walter ("a ridiculously talented writer" - New York Times) painted an America all his own: a land of real, flawed, and deeply human characters coping with the anxieties of their times. Now, in his warmest, funniest, and best novel yet, Walter offers a story as real as our own lives: a tale of overstretched accounts, misbegotten schemes, and domestic dreams deferred.
A few years ago, small-time finance journalist Matthew Prior quit his day job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse. When his big idea - and his wife's eBay resale business - ends with a whimper (and a garage full of unwanted figurines), they borrow and borrow, whistling past the graveyard of their uncertain dreams. One morning Matt wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife's online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. Is this really how things were supposed to end up for me, he wonders: staying up all night worried, driving to 7-Eleven in the middle of the night to get milk for his boys, and falling in with two local degenerates after they offer him a hit of high-grade marijuana? Or, he thinks, could this be the solution to all my problems? Following Matt in his weeklong quest to save his marriage, his sanity, and his dreams, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a hysterical, heartfelt novel about how we can reach the edge of ruin - and how we can begin to make our way back.
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- By KT on 06-11-15
By: Angela Flournoy
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Lawn Boy
- By: Jonathan Evison
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work - and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew - he knows that he's got to be the one to shake things up if he's ever going to change his life. But how?
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CATEGORY AND SUMMARY MISLEADING
- By Gretchen on 05-01-18
By: Jonathan Evison
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The Ritual Bath
- The First Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Novel
- By: Faye Kellerman
- Narrated by: Mitchell Greenberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.
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Good Read
- By Eva Gannon on 08-21-08
By: Faye Kellerman
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An Abundance of Katherines
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has $10,000 in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines.
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struggled to finish listening
- By Daniel on 03-11-20
By: John Green
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Faces of the Gone
- Carter Ross, Book 1
- By: Brad Parks
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Four bodies, each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood in a weed-choked vacant lot: That's the front-page news facing Carter Ross, investigative reporter with the Newark Eagle-Examiner. Immediately dispatched to the scene, Carter learns that the four victims - an exotic dancer, a drug dealer, a hustler, and a mama's boy - came from different parts of the city and didn't seem to know one another.
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Wish Brad Parks were more prolific!!!!
- By shelley on 02-16-18
By: Brad Parks
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The Man from Primrose Lane
- By: James Renner
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A mind-bending, genre-twisting debut novel. In West Akron, there lived a reclusive elderly man who always wore mittens, even in July. He had no friends and no family; all over town, he was known only as The the Man from Primrose Lane. And on a summer day in 2008, someone murdered him.
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Good read, despite, not because of sci fi twist
- By Lulu W. on 07-18-12
By: James Renner
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Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
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Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
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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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Lamentation
- By: Joe Clifford
- Narrated by: Timothy McKean
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In a frigid New Hampshire winter, Jay Porter is trying to eke out a living and maintain some semblance of a relationship with his former girlfriend and their two-year-old son. When he receives an urgent call that Chris, his drug-addicted brother, is being questioned by the sheriff about his missing junkie business partner, Jay feels obliged to come to his rescue. After Jay negotiates his brother's release from the county jail, Chris disappears into the night.
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Excellent Listen!
- By Jason on 08-19-15
By: Joe Clifford
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The Stranger
- By: Harlan Coben
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar or a parking lot or at the grocery store. His identity is unknown. His motives are unclear. His information is undeniable. Then he whispers a few words in your ear and disappears, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world.
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What a disappointment....Semi Spoilers
- By Big jim Picotto on 03-24-15
By: Harlan Coben
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Loving Day
- By: Mat Johnson
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: In the face of the teenage girl he meets at a comics convention, he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl is his daughter, and she thinks she's white.
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Teen lit with heavy erotic imagery
- By Itinerant T on 08-26-15
By: Mat Johnson
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God-Shaped Hole
- A Novel
- By: Tiffanie DeBartolo
- Narrated by: Rachael Warren
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When Beatrice Trixie Jordan replies to a personal ad, she meets Jacob Grace, a charming, effervescent 30-something free-spirit writer passionately seeking life. He possesses his own turns of phrase and ways of thinking and feeling that dissonantly harmonize with Trixie's off-center vision. As they rollercoaster through the joys and furies of their wrenching romance, they try to come to terms with the hurt brought about by both of their distant fathers who, in different ways, forsook them.
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To see a fortune teller or not to see one...
- By Renee on 08-08-18
What listeners say about The Financial Lives of the Poets
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Bonny
- 10-13-12
The edge is so close to where we live.
I started The Financial Lives of the Poets because I loved Jess Walter's latest novel, Beautiful Ruins, so much. Matt Prior is in the middle of a mid-life crisis, which through his own choices, rapidly escalates to a mid-life catastrophe. He quits his job as a newspaper financial reporter to create poetfolio, a web site that combines investment advice and poetry. That goes over as well as a realistic person might predict, but it's also just the tip of the iceberg. Matt's wife is having a text/Facebook/in person affair with a guy from Lumberland after she has filled their garage with crap from eBay and failed to resell it, and his senile father has to move in after losing everything to a stripper. Matt is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and foreclosure, when he meets Skeet and Jamie one night at the local 7-11. They introduce him to designer marijuana, and Matt gets the brilliant idea to cash in his miniscule 401(k) and use the proceeds to buy and sell marijuana. This is how he will dig himself out of his financial chasm, but this plan also goes as well as a rational person might predict.
Matt is an interesting protagonist, very well-written by Walter. One of the most interesting things about him is that he seems to be quite aware of the financial, emotional, and bureaucratic messes that he (and our society) have made, yet he goes on making increasingly desperate decisions. Walter doesn't write Matt as hapless, so we cheer for his indomitability while shaking our heads at his incompetence. Ordinarily a character like this might irritate me, but Jess Walter's amazing writing made this a pleasure to read. Matt does learn a lesson that we should all take notice of: "The edge is so close to where we live."
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8 people found this helpful
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- D. E. Dickerson
- 10-01-12
Hilarious and touching
What other book might you compare The Financial Lives of the Poets to and why?
It definitely fits into what you might call the "middle-aged suburban comic nightmare" genre of fiction on the lines of Franzen's "The Corrections," Chabon's "Wonder Boys" or Clarke's "An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England." What makes this stand out in the field is that the story is small and controlled (none of the sprawl that often makes books like these wander too far), and absolutely every element pays off in larger meaning. (The fact that the first chapter takes place at a 7-11 becomes a parodic model for references to 9/11 later, and it works smartly.) In short, there is warm intelligence and compassion for ever character on every page, while at the same time Walter creates a tremendously important document about the human costs of the 2008 recession, and of the modern world in general. Just amazing, and well worth the visit. He had me at chapter one.
What does Jess Walter bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He has the delivery EXACTLY, as you might expect, so that even parenthetical comments sound perfectly parenthetical and don't stop the forward flow of a sentence. Best of all, and most important, is that he delivers all the jokes perfectly: not only in their timing, but in the voice of the appropriate characters. He's got a good ear for humanity, and it shows in his telling.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Ken
- 03-01-10
Great Book
Writing is intelligent and witty. Enjoyed every minute of this reading. More than just a good story--anyone feeling the pinch of today's economy will relate to the protagonist's plight.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Joseph
- 10-15-12
Sex, Drugs and L.O.L.
Jess Walter knows how to tell a story. This 7-day adventure is a stream-of-consciousness tale about a modern, post GFC (global financial crisis) family. It is fast paced and
1. funny
2. sad
3. philosophical
4. insightful
5. funny
6. provocative
7. funny
When it comes to narration, some authors make great narrators of their own work (Bill Bryson) and some do not (Dave Berry). Jess Walter nails it. His performance is transparent, which allowed me to hear the story, not the narrator.
When the story ended, I found myself wanting to follow the main character, his family and the variety of wacky characters even further.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Debo
- 05-29-23
Loved it
Jess walker is a fabulous author, but who knew he is also a brilliant narrator? Such a talented guy. I plan to read everything he has written. His short stories are also fabulous.
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- Smart, AZ
- 04-30-23
Utterly astonishing
My first experience of this author. Mind well and fully blown by the brilliance of both book and narration.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lauren E. Dillon
- 01-22-15
Beautifully Written; Huge Downer
I'd be hard-pressed to find a more poetically written contemporary novel. That said, it incredibly depressing, even with its reprieves.
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- KBoat
- 10-01-12
Liked it – didn’t Love it
I started with Jess Walter with “Beautiful Ruins” and decided to listen to ANYTHING he wrote. I have to say this is nothing like Beautiful Ruins – which took him 7 years (?) to write.
This story is reminiscent of youthful thoughts of getting out of a financial disaster with ‘easy’ money with a dash of danger (aka: excitement). Looking back I would say it was mildly juvenile.
I didn’t lose interest but I was definitely tossed back and forth from the 70’s to the present - how to make it in difficult situations. I don’t know how to recommend this book. It is bleak but not. It has its moments of humor, which would have been more humorous if the situations were not so bleak. Inevitability is another word that comes to mind. I will listen to anything else Jess Walter write. I doubt I will listen to this one again.
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- Molly
- 05-29-12
What a romp!
I have never read anything by Jess Walters and so was truly taken by surprise by the sheer intelligence of this guy! The metaphors, the rich, snappy banter of his writing is a treat after some of the bad sitcom-like books I sometimes download by mistake. The story is straightforward and also very touching amid all of this verbal acrobatics. Loved it.
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4 people found this helpful
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- jane
- 01-17-10
Buy this book
This book kept me up till 4am. I found the first person narrative honest and authentic. Matt Prior is a sympathetic main character struggling to make sense of the financial crash of 09 and his failing marriage. Very engaging, topical and funny in many places. Loved it.
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2 people found this helpful