The Most Fun Thing
Dispatches from a Skateboard Life
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Narrated by:
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Chris Mayers
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By:
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Kyle Beachy
About this listen
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR • Southwest Review • Electric Literature
Perfect for fans of Barbarian Days, this memoir in essays follows one man's decade-long quest to uncover the hidden meaning of skateboarding, and explores how this search led unexpectedly to insights on marriage, love, loss, American invention, and growing old.
In January 2012, creative writing professor and novelist Kyle Beachy published one of his first essays on skate culture, an exploration of how Nike’s corporate strategy successfully gutted the once-mighty independent skate shoe market. Beachy has since established himself as skate culture's freshest, most illuminating, at times most controversial voice, writing candidly about the increasingly popular and fast-changing pastime he first picked up as a young boy and has continued to practice well into adulthood.
What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after the age of 40, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married?
Contemplating these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime - often overlooked, regularly maligned—whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. The Most Fun Thing is both a rich account of a hobby and a collection of the lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy - and what it continues to teach him as he struggles to find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband.
©2021 Kyle Beachy (P)2021 Grand Central PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“The year 2021 is the year of skateboarding. The ‘rebel’ pursuit was transformed into an Olympic sport. Thrasher magazine, skateboarding's bible, turned 40. So The Most Fun Thing couldn't have come at a better time [to] ponder the meaning of skateboarding.” (NPR)
"As readable as a skate mag and as complex as the best fiction, The Most Fun Thing imbricates themes of meaning, community, and the soul, and will leave you marveling at skateboarding’s mystery and hopeful for its future. A book as much for the skateboarder as the artist and the writer, the thinker, the feeler." (Mark Suciu, professional skateboarder)
"Reading The Most Fun Thing is the most fun thing that this reader has done in months. Kyle Beachy knows his skateboarding, but has even more to say about urban design, literary theory, marriage, the struggle for selfhood, the long-overdue exorcism of skate culture’s misogyny and bigotry, and the eternal knife fight between capitalism and community. With an omnivorous and probing intelligence, Beachy views our tattered world through the scratched fish-eye lens of a skateboarder, and finds jewels of truth hidden everywhere he looks." (Michael Christie, author of Greenwood and If I Fall, If I Die)
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In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire listeners to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
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Practical, literate, generous
- By Gare on 04-13-08
By: Francine Prose
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Go Ahead in the Rain
- Notes to A Tribe Called Quest
- By: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The seminal rap group A Tribe Called Quest brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces. This narrative follows Tribe from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Throughout the narrative, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself.
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Beautiful
- By Joshua Lindell on 03-06-19
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
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The Geography of Genius
- A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley
- By: Eric Weiner
- Narrated by: Eric Weiner
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity.
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Very, very disappointing
- By Tamara Greer on 06-08-16
By: Eric Weiner
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Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
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Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
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In the Land of Good Living
- A Journey to the Heart of Florida
- By: Kent Russell
- Narrated by: Kent Russell
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A wickedly smart, funny, and irresistibly off-kilter account of an improbable thousand-mile journey on foot into the heart of modern Florida, the state that Russell calls "America Concentrate".
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Wanna be writer and other fools
- By E on 08-11-20
By: Kent Russell
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Gumption
- Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers
- By: Nick Offerman
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The star of Parks and Recreation and author of the New York Times best seller Paddle Your Own Canoe returns with a second book that humorously highlights 21 figures from our nation’s history, from her inception to present day - Nick’s personal pantheon of “great Americans". After the great success of his autobiography, Paddle Your Own Canoe, Offerman now focuses on the lives of those who inspired him. From George Washington to Willie Nelson, he describes 21 heroic figures and why they inspire in him such great meaning.
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Swagger and mirth
- By Tamara Shope on 09-14-15
By: Nick Offerman
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The Fire This Time
- A New Generation Speaks About Race
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Cherise Boothe, Michael Early, Kevin R. Free, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping-off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
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Delusion shattering
- By Matthew A. Burnett on 06-12-20
By: Jesmyn Ward
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100 Things the Simpsons Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
- By: Allie Goertz, Julia Prescott
- Narrated by: Pete Cross, Angie Kane
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Most fans of The Simpsons can distinguish Lenny from Carl without checking their hands. But only real fans recall the Eastern European equivalent of The Itchy & Scratchy Show, know the name of Barney Gumble's submission to the Springfield Film Festival, and have road tripped to the World's Fair in Knoxville. 100 Things The Simpsons Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource for true fans, whether you comprehend at a Ralph Wiggum or Lisa Simpson level.
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BEST BOOK EVER!!😁
- By Kathleen on 11-22-20
By: Allie Goertz, and others
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The Humor Code
- A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny
- By: Peter McGraw, Joel Warner
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Peter McGraw, founder of the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, teamed up with journalist Joel Warner on a far-reaching search for the secret behind humor. Their journey spanned the globe, from New York to Japan, from Palestine to the Amazon. Meanwhile, the duo conducted their own humor experiments along the way-to wince-worthy, hilarious, and illuminating results.
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Real research and a scientific theory of humor!
- By Dianne on 05-22-15
By: Peter McGraw, and others
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The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
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Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
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Life, Animated
- A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism
- By: Ron Suskind
- Narrated by: Ron Suskind
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the real-life story of Owen Suskind, the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and his wife, Cornelia. An autistic boy who couldn't speak for years, Owen memorized dozens of Disney movies, turned them into a language to express love and loss, kinship, brotherhood. The family was forced to become animated characters, communicating with him in Disney dialogue and song; until they all emerge, together, revealing how, in darkness, we all literally need stories to survive.
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Life, Animated ... is Love, Animated *****
- By Tom T. Rumble on 04-12-14
By: Ron Suskind
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Road Dog
- Life and Reflections from the Road as a Stand-up Comic
- By: Dov Davidoff
- Narrated by: Dov Davidoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Road Dog is comedian, actor, and writer, Dov Davidoff's unflinching memoir told through reflections of twelve months on the road. Davidoff travels across the country from college campuses to local theaters doing stand-up comedy and telling it like it is. He's been known to wax poetic about everything from encounters with large fake breasts, to people who have too many kids, to magnum condoms the size of CD cases. He is hilarious and relatable and will have you laughing at yourself in no time.
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dark, real, & exceptional
- By Luis F Rodriguez on 11-22-17
By: Dov Davidoff
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.
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Unabridged?
- By K. Stiffler on 02-11-22
By: John Irving
What listeners say about The Most Fun Thing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- JPeggers
- 08-18-21
Pass
I waited six months for this book to come out. Unfortunately it is boring, purposeless, and the audio narration is painful. It also reads as if you are reviewing an essay on somebody who is competing in a creative writing competition, trying way too hard. Sorry.
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