
The Stone Diaries
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Narrated by:
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Deborah Drakeford
About this listen
Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
In The Stone Diaries, one of the most successful and acclaimed novels of our time, Carol Shields weaves the strands of Daisy’s life together in a rich, sensuous, and poignant work that delivers lasting insights into the nature of life—and fiction.
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Critic reviews
1993, Governor General's Literary Awards - Fiction, Winner
1995, Pulitzer Prize, Winner
"Carol Shields has explored the mysteries of life with abandon, taking unusual risks along the way. The Stone Diaries reminds us again why literature matters." (The New York Times Book Review)
"...Shields's storytelling is at its most ambitious and compelling." (The Toronto Star)
"A beautiful, darkly ironic novel of misunderstanding and missed opportunities." (Esquire)
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By: Penelope Lively
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House Made of Dawn
- A Novel
- By: N. Scott Momaday
- Narrated by: N. Scott Momaday, Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A young Native American, Abel has come home from war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father’s, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world - modern, industrial America - pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, trying to claim his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust.
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Novel great, reader not so much.
- By Marcia on 05-17-20
By: N. Scott Momaday
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A Thousand Acres
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a tangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father, Larry Cook, grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand-acre farm. As each couple struggles with their own tragedies and challenges, they know their father is judging them in light of the weighty inheritance that hovers within their reach.
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good book bad reader
- By C. Carlson on 08-07-08
By: Jane Smiley
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Breathing Lessons
- By: Anne Tyler
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Maggie and Ira Moran are on a road trip from Baltimore, Maryland, to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania, to attend the funeral of a friend. Along the way, they reflect on the state of their marriage, its trials, and its triumphs - through their quarrels, their routines, and their ability to tolerate each other's faults with patience and affection.
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This novel has earned all the recognition ---
- By DLTBGYD on 11-20-22
By: Anne Tyler
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- By: Junot Diaz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.
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Wondrous Book!!!
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Junot Diaz
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The Hours
- By: Michael Cunningham
- Narrated by: Michael Cunningham
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, The Hours tells the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend; Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories have intertwined, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.
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Very literary, intentionally slight plot
- By Steve on 12-02-03
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Empire Falls
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Dexter County, Maine, and specifically the town of Empire Falls, has seen better days, and for decades, in fact, only a succession from bad to worse. One by one, its logging and textile enterprises have gone belly-up, and the once vast holdings of the Whiting clan (presided over by the last scion’s widow) now mostly amount to decrepit real estate. The working classes, meanwhile, continue to eke out whatever meager promise isn’t already boarded up. Miles Roby gazes over this ruined kingdom from the Empire Grill, an opportunity of his youth that has become the albatross of his life.
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Hugely Enjoyable
- By margaret on 01-23-12
By: Richard Russo
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- By: Annie Dillard
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence." Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope.
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It's a Classic for a Reason
- By MWS on 02-20-25
By: Annie Dillard
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The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
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Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
- By Polly on 03-06-12
By: Annie Proulx
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Martin Dressler
- The Tale of an American Dreamer
- By: Steven Millhauser
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Martin Dressler, son of an immigrant cigar maker, believes he can achieve anything if he works hard enough. At the turn of the century, he rises from the shadows of his father’s shop in New York City to become a powerful entrepreneur and builder of hotels. But, as he contemplates this land of almost limitless opportunity, his plans grow impossibly grand. Through the curve of Martin’s spectacular rise and eventual downfall in the business world, his tale remains a uniquely American one. Martin may not always control an empire, but he will always be able to dream.
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It Builds a Great Foundation
- By Joe Kraus on 03-26-13
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The Idiot
- By: Elif Batuman
- Narrated by: Elif Batuman
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary.
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Fascinating point of view
- By Amazon Customer on 04-21-17
By: Elif Batuman
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Interpreter of Maladies
- By: Jhumpa Lahiri
- Narrated by: Matilda Novak
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.
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skip it
- By Sheri on 06-30-09
By: Jhumpa Lahiri
Excellent Narrative
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basic americana
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Stone diaries
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