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Tristram Shandy
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's summary
Laurence Sterne’s most famous novel is a biting satire of literary conventions and contemporary 18th-century values. Renowned for its parody of established narrative techniques, Tristram Shandy is commonly regarded as the forerunner of avant-garde fiction. Tristram’s characteristic digressions on a whole range of unlikely subjects (including battle strategy and noses!) are endlessly surprising and make this one of Britain’s greatest comic achievements. A cast of strange characters populate this strangest of novels: gentle Uncle Toby, sarcastic Walter, and of course, the pompous, garrulous Tristram himself. This edition is read by Anton Lesser in a tour de force performance.
Please note: In print, Tristram Shandy is filled with visual, typographical, and compositing jokes - pages that are completely blank, pages that are completely black, misplaced chapters or chapters consisting only of their title, squiggly lines to indicate waving a stick, and much more besides. This audiobook tries in a variety of ways to match Sterne's invention with aural equivalents.
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- Narrated by: Jack Davenport
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When first published in 1759, Candide became an instant best seller and is now regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s preoccupations with evil and with various kinds of human folly and intolerance found a perfect vehicle in this philosophical tale. A master storyteller, he combined often wildly entertaining action with profoundly serious sense, parodying the traditional chivalric and oriental tales with which his public was more familiar.
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Guaranteed to keep you smiling if not LOL
- By Robert on 08-09-12
By: Voltaire
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The Confidence-Man
- His Masquerade
- By: Herman Melville
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Evoking Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this is a story of interlocking tales from a group of steamboat passengers traveling down the Mississippi toward New Orleans. Aboard the Fidèle can be found all manner of con men, from those selling stock in failing companies and herbal cure-all "medicines" to those who are raising money for supposed charitable organizations and those who simply ask for money outright.
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Trust and the confidence man
- By Nelson on 01-24-22
By: Herman Melville
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Felix Holt, The Radical
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Relinquishing thoughts of a materially rewarding life, the respectably educated Felix Holt returns to his native village in North Loamshire and becomes an artisan. He is a forceful young man of honor, integrity, and idealism, burning to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans.
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four and a half stars
- By connie on 01-02-08
By: George Eliot
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Barry Lyndon
- By: William Makepeace Thackeray
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Like Tom Jones before him, Barry Lyndon is one of the most lively and roguish characters in English literature. He may now be best known through the colorful Stanley Kubrick film released in 1975, but it is Thackeray who, in true 19th-century style, shows him best.
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A masterful reading
- By BB on 06-14-14
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The Way of All Flesh
- By: Samuel Butler
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This brilliant satirical novel, tracing the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex, has continued in popularity since its original publication in 1903. Every generation finds in The Way of All Flesh a reaffirmation of youth's rightful struggle against the tyranny of harsh parents and its admirable will for freedom of personal expression.
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classic satire- would make Jon Stewart laugh
- By Connie on 06-04-08
By: Samuel Butler
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Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
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Best Audible book ever
- By Molly-o on 12-25-11
By: George Eliot
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Waverley
- By: Sir Walter Scott
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Waverley by Sir Walter Scott is an enthralling tale of love, war and divided loyalties. Taking place during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the novel tells the story of proud English officer Edward Waverley. After being posted to Dundee, Edward eventually befriends chieftain of the Highland Clan Mac-Ivor and falls in love with his beautiful sister Flora. He then renounces his former loyalties in order actively to support Scotland in open rebellion against the Union with England. The book depicts stunning, romantic panoramas of the Highlands.
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Loved it
- By Tad Davis on 04-12-18
By: Sir Walter Scott
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North and South
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....
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Delightful
- By Sally on 01-04-10
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Mark Twain - The Complete Novels
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Lee Howard
- Length: 58 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Here you will find the complete novels of Mark Twain: 1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Starts at Chapter 1, 2. The Prince and the Pauper Starts at Chapter 37, 3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Starts at Chapter 70, 4. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Starts at Chapter 113, 5. The American Claimant Starts at Chapter 158, 6. Tom Sawyer Abroad Starts at Chapter 184, 7. Pudd'nhead Wilson Starts at Chapter 197, 8. Tom Sawyer, Detective Starts at Chapter 219, 9. A Horse's Tale Starts at Chapter 230, 10. The Mysterious Stranger Starts at Chapter 245.
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Content; GREAT! Performance.. .not so much😁
- By brian deis on 01-09-20
By: Mark Twain
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Laurence Sterne's beloved comic novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, is the "biography" of Tristram Shandy - a wonderfully humorous and eccentric narrator who guides the listener from his conception to his birth and on to his life as an adult. The twists and turns of Tristram's life expose him to such memorable characters as Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, Dr. Slop, and the Widow Wadman - whose own stories enrich the central narrative of Tristram's life.
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Thick but rewarding
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A classic and a hoot
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Tom Jones, a foundling, is brought up by the kindly Mr. Allworthy as if he were his own son. Forced to leave the house as a young man after tales of his disgraceful behavior reach his benefactor's ears, he sets out in utter despair, not only because of his banishment but because he has now lost all hope of gaining the hand of the beautiful Sophia. But she too is forced to flee her parental home to escape an undesirable marriage and their stories and adventures intertwine.
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terrific story BUT
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The Complete Essays of Montaigne
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“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)
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Stands next to the Bible and M.A.'s Meditations
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
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Gargantua and Pantagruel
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Here is a grotesque and carnivalesque collection of exuberant, fantastical stories that takes us from the ancient world through to the European Renaissance. At the heart of these tall tales are the giant Gargantua and his equally seismic son, Pantagruel. Containing magical adventures, maniacal punning, slapstick humor, erudite allusions, and just about any bodily function one can think of, here is quite possibly the zaniest, most risqué book ever written.
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The king of all the narrators
- By amazon on 02-13-20
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Tristram Shandy (AmazonClassics Edition)
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Beginning with the events leading up to his conception, Tristram Shandy intends to grace listeners with his remarkable life story. But his words often run wild. And through two expansive arcs - marvels of incident - so does his narrative, chockablock with family, friends, chambermaids, midwives, parsons, guardians, and neighbors. For the defensive Tristram, marshaling his material becomes something of a wonderful struggle with every new digression.
By: Laurence Sterne
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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
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Laurence Sterne's beloved comic novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, is the "biography" of Tristram Shandy - a wonderfully humorous and eccentric narrator who guides the listener from his conception to his birth and on to his life as an adult. The twists and turns of Tristram's life expose him to such memorable characters as Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, Dr. Slop, and the Widow Wadman - whose own stories enrich the central narrative of Tristram's life.
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Thick but rewarding
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Tristram Shandy
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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel by Laurence Sterne considered one of the greatest comic novels in English. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. Laurence Sterne (1713 - 1768) was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman.
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A classic and a hoot
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Tom Jones, a foundling, is brought up by the kindly Mr. Allworthy as if he were his own son. Forced to leave the house as a young man after tales of his disgraceful behavior reach his benefactor's ears, he sets out in utter despair, not only because of his banishment but because he has now lost all hope of gaining the hand of the beautiful Sophia. But she too is forced to flee her parental home to escape an undesirable marriage and their stories and adventures intertwine.
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terrific story BUT
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“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)
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Stands next to the Bible and M.A.'s Meditations
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
By: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, and others
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Gargantua and Pantagruel
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- Length: 34 hrs and 50 mins
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Here is a grotesque and carnivalesque collection of exuberant, fantastical stories that takes us from the ancient world through to the European Renaissance. At the heart of these tall tales are the giant Gargantua and his equally seismic son, Pantagruel. Containing magical adventures, maniacal punning, slapstick humor, erudite allusions, and just about any bodily function one can think of, here is quite possibly the zaniest, most risqué book ever written.
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Beginning with the events leading up to his conception, Tristram Shandy intends to grace listeners with his remarkable life story. But his words often run wild. And through two expansive arcs - marvels of incident - so does his narrative, chockablock with family, friends, chambermaids, midwives, parsons, guardians, and neighbors. For the defensive Tristram, marshaling his material becomes something of a wonderful struggle with every new digression.
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Tristram Shandy
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A full-cast dramatisation of this comic tale about an 18th-century gentleman who tries to tell his life story but continually finds that he must digress.... Featuring some of the best known and most well-loved characters in English literature, including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Dr Slop and the Widow Wadman. Beginning (or attempting to begin) at the moment of his own conception, Tristram Shandy recounts his progress through the world and utterly fails to stick to the point.
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Fabulous
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Alison Larkin Presents: Moby Dick and Two Poems by Herman Melville
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Melville’s epic tale of one man versus a great white whale will delight Melville devotees as well as those who have yet to sail on this adventure in this mesmerizing new recording read by Jonathan Epstein. The mountain whose whale-like shape first gave Melville the idea of writing Moby Dick rests in the Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts, a short drive away from The Alison Larkin Presents recording studio. At the end of the recording, Larkin interviews Jonathan Epstein and recording engineer Galen Wade about the experience recording the great novel.
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Absolutely outstanding
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Published just months before his death in 1768, A Sentimental Journey is Sterne's lightly fictionalised account of his own European travels; and being Sterne, it is more about digressions, misunderstandings and risqué jokes than the places he visits. Narrated by the (apparently) innocent Parson Yorick, who appeared in Sterne's other masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, it is full of anecdote and incident, and is far more about the people than the landscapes on the road from Calais.
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Glad I Listened, But…
- By SandyK on 09-03-24
By: Laurence Sterne
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Dead Souls
- Penguin Classics
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- Unabridged
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Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'dead souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a aristocrat. In this ebullient picaresque masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov.
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Excellent Narration
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By: Nikolay Gogol, and others
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Stalingrad
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The story told in Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad unfolds across the length and breadth of Russia and Europe. At the heart of the novel is the Shaposhnikov family. Even as the Germans advance, the matriarch, Alexandra Vladimirovna, refuses to leave Stalingrad. Far from the front, her eldest daughter, Ludmila, is unhappily married to the Jewish physicist Viktor Shtrum. Viktor's research may be of crucial military importance, but he is distracted by thoughts of his mother in the Ukraine, lost behind German lines.
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One of the best audiobooks of all time
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By: Vasily Grossman, and others
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The Decameron
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The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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Not Up to the Usual Naxos Standard
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Gulliver's Travels: A Signature Performance by David Hyde Pierce
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A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.
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Loved every minute
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Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays
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In 1572, Montaigne - nobleman, humanist, and thoroughly Renaissance man - retired to the seclusion of his estate in the Dordogne and started to write. From his pen poured a stream of "essays" - attempts to capture the observations that came to him on an idiosyncratic range of subjects, from ancient customs, cannibals, and books to thumbs, war-horses, and the wearing of clothes. He made the study of himself the starting point for investigations into how to live, and wrote with a startlingly modern candor about love, grief, friendship, sex, and death.
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Philosophical Dictionary
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Preeminent French cynic and philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) collected ideas and thoughts that were too short for pamphlets but worth saving for later development. These jottings eventually became the Philosophical Dictionary, filled with witty and wise entries on subjects as diverse as Atheism and Kissing - a compendium of the whole spectrum of Voltaire's ideas.
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Good for historical value only...
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By: Voltaire
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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
- By: Laurence Sterne
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
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- Unabridged
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First published in nine volumes over the years from 1759 to 1767, The life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a, comic, bawdy, humorous, satirical novel. It purports to be the autobiography of Tristram Shandy beginning at his conception but, famously, Sterne's egoistic character digresses and side-tracks the listener with so many colorful observations of his family and cast of supporting characters that his birth doesn't take place until Vol 3.
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A rich glimps into our past or the longest Shaggy
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By: Laurence Sterne
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Two Years Before the Mast
- By: Richard Henry Dana
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
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- Unabridged
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Richard Henry Dana, a law student turned sailor for health reasons, sailed in 1834 aboard the brig Pilgrim on a voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. Drawing from his journals, Two Years Before the Mast gives a vivid and detailed account, shrewdly observed and beautifully described, of a common sailor's wretched treatment at sea, and of a way of life virtually unknown at that time.
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The Uncommon Common Sailor in the Age of Sail
- By Jefferson on 05-24-13
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Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
What listeners say about Tristram Shandy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chad Owens
- 01-05-17
Wonderful narrator and sound effects
The best narrator I have ever heard. Also, great sound effects for places in the book where there are no words.
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- Darwin8u
- 01-02-14
Like discovering Frank Zappa in 250 years
A POEM IN WHICH IS A CELEBRATION BY NEGATION
or, a repartee on jeopardy.
If on a friend’s bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.
― Alexander Theroux*
I was (of course) destined to love this book. Just look at my love for/on Montaigne, Cervantes & Burton. J'adore big books full of absurdity and digressions and allusions. This is the ... THE ... grand-pappa of the modern novel; the paterfamilis of all things Shandy.
Looking into the black night after emerging with a book from my mother's womb, I dreamt of THIS book among the stars. Sterne's Tristram existed for me before I read it. It was like a song whose tune you hum in your head for years, before identifying the tune with an actual song. Tristram Shandy was playing in the background as I read Joyce, Nabokov, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Murakami, Pynchon, DFW, Rushdie, Woolf, etc. Hell, even Karl Marx loved this book.
But now, I find myself debating on whether I will be content with my Modern Library (Fokenflik intro and notes) version or if I need to go buy the Visual Edition or the Florida Edition. BTW, the NAXOS/Lesser audio version is amazing AMAZING, but you still want the text in front of you because part of Sterne's genius is SEEN not just heard.
IF this seems like an odd obsession after reading/finishing/listening to Tristram Shandy, perhaps (I am guessing) you haven't READ it. 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' just isn't one of those books you really escape from. I keep digressing back into the novel because you keep recognizing the novel in other novels and movies and people. I look at Mandelbrot sets and think THIS is Tristram Shandy with its digressions, repetitions, and spawn. I look at the endnotes of DFW and think, this IS a Shandian experiment. I look at Vonnegut's picture of an * a$$hole (pg 81) in 'BreakFast of Champions' and think: this is a Shandian experiment.
Sterne was postModern before postModern was cool. Reading Tristram Shandy is like discovering that someone in the 18th century had already built a working computer, but that all (all is not to minimize it, simply to localize ti) it did was spit out a long sequence of digressions (All your base are belong to us). Anyway, my wife informed me that she loved just watching me read/listen (so this is now a voyeur review) Sterne because I would spit, giggle, choke, and squirm every page. I would wiggle and twist as Sterne would allude to the classics and twist the logic and satirize everyone from Robert Burton to Jonathan Swift to William Warburton. I can't say this novel isn't appreciated. Those who have read it get it, but it isn't appreciated enough. I imagine it will be like discovering Frank Zappa in 250 years. A future me will be looking at old YouTube videos and will think GOD why didn't more people appreciate him?
* from 'The Lollipop Trollops and Other Poems'
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40 people found this helpful
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- Nicole Tompos
- 04-10-19
A Great Help for a Great Story
This book was assigned to me for a class at my college. With the limited time to actually read and understand it, this audiobook was an unbelievably great help not just for getting all the reading done but to enhance my enjoyment of it. Lesser does a fantastic job of reading and hits on the humor just right. However, this isn't a book you can just listen too, you need the physical thing in front of you as well to fully understand and appreciate what Stern was doing. Reading Tristram Shandy is marathon, not a sprint, so be ready to be in it for the long haul. It is truly a good time though, so have fun with it.
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- John
- 12-30-20
Great
Really lovely reading of an amazing and classic novel. Truly fist rate in all aspects.
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- andrew
- 07-14-12
Much better than the first time
I originally tried reading this in high school, and the whole thing seemed like an insane mess to me, not funny at all. It was somewhat over my head, let's say. Same thing happened with Gulliver's Travels for me. I hated the book for a long time because I read it too early. This is a brilliant book really, and alternates from being mildly funny, to annoying, to hilarious. The whole gag is that the author keeps procrastinating and never getting anywhere, and its similar in style of humor to anything that is funny at first, and becomes funny again if you keep the joke up. I started to giggle at times as I realized just how long nothing had happened! I wondered how anyone could keep up the delays and marvelled at the originality. However, this won't be for everyone, and the joke is a bit subtle for some maybe, who will just wonder, why on earth does anyone read this when there is no story and nothing happens?
Its very British. So if you do not like British humor, then avoid this. Not that all British humor is the same, but its not straight at you, wink and stamp the foot while the joke is told American style humor. So some will miss it. The narration is wonderful, and helps immensely from my experience trying to read this myself. He emphasizes often and has unique voices for each of the characters which helps quite a bit to prevent boredom and keep things straight and only towards the end did I begin to sigh and want it to wrap up. This might be one that is better paired with another book so you can alternate between them. I was listening at a typing job and always try to have several books going depending on mood, so I can flip flop. I now understand just why the book is considered a classic and in that regard am very happy to have purchased and tried it again. One of those books better as an audio. Funny.
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29 people found this helpful
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- fol
- 01-27-21
Spectacular!
I wouldn't have thought that this intensely *literary* novel, with its zigzags, lists, fragments of other genres, borrowings, typographical play and all would adapt well to performance. But Anton "Qyburn" Lesser does a spectacular job capturing its many moods, velocities and voices. Get this one--dive in head first.
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- redmeatkelley
- 09-04-21
Outstanding narration
One of the very best narrations! Full command and fantastic. I highly recommend this version!
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- Rebecca
- 11-16-13
Glorious digressions
What a glorious ramble and rollicking good time. Tristram spends half of the book finally getting to the complications of his birth and name. Along the way, he gets diverted into stories of his Uncle Toby's war wound, Corporal Trim's brother, and the beliefs of his father, Doctor Slop and more. Another book that I wonder if the audiobook performance is what made the difference. Anton Lesser and the producers of this book made it come to life and put the humor in it.
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- blake rose
- 03-25-21
wonderful!
I gave it a one on story because that is what the author would have wanted.
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- bibliophilelinda
- 03-22-16
Excellent narration!
Any additional comments?
Aside from the fact that this book is outrageous and amusing, the real gem is the narration. Anton is a master narrator, enhancing the hilarity and making this book a must read (listen). I think even the stuffiest literary critic would be pleased by his performance of this work of art. Oh, the the story is great, too.
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