What's Not to Love? Audiobook By Jonathan Ames cover art

What's Not to Love?

The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

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What's Not to Love?

By: Jonathan Ames
Narrated by: Jonathan Ames
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Perhaps all of Jonathan Ames' problems, and the genesis of this hilarious audiobook, can be traced back to the late onset of his puberty. After all, it can't be easy to be 16 with a hairless penis "undistinguishable from that of a five-year-old's".

This wonderfully entertaining memoir is a touching and humorous look at life in New York City. But this is life for an author who can proclaim "my first sexual experience was rather old-fashioned: it was with a prostitute", an author who can talk about his desire to be a model for the Hair Club for Men and about meeting his son for the first time.

Often insightful, sometimes tender, always witty and self-deprecating, What's Not to Love? is an engaging memoir from one of our most funny, most daring writers.

©2000 Jonathan Ames (P)2006 Audible, Inc. Art & Literature Authors Entertainment & Celebrities Gender Studies Social Sciences Celebrity Funny Witty Comedy

Critic reviews

"Ludicrously funny...disconcerting and refreshingly frank." (The Denver Post)
"[What's Not to Love?] soar[s] with Ames' original wit and generous spirit." (Entertainment Weekly)
"Hilarious....[Jonathan Ames has] an unusual ability to take crack-smoking, balding, and Oedipal fixation and whip them up into an elegant, comic meringue." (The New York Times Book Review)
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The only negative thing about it is its subtitle. All of the negative reviews seam to be about outs contents rather than its execution. If you come to it with an open and compassionate mind you we’ll definitely find something great. It’s disturbing in some ways but everything worth reading is.

Phenomenal

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Ames convinces us that redemption comes through absolute truth and fidelity to language. I don’t believe there is a better writer and somehow Ames has created a style through this memoir and his novels that is new and unique. I’m not smart enough to name it or classify it but I suspect that it’s true. Convince me that I’m wrong and that there is another like him please.

Truth and Fidelity

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I love the author’s narration. I read this book years ago, and revisiting it as an audio book is delightful. Heartwarming , funny and grim all at the same time.

Hilarious!

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This book was not for me. Taken individually, some of these articles might have been interesting. Collected like this, though, they're repetitive and boring, the rare chuckles oases of entertainment in a desert of dullness. Also, perhaps some of this material was edgy when the stories were first published, but now they're bland. It's tepidness even appears in the subtitle, "Mildly Perverted." Who wants to waste eight and a half hours on mildness?

Certainly not the author, because his read sounds like he's not even interested in his own work. He takes the pan out of deadpan.

You might consider buying the print book and reading it in small portions over a long time, but I cannot recommend this audio version.

3 Star Writing, -1 Star Reading

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