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Choke
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
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By: Lev Grossman
Publisher's summary
Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: He pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him.
When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual-addiction-recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park.
His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.
(P)2002 Random House, Inc.
Critic reviews
"One of the freshest, most intriguing voices to appear in a long time. He rearranges Vonnegut's sly humor, DeLillo's mordant social analysis, and Pynchon's antic surrealism (or is it R. Crumb's?) into a gleaming puzzle palace all its own." (Newsday)
"At times very funny. Also sick and perverted....Readers will love it. Readers will hate it and be offended by it. Must listen to figure out what you think." (AudioFile)
"Displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences that loom with stark, prickly prose and repetitive rhythms." (San Francisco Examiner)
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Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.
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A Thinking Man's Novel
- By L. Berlyne on 01-12-09
By: John Updike
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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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Darling Days
- A Memoir
- By: iO Tillett Wright
- Narrated by: iO Tillett Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO's mother's. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO's fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life.
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Can’t wait for more from this Author!
- By Team Hobson on 07-24-19
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The Center of Everything
- By: Laura Moriarty
- Narrated by: Julie Dretzin
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The Center of Everything is the fictional story of 10-year-old math prodigy Evelyn Bucknow. Living in Kansas with her single mother and deeply religious grandmother, Evelyn believes she is destined to marry Travis, the boy next door. But as she grows up, she experiences the heartbreak of a love not meant to be. Author Laura Moriarty was a recipient of the George Bennet Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy.
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not religious fiction
- By Theresa Jameson on 04-28-14
By: Laura Moriarty
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Lie Still
- A Novel
- By: Julia Heaberlin
- Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nursing the faded scars of a long-held trauma, Emily Page and her husband, awaiting the arrival of their first child, move from New York City to the uber-wealthy Clairmont, Texas. There, Emily is swept into a world of opulent privilege and shifting loyalties. But the secrets she keeps follow her south, and with them comes the danger that her new friends can't protect her from, and her new enemies will not hesitate to use to destroy her once and for all.
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Lie Still
- By Mary K on 06-27-17
By: Julia Heaberlin
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Scarborough
- By: Catherine Hernandez
- Narrated by: Catherine Hernandez
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Scarborough, a low-income urban neighborhood, three kids struggle to rise above poverty, abuse, and a system that consistently fails them. The adults in their lives either rise to the occasion or fall by the wayside; together, they make up a troubled yet inspired community that refuses to be undone.
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Difficult but excellent!
- By Erna on 01-30-20
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Thirsty
- By: Mia Hopkins
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
My name is Salvador Rosas. Back in the barrio, my past is written on the walls: ESHB. Short for East Side Hollenbeck, my father's gang - my gang. Hell, it's a family tradition, one that sent both my brothers away. They used to call me "Ghost" because I haunted people's dreams. Now I've got nothing going for me except a hipster gringo mentoring me in a new career. An ex-con making craft beer? No mames. Still, people in this neighborhood look out for one another.
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Really good ....
- By AMSullivan1077 on 04-07-19
By: Mia Hopkins
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Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
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A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
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Infinite Jest
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 56 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
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Removing Endnotes Does NOT Equal Unabridged!
- By Darwin8u on 04-11-12
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The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club
- True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life
- By: Laurie Notaro
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Introducing Laurie Notaro, the leader of the Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club. Every day she fearlessly rises from bed to defeat the evil machinations of dolts, dimwits, and creepy boyfriends - and that's before she even puts on a bra. For the past 10 years, Notaro has been entertaining Phoenix newspaper readers with her wildly amusing autobiographical exploits and unique life experiences.
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Sweet and funny
- By Julia Valentin on 12-19-20
By: Laurie Notaro
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The uninitiated need not apply
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Great on audiobook
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not sure what to expect,this wasn't it. but better
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Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. It is a dark, hilarious, and poignant act of storytelling from America's favorite, most inventive nihilist.
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Lullaby
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New York Times best-selling author of Fight Club, which was adapted into a major motion picture, Chuck Palahniuk offers a haunting tale. Winner of the Northwest Booksellers Association Award, Palahniuk is one of the rare literary geniuses who has been able to bridge the gap between a cult following and commercial success.
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“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.” Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism.
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Brilliant dissection of language and country.
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True Horror -- Not for the faint of heart, stomach
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Meet Otto and Cecil. Two brothers growing up privileged in the Welsh countryside. They enjoy watching nature shows, playing with their pet pony, impersonating their Grandfather...and killing the help. Murder is the family business after all. Downton Abbey, this is not. However, it’s not so easy to continue the family legacy with the constant stream of threats and distractions seemingly leaping from the hedgerow.
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Not sure what to say…
- By Amazing! on 09-25-23
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For decades Hazie Coogan has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton, veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart - and boudoir. Soon, Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in an upcoming musical extravaganza. As the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans and for posterity.
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Not awful but just read Diary instead
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By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Stranger Than Fiction
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Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. These pieces from Stranger Than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling.
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Excellent and hilarious
- By Brooke P. Anderson on 01-17-05
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Invisible Monsters Remix
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Palahniuk’s fashion-model protagonist has it all - boyfriend, career, loyal best friend - until an accident destroys her face, her ability to speak, and her self-esteem. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a bona fide woman.
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Just get the original.
- By Quinn on 11-24-21
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Fight Club
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Overall
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Story
When a listless office employee (the narrator) meets Tyler Durden, his life begins to take on a strange new dimension. Together they form Fight Club - a secretive underground group sponsoring bloody bare-knuckle boxing matches staged in seedy alleys, vacant warehouses, and dive-bar basements. Fight Club lets ordinary men vent their suppressed rage, and it quickly develops a fanatical following.
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The first rule about Fight Club is...
- By Ilana on 04-17-12
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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The Invention of Sound
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Story
Gates Foster lost his daughter, Lucy, 17 years ago. He's never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth. Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists creating the immersive sounds giving Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she's become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real.
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good one chuck
- By Dane on 11-12-20
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Adjustment Day
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
People pass the word only to those they trust most: Adjustment Day is coming. They've been reading a mysterious blue-black book and memorizing its directives. They are ready for the reckoning.
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Hard to listen to
- By Sondra Jacobs on 06-15-18
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Overall
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For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Beautiful You
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Story
From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Beautiful You is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit à la Sex and the City, and fantasy lit à la Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.
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So weird
- By Sterling Scott on 03-15-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Consider This
- Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, best-selling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
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Poetic Justice
- By Dave Green on 01-20-20
By: Chuck Palahniuk
What listeners say about Choke
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Pamela
- 10-26-03
Oh please, not another abridged!!!
Will you please stop featuring such appealing novels only available in abridged format? I am continually stumped as to why oh why anyone with a brain would even bother to read an abridged novel. Several times I have found on your site what promised to be a good read, but only available in the abridged version, and I have gone to the competition and rented the unabridged cassettes. Please stop the insanity!
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217 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Pamela Harvey
- 10-26-03
Oh please, not another abridged!!!
Will you please stop featuring such appealing novels only available in abridged format? I am continually stumped as to why oh why anyone with a brain would even bother to read an abridged novel. Several times I have found on your site what promised to be a good read, but only available in the abridged version, and I have gone to the competition and rented the unabridged cassettes. Please stop the insanity!
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113 people found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 07-02-15
Stop the Abridged Madness!
“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
I'm not sure how this one slipped by me. I normally don't purchase abridged novels or audiobooks. Perhaps, I just really wanted to hear Palahniuk read his own stuff (his voice is uncannily like a friend of mine who suffers from Triskaidekaphobia, but I digress...), but I can't give it a great review because it is ABRIDGED. Half the Mona Lisa might still be 1/2 a Da Vinci, but it isn't the Mona Lisa anymore. It is a piece. A sleave. Ugh.
I really liked this book. In a lot of ways it may be my favorite Palahniuk novel (so far, and ignoring the abridgement which I had to fix on my own by going back to the original novel). You can tell CP is leaving a lot of his own emotion and blood in the narrative. Do I think it is autobiographical? Certainly not, but I think it may be built out of stones that Palahniuk has lifted. He is able to weave many of the themes he will visit again and again into this novel. The struggle of addiction, the struggle to be human in a dehumanized world, the explosive need to not conform to what is being sold is all here.
There is a period in modern life when you wake up and realize that YOU are the beakless chicken destined to spend the rest of your life in a battery cage so small you cannot even stretch your wings. Society will continue to feed and water you as long as you keep pumping those eggs out. Most of us wake up to this existence and either pray or beg for it to end quickly. We might seek to muffle our existence with drugs, or religion, or sex, or exercise, or some other form of mental escape. We all grab for some opiate of the egg farm. Palahniuk is one of those rare writers, one of those rare birds who won't sit still in the cage. He is a chicken that seems fully prepared to burn the farm DOWN.
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42 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Michael
- 03-02-05
Completely mis-understood work of genius
This book has been reviewed by several prudes on this site, and that's cool. But this book contains so much more depth and insight into people's actions and the motivations behind them. It is one of the most insightful and thought provoking books I've ever read, and it's a shame that so many people can't see past the "vulgarity and sex talk". Have an open mind with this one and you might walk away a different person. I know I did.
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21 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Andy
- 03-30-08
Original amusing and sexy in a sick kind of way
I sometimes wonder if I have been listening to the same book as other reviewers. This is an ultimately uplifting book about the point at which people break out of destructive behaviors and turn their lives around.
Now that obviously involves delving into the destructive behaviors but since the example given is sex addiction everything has its positive side.
I found it a very funny book. It is completely unreliable on almost everything especially the opening entreaty from the author to stop reading.
If you are easily offended its not for you. If your are annoyed by snowboarder speak...Dude don't do it!
If you enjoy original and irreverent ideas coming at you in twisted but amusing ways get it in your cart!
I bought it because I enjoyed the sample...I think its pretty representative of the whole book so I would recommend you try that, if you enjoy it you will enjoy the whole thing.
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20 people found this helpful
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Overall
- John
- 01-16-03
Too much vulgarity and sex-talk
If you are a male with pimples and braces in the demographic age group 12-16, or still stuck mentally in that range, you will find this book hilarious. I'm a few years above this age group, and I was turned off by the amount of vulgarity and sex-talk. Must be a sign that I'm maturing. I'll admit that I laughed at one or two of the bathroom humor jokes, but I found myself far too often fast-forwarding the CD to find something of interest to hear when I stopped counting the main character's sexual encounters. This isn't a dig at the author, I just wasn't the target reader for this book.
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Overall
- Liz
- 07-01-03
sobering
I got this book because I really enjoyed the movie "Fight Club." I was a little unnerved by the extensive and raw description of what goes on in the mind of a sex addict. Though this was disturbing, I found the book compelling. In the end I felt that the author's narration set the perfect tone. I enjoyed my little journey in someone else's mind--a reminder that the world is composed of all kinds.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
- S A
- 07-27-04
Couldn't finish it
This book seemed pretty pointless and to use shock for shocks sake. Maybe I don't get it, but I wouldn't want to.
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5 people found this helpful
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- John
- 08-09-17
Dull voice performance
The author read his book with no emotion at a very slow pace. The story had some great disgusting imagery, and a great premise but was poorly executed.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Corey A. Messer
- 11-19-08
Does not live up to hype
First off let me start by saying, this book is not offensive, edgy, or even really that "erotic". It is in fact fairly boring and highly uneventful. I was told (when I asked what Palahniuk book to start with) that it had some brilliant subtext and original characters. What I got was subtext that was repeated so much that it was no longer subtext but text written 10 feet tall on a billboard. The sexual acts within the book were some of the most tame, uninspired,snooze fests I have ever read/listened to. Its not even the authors voice that does it in, his voice lends itself well to the story. This book should have been condensed to about half its length. I didn't need a million descriptions of why his mother is crazy/the anti anti hero. I get it, move on with the story. I don't need a million examples of his sex life, he's pathetic, I get it, move on. I don't need a million repetitions of repetitions to make me feel like I'm losing it with the character, I have a better imagination then that, I get it, move on. This story kind of meanders about in a little circle never really speaking out, never really making an impact. The characters seem very forced, like 2D characters bent in half to try to make them somewhat 3 dimensional. Its a book that tries to hard. Its like the kid in grade school you see desperately trying to color inside the lines, nearly shaking with frustration from trying to keep the crayons tip inside the treacherous little black lines. Someone needs to tell that kid that sometimes, its ok to color outside the lines. Don't try so hard, we're not stupid. We get it. Hope his other books don't disappoint.
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4 people found this helpful