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The Flowers of Buffoonery
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
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The Flowers of Buffoonery
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Publisher's summary
For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer Human
The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.
While No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai’s masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.
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By: William Gaddis
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Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,033
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 914
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 907
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 47
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
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Elfland
- Aetherial Tales, Book 1
- By: Freda Warrington
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 205
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 187
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Story4 out of 5 stars 187
Elfland is an intimate, sensual novel of people—both human and Aetherial—caught between duty and desire. It is a story of families, and of Rose Fox, a woman born to magic but tormented by her place in her adopted world.Led by Auberon Fox, a group of Aetherials—call them the Fair Folk, if you will—live among us, indistinguishable from humans. Every seven years, on the Night of the Summer Stars, Lawrence Wilder, the Gatekeeper, throws open all gates to the Other World. But this time, something has gone wrong.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Miscommunication is an obnoxious plot device
- By Robin on 05-26-16
By: Freda Warrington
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 156
Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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Martin Eden
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 179
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 181
Martin Eden, Jack London’s semiautobiographical novel, is about a struggling young writer. It is considered by many to be the author’s most mature work. Personifying London’s own dreams of education and literary fame as a young man in San Francisco, Martin Eden’s impassioned but ultimately ineffective battle to overcome his bleak circumstances makes him one of the most memorable and poignant characters Jack London ever created.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My favorite Jack London book.
- By j daly on 11-26-14
By: Jack London
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Anthem
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,884
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,664
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,669
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Triumphant! A beautiful molding of the mind.
- By Kari on 02-17-16
By: Ayn Rand
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I Am a Cat
- By: Soseki Natsume, Aiko Ito - translator, Graeme Wilson - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 21 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 126
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 107
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 107
Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great performance!
- By mz on 04-03-20
By: Soseki Natsume, and others
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The Voyage Out
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 108
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 95
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 94
The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a naïve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical, and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love, and learns how to face life intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight into humanity, will capture the imagination of the listener.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely
- By Edith on 05-24-19
By: Virginia Woolf
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Courting Catherine
- The Calhoun Women, Book 1
- By: Nora Roberts
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 548
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 489
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 488
Catherine "C.C." Calhoun is determined to keep her family's estate, known affectionately as the Towers, in the family. She admits the cost of keeping up the crumbling mansion might be quickly exceeding what C.C., her sisters and her aunt can afford, but the only way to save the house can't be to sell it. Especially not to arrogant and handsome hotel magnate Trenton St. James III.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
The narration is really annoying
- By Kate on 04-08-15
By: Nora Roberts
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Death in Venice
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: Peter Batchelor
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 208
-
Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 180
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 182
A stunningly beautiful youth and the city of Venice set the stage for Thomas Mann’s introspective examination of erotic love and philosophical wisdom.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
A problem with the narration
- By Erez on 03-19-12
By: Thomas Mann
-
The Setting Sun
- New Directions Book
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: June Angela
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 81
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
MORE OSAMU DAZAI TRANSLATIONS PLEASE!!!!!
- By Lucky on 10-19-22
By: Osamu Dazai
-
The Day the Lies Began
- By: Kylie Kaden
- Narrated by: Casey Withoos
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 468
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 430
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 426
It happened the day of the Moon Festival. It could have been left behind, they all could have moved on with their lives. But secrets have a habit of rising to the surface, especially in small towns. Two couples, four ironclad friendships, the perfect coastal holiday town. With salt-stung houses perched like lifeguards overlooking the shore, Lago Point is the scene of postcards, not crime scenes. Wife and mother Abbi, town cop Blake, schoolteacher Hannah and local doctor Will are caught in their own tangled webs of deceit.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
good but mixed feelings
- By lisa on 09-16-19
By: Kylie Kaden
-
The Kill (La Curee)
- By: Émile Zola
- Narrated by: Cate Barratt
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 15
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 16
Émile Zola's The Kill is one part of the French author's 20-volume series about the fictitious Rougon-Macquart family during the Second French Empire, and it is rich with symbolism. Paris is awakening to unprecedented expansion, the future intoxicating, and in keeping with its penchant for excess, the aristocracy is caught up in the mad dash to devour as much of it as it can.
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1 out of 5 stars
-
Whoever?!
- By Matthew Garcia on 07-07-21
By: Émile Zola
-
Amulet
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: Adriana Sananes
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 46
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 35
A tour de force, Amulet is a highly charged first-person, semi-hallucinatory novel that embodies in one woman's voice the melancholy and violent recent history of Latin America. Amulet is a monologue, like Bolaño's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry", hanging out with the young poets in the cafés and bars of the University.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Read The Savage Detectives first
- By Alicia Grega on 12-05-13
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others
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Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
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MORE OSAMU DAZAI TRANSLATIONS PLEASE!!!!!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
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Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them—a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally. This new translation preserves the playful language of the original and offers the listener a new window into the mind of one of the greatest Japanese authors of the 20th century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Short and introspective
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No Longer Human - Confessions of a Faulty Man
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Simon Jackson
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
No Longer Human (1948, Ningen Shikkaku / A Shameful Life / Confessions of a Faulty Man) was an attack on the traditions of Japan, capturing the postwar crisis of Japanese cultural identity. Framed by an epilogue and prologue, the story is told in the form three notebooks left by Ōba Yōzō, whose calm exterior hides his tormented soul. Osamu Dazai was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō (The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human), are considered modern-day classics in Japan.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Depressing but realistic take on the idea of a faulty man.
- By Steven Flores on 04-14-24
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No Longer Human
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s NO LONGER HUMAN narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
By: Osamu Dazai
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Kokoro
- By: Natsume Soseki
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- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 466
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 407
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The subject of Kokoro, which can be translated as 'the heart of things' or as 'feeling,' is the delicate matter of the contrast between the meanings the various parties of a relationship attach to it. In the course of this exploration, Soseki brilliantly describes different levels of friendship, family relationships, and the devices by which men attempt to escape from their fundamental loneliness. The novel sustains throughout its length something approaching poetry, and it is rich in understanding and insight.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Heart Of Things, Relationships & Feelings
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Early Light
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew.
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The Setting Sun
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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- By Lucky on 10-19-22
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
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5 out of 5 stars
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No Longer Human - Confessions of a Faulty Man
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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5 out of 5 stars
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Depressing but realistic take on the idea of a faulty man.
- By Steven Flores on 04-14-24
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s NO LONGER HUMAN narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
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Mikage is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend, Yoichi, and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart.
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5 out of 5 stars
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First Time is the Charm
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Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. A young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. They fall in love, but must then endure the calumny and gossip of the villagers.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Remote Japanese island beautifully depicted
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The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
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A band of savage 13-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unsettling writing, flawed reading
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The Housekeeper and the Professor
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He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper - with a 10-year-old son-who is hired to care for the professor. And every morning, as the professor and the housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Wonder Of Kindness & Connection
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Convenience Store Woman
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,953
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Tokyo resident Keiko Furukara has never fit in - neither in her family, nor in school - but when at the age of 18 she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of national convenience store chain Smile Mart, she realizes instantly that she has found her purpose in life. Delighted to be able to exist in a place where the rules of social interaction are crystal clear (many are laid out line-by-line in the store's manual), Keiko does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and mode of speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a "normal" person excellently, more or less.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Am amazing and different story
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I Am a Cat
- By: Soseki Natsume, Aiko Ito - translator, Graeme Wilson - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 21 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.
-
5 out of 5 stars
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Great performance!
- By mz on 04-03-20
By: Soseki Natsume, and others
What listeners say about The Flowers of Buffoonery
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- ALICE
- 06-17-23
Quick Read
The narrator was amazing! Was a super quick read! Definitely recommend this book! !
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
A meandering mess
Big Osamu Dazai fan. Have read Setting Sun and No Longer Human several times over. I highly recommend both of those audiobooks-and you can't even imagine the same author wrote both books.
In the Flowers of Buffoonery, I tried it a few times, but it has no flow. It starts off jumbled. The reader struggles to find any traction in the story. It has weird interjections from the author where he pretends not to be referencing his real life events, or maybe he admits. Hard to tell.
Probably, this book was a lot more interesting at the time when the author's first suicide attempt was publicized. In comparison to his other books, which are both stellar, this did nothing for me. And I seriously gave it a few tries. Narration was perfect as always, but so what?
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