A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (2024)

• Consider the Lobster

• And Other Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
• Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
• Unabridged

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• How this differs from the other version

• By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17

• The Pale King

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
• Unabridged

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• The King is dead, long live the King!

• By Darwin8u on 10-31-16

• David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
• Original Recording

Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circ*mstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• The best book on Audible!

• By Karen Chance on 04-07-16

• This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 24 mins
• Original Recording

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. This is the audio recording of David Foster Wallace delivering that very address. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• The best 20 minutes of my life.

• By John Nosal on 10-09-12

• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
• Highlights

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

• 1 out of 5 stars

• This is ABRIDGED

• By Mark on 09-26-09

• Oblivion

• Stories
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
• Unabridged

In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words

• By Darwin8u on 08-22-12

• Consider the Lobster

• And Other Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
• Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
• Unabridged

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• How this differs from the other version

• By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17

• The Pale King

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
• Unabridged

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• The King is dead, long live the King!

• By Darwin8u on 10-31-16

• David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
• Original Recording

Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circ*mstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• The best book on Audible!

• By Karen Chance on 04-07-16

• This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 24 mins
• Original Recording

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. This is the audio recording of David Foster Wallace delivering that very address. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• The best 20 minutes of my life.

• By John Nosal on 10-09-12

• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
• Highlights

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

• 1 out of 5 stars

• This is ABRIDGED

• By Mark on 09-26-09

• Oblivion

• Stories
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
• Unabridged

In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words

• By Darwin8u on 08-22-12

• The David Foster Wallace Reader

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
• Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
• Unabridged

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.

• 1 out of 5 stars

• Impossible to use without Chapter Names

• By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21

• The Broom of the System

• A Novel
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
• Unabridged

At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (and also bewildered) heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland-the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Evidence I WASTED my College years.

• By Darwin8u on 04-18-12

• On Tennis

• Five Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
• Unabridged

From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform

• By Darwin8u on 01-27-17

• Flowers for Algernon

• By: Daniel Keyes
• Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
• Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
• Unabridged

Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Walk with a Swagger

• By Tim on 05-30-14

• Both Flesh and Not

• Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
• Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
• Unabridged

Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and more.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Both Perfect and Not

• By Darwin8u on 02-16-13

• Signifying Rappers

• By: Mark Costello, David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
• Unabridged

Finally back in print - David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture. Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop." The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom.

• 3 out of 5 stars

• Signifying Roomates

• By Darwin8u on 08-08-13

• The Mechanic

• John Tyler Action Thrillers Series, Book 1
• By: Tom Fowler
• Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
• Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
• Unabridged

John Tyler finally built the life he wanted. But his past casts a long shadow. Eight years retired from the army, Tyler manages his PTSD and begins a job as a classic car mechanic. He's a single dad to Lexi, who's about to enter college. Life is looking up. Then, everything comes crashing down. Tyler's former commanding officer is out of prison and hellbent on revenge. Their mutual hatred has been simmering for years. When it finally boils over, everyone and everything in Tyler's life is threatened.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Interesting Cast of Characters

• By Grateful Lady on 07-12-22

• East of Eden

• By: John Steinbeck
• Narrated by: Richard Poe
• Length: 25 hrs and 23 mins
• Unabridged

This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Why have I avoided this Beautiful Book???

• By Kelly on 03-25-17

• Girl with Curious Hair

• Stories
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
• Unabridged

From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• This book is not NOT a Datsun!

• By Darwin8u on 04-15-12

• Everything and More

• A Compact History of Infinity
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
• Unabridged

Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.

• 3 out of 5 stars

• Equations via audio are tuff

• By Brian E. on 03-08-22

• Slaughterhouse-Five

• By: Kurt Vonnegut
• Narrated by: James Franco
• Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
• Unabridged

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James

• By Keith on 11-20-15

• Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

• A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
• By: David Lipsky
• Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain, Danny Campbell
• Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
• Unabridged

In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Leapin' Over That Wall of Self

• By Darwin8u on 08-27-12

• Hot White Heist 2

• By: Adam Goldman
• Narrated by: Bowen Yang, Jane Lynch, Cynthia Nixon, and others
• Length: 2 hrs and 38 mins
• Original Recording

Two years after successfully melting down the top secret sperm bank under the Space Needle, the cl*tO collective (Community of Lesbians Inclusive To Others) is thriving on their newly acquired private island, Lesbos 2. All is well in their queer utopia. Or is it? Investigative reporter Sarah Keebler (Sarah Steele) is piecing together the crew's previous heist for her bombshell true-crime podcast–and getting dangerously close to the truth.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Love Bowen Yang

• By Sheena Bambus on 03-15-24

• Born a Crime

• Stories from a South African Childhood
• By: Trevor Noah
• Narrated by: Trevor Noah
• Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
• Unabridged

In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Great book and perfect narration

• By MarilynArms on 12-15-16

• Yellow Face

• A Semi-autobiographical Comedy
• By: David Henry Hwang
• Narrated by: Daniel Dae Kim (CK), Ashley Park, Wendell Pierce, and others
• Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
• Original Recording

Winner of an Obie and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman, Yellow Face is as timely as ever, wrestling with issues of cultural appropriation, complicity, and artistic freedom. It’s brought to life in this audio-only revival by a stunning all-star cast (many playing themselves) led by Daniel Dae Kim.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Funny, great audible performance, and good dialogue.

• By Ed the Canadian on 05-04-24

• Cut and Thirst

• A Short Story
• By: Margaret Atwood
• Narrated by: Joyce Bean
• Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
• Unabridged

Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet every Thursday to sample fine cheeses, to reminisce about their former lives as professors, and lately, to muse about murder. Decades ago, a vicious cabal of male poets contrived—quite publicly and successfully—to undermine the writing career, confidence, and health of their dear friend Fern. Now, after Fern has taken a turn for the worse, her three old friends decide that it’s finally time to strike back—in secret, of course, since Fern is far too gentle to approve of a vendetta.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Smart women

• By Janice on 05-18-24

• Slaughterhouse-Five

• By: Kurt Vonnegut
• Narrated by: James Franco
• Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
• Unabridged

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James

• By Keith on 11-20-15

• Heads Will Roll

• By: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne
• Narrated by: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne, Tim Gunn, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
• Original Recording

Heads Will Roll is an Audible Original from Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon and her cocreator/costar (and real-life sister) Emily Lynne. Produced by Broadway Video, this is not an audiobook - it’s a 10-episode, star-studded audio comedy that features performances from Meryl Streep, Tim Gunn, Peter Dinklage, Queer Eye’s Fab Five, and so many more. Please note: This content is not for kids.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• More like this please

• By Anon893 on 05-03-19

• Hot White Heist 2

• By: Adam Goldman
• Narrated by: Bowen Yang, Jane Lynch, Cynthia Nixon, and others
• Length: 2 hrs and 38 mins
• Original Recording

Two years after successfully melting down the top secret sperm bank under the Space Needle, the cl*tO collective (Community of Lesbians Inclusive To Others) is thriving on their newly acquired private island, Lesbos 2. All is well in their queer utopia. Or is it? Investigative reporter Sarah Keebler (Sarah Steele) is piecing together the crew's previous heist for her bombshell true-crime podcast–and getting dangerously close to the truth.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Love Bowen Yang

• By Sheena Bambus on 03-15-24

• Born a Crime

• Stories from a South African Childhood
• By: Trevor Noah
• Narrated by: Trevor Noah
• Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
• Unabridged

In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Great book and perfect narration

• By MarilynArms on 12-15-16

• Yellow Face

• A Semi-autobiographical Comedy
• By: David Henry Hwang
• Narrated by: Daniel Dae Kim (CK), Ashley Park, Wendell Pierce, and others
• Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
• Original Recording

Winner of an Obie and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman, Yellow Face is as timely as ever, wrestling with issues of cultural appropriation, complicity, and artistic freedom. It’s brought to life in this audio-only revival by a stunning all-star cast (many playing themselves) led by Daniel Dae Kim.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Funny, great audible performance, and good dialogue.

• By Ed the Canadian on 05-04-24

• Cut and Thirst

• A Short Story
• By: Margaret Atwood
• Narrated by: Joyce Bean
• Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
• Unabridged

Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet every Thursday to sample fine cheeses, to reminisce about their former lives as professors, and lately, to muse about murder. Decades ago, a vicious cabal of male poets contrived—quite publicly and successfully—to undermine the writing career, confidence, and health of their dear friend Fern. Now, after Fern has taken a turn for the worse, her three old friends decide that it’s finally time to strike back—in secret, of course, since Fern is far too gentle to approve of a vendetta.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Smart women

• By Janice on 05-18-24

• Slaughterhouse-Five

• By: Kurt Vonnegut
• Narrated by: James Franco
• Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
• Unabridged

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James

• By Keith on 11-20-15

• Heads Will Roll

• By: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne
• Narrated by: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne, Tim Gunn, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
• Original Recording

Heads Will Roll is an Audible Original from Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon and her cocreator/costar (and real-life sister) Emily Lynne. Produced by Broadway Video, this is not an audiobook - it’s a 10-episode, star-studded audio comedy that features performances from Meryl Streep, Tim Gunn, Peter Dinklage, Queer Eye’s Fab Five, and so many more. Please note: This content is not for kids.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• More like this please

• By Anon893 on 05-03-19

• Napoleon's Hemorrhoids…And Other Small Events That Changed History

• By: Phil Mason
• Narrated by: LJ Ganser
• Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
• Unabridged

Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleon's Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Mason's many revelations, you'll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You'll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield.

• 3 out of 5 stars

• They just throw the facts too fast

• By Concerned_llama on 12-11-20

• I Can't Make This Up

• Life Lessons
• By: Neil Strauss - contributor, Kevin Hart
• Narrated by: Kevin Hart
• Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
• Unabridged

Superstar comedian and Hollywood box-office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To

• By Sam Clear on 07-13-17

• Escape from Virtual Island

• An Audio Comedy
• By: John Lutz
• Narrated by: Paul Rudd, Jack McBrayer, Sue Galloway, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
• Original Recording

In the year 2038, there’s only one destination that can play host to the world’s wealthiest adventure seekers: the Pengalaman Island Resort and Virtual Reality Theme Park. Located on a private South Pacific island, guests here live out their wildest fantasies in custom-made virtual reality simulations while also enjoying the usual amenities of an exclusive five-star getaway. All is relatively breezy until famed billionaire and avid guest, Mr. Wagner, goes missing within a virtual simulation. His only hope? A daring rescue led by Derek Ambrose and his ragtag search party.

• 2 out of 5 stars

• Story is a Bit Stupid

• By Jeffrey veals on 04-03-20

• The Sirens of Titan

• By: Kurt Vonnegut
• Narrated by: Jay Snyder
• Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
• Unabridged

The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Absolutely Outstanding

• By Robert on 01-07-12

• Green Wing: Resuscitated

• By: Victoria Pile, James Henry, Oriane Messina, and others
• Narrated by: Oliver Chris, Olivia Colman, Pippa Haywood, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
• Original Recording

They’re back! The all-star cast multi-award-winning cult hit comedy returns, with more surreal goings-on in the lives and loves of the doctors and staff at East Hampton Hospital (warning: contains very little medical content).

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Wonderful to hear these voices again

• By LucilleB on 05-03-24

• Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

• One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes
• By: Jessica Pan
• Narrated by: Jessica Pan
• Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
• Unabridged

What would happen if a shy introvert lived like a gregarious extrovert for one year? If she knowingly and willingly put herself in perilous social situations that she’d normally avoid at all costs? Writer Jessica Pan intends to find out. With the help of various extrovert mentors, Jessica sets up a series of personal challenges (talk to strangers, perform stand-up comedy, host a dinner party, travel alone, make friends on the road, and much, much worse) to explore whether living like an extrovert can teach her lessons that might improve the quality of her life.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• Encouraging memoir: Sorry, cheer

• By Aaron Menz on 07-03-23

• Consider the Lobster

• And Other Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
• Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
• Unabridged

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• How this differs from the other version

• By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17

• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
• Highlights

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

• 1 out of 5 stars

• This is ABRIDGED

• By Mark on 09-26-09

• The David Foster Wallace Reader

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
• Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
• Unabridged

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.

• 1 out of 5 stars

• Impossible to use without Chapter Names

• By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21

• David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
• Original Recording

Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circ*mstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• The best book on Audible!

• By Karen Chance on 04-07-16

• The Pale King

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
• Unabridged

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• The King is dead, long live the King!

• By Darwin8u on 10-31-16

• Oblivion

• Stories
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
• Unabridged

In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words

• By Darwin8u on 08-22-12

• Consider the Lobster

• And Other Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
• Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
• Unabridged

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• How this differs from the other version

• By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17

• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
• Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
• Highlights

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

• 1 out of 5 stars

• This is ABRIDGED

• By Mark on 09-26-09

• The David Foster Wallace Reader

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
• Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
• Unabridged

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.

• 1 out of 5 stars

• Impossible to use without Chapter Names

• By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21

• David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
• Original Recording

Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circ*mstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• The best book on Audible!

• By Karen Chance on 04-07-16

• The Pale King

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
• Unabridged

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• The King is dead, long live the King!

• By Darwin8u on 10-31-16

• Oblivion

• Stories
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
• Unabridged

In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words

• By Darwin8u on 08-22-12

• This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 24 mins
• Original Recording

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. This is the audio recording of David Foster Wallace delivering that very address. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• The best 20 minutes of my life.

• By John Nosal on 10-09-12

• The Broom of the System

• A Novel
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
• Unabridged

At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (and also bewildered) heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland-the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Evidence I WASTED my College years.

• By Darwin8u on 04-18-12

• Infinite Jest

• By: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers
• Narrated by: Sean Pratt
• Length: 64 hrs and 11 mins
• Unabridged

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.

• 5 out of 5 stars

• With footnotes!

• By George Saris on 04-25-24

• Girl with Curious Hair

• Stories
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
• Unabridged

From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• This book is not NOT a Datsun!

• By Darwin8u on 04-15-12

• Both Flesh and Not

• Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
• Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
• Unabridged

Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and more.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Both Perfect and Not

• By Darwin8u on 02-16-13

• Everything and More

• A Compact History of Infinity
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
• Unabridged

Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.

• 3 out of 5 stars

• Equations via audio are tuff

• By Brian E. on 03-08-22

• Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

• A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
• By: David Lipsky
• Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain, Danny Campbell
• Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
• Unabridged

In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Leapin' Over That Wall of Self

• By Darwin8u on 08-27-12

• On Tennis

• Five Essays
• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
• Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
• Unabridged

From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform

• By Darwin8u on 01-27-17

• Algo supuestamente divertido que nunca volveré a hacer [Something Supposedly Fun that I'll Never Do Again]

• By: David Foster Wallace, Javier Calvo Perales
• Narrated by: Antonio Raluy
• Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
• Unabridged

Foster Wallace elabora en Algo supuestamente divertido que nunca volveré a hacer una postal gigantesca basada en su experiencia en un crucero de lujo por el Caribe. Lo que a primera vista parece ser un simple viaje «para relajarse», en manos de un humor delirante y un cinismo corrosivo acabará convirtiéndose en el horror más absoluto.

• This Is Water

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: Amy Wallace-Havens
• Length: 23 mins
• Unabridged

How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? This audiobook version of a David Foster Wallace commencement speech, read by his sister, Amy Wallace-Havens, captures his electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.

• 3 out of 5 stars

• Too short for what you pay for!

• By Adryan on 05-14-09

• Gravity's Rainbow

• By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
• Narrated by: George Guidall
• Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
• Unabridged

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.

• 4 out of 5 stars

• "Time to touch the person next to you"

• By Jefferson on 07-04-16

• Consider the Lobster

• By: David Foster Wallace
• Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
• Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
• Abridged

Long renowned as one of the smartest writers on the loose, David Foster Wallace reveals himself in Consider the Lobster to be also one of the funniest. In this program, he ranges far and farther in his search for the original, the curious, or the merely mystifying. He discovers the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the Maine Lobster Festival and confronts the inevitable question just beyond the butter-or-co*cktail-sauce quandary.

• 3 out of 5 stars

• David Foster Wallace...a good place to start

• By Rick on 11-25-08