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Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
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Galapagos
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Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
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Incredible!
- By Greg at 2 Book Lovers Reviews on 2019-02-16
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Hocus Pocus
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Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
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I found the racism to be challenging
- By Bill Westwell on 2018-09-11
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Cat's Cradle
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- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
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Excellent book and recording
- By Emergentmind on 2019-05-18
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Player Piano
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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Book was full of "meh"
- By Dennis on 2017-10-18
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Mother Night
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
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American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
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Deadeye Dick
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Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
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Galapagos
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
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Incredible!
- By Greg at 2 Book Lovers Reviews on 2019-02-16
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Hocus Pocus
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
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-
I found the racism to be challenging
- By Bill Westwell on 2018-09-11
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Cat's Cradle
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
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Excellent book and recording
- By Emergentmind on 2019-05-18
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Player Piano
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
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Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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Book was full of "meh"
- By Dennis on 2017-10-18
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Mother Night
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
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Deadeye Dick
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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- Unabridged
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Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.
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Slaughterhouse-Five
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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).
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Where’s the old version?
- By S.S. on 2022-02-17
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Welcome to the Monkey House
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- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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not the greatest by one of the greatest
- By Orrin farries on 2020-09-30
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Breakfast of Champions
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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NOT for me
- By C. J. Mccoy on 2018-04-09
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Palm Sunday
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
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It’s the book.
- By erik nilsen on 2022-01-07
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
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Jailbird
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher's Summary
Bluebeard, published in 1987, is Vonnegut's meditation on art, artists, surrealism, and disaster.
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life, which are heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence. Vonnegut's intention here is not so much satirical (although the contemporary art scene would be easy enough to deconstruct), nor is it documentary (although Karabekian does carry elements of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). Instead Vonnegut is using art for the same purpose he used science fiction clichés in Slaughterhouse-Five: as a filter through which he can illuminate the savagery, cruelty, and essentially comic misdirection of human existence.
Listeners will recognize familiar Vonnegut character types and archetypes as they drift in and out through the background; meanwhile Karabekian, betrayed and betrayer, sinks through a bottomless haze of recollection. Like most of Vonnegut's late works, this is both science fiction and cruel, contemporary realism at once, using science fiction as metaphor for human damage as well as failure to perceive.
Listeners will find that Vonnegut's protagonists can never really clarify for us whether they are ultimately unwitting victims or simple barbarians, leaving it up to the listener to determine in which genre this audiobook really fits, if any at all.
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What listeners say about Bluebeard
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Justin S.
- 2019-10-01
meh.
not his best work. kinda goes nowhere and doesn't have much to say at the end. meh.
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