
Making the Best of What's Left
When We're too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $13.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Judith Viorst
-
By:
-
Judith Viorst
About this listen
From the bestselling author Judith Viorst comes a witty and poignant exploration of the joys and sorrows of life’s twilight years—one that leaves us laughing, pondering, and grateful for the moments we have left.
In a career that has spanned more than fifty years, Judith Viorst has captivated readers with her bestselling children’s books and collections of poetry reflecting on each decade of life. Now in her nineties, Viorst writes about life’s “Final Fifth,” those who are eighty to one hundred years old. Her signature blend of humor and vulnerability infuses personal anecdotes and observations, drawing you into her world of memories and candid conversations.
She confesses, “I never ever send a text while driving, and not just because I don’t know how to text.” She discusses the afterlife (She doesn’t believe in it, but if it exists, she hopes her sister-in-law isn’t there). She complains to her dead husband (“I need you fixing our damn circuit breakers. I need you! Could you please stop being dead?”). And she explores the late-life meanings of wisdom and happiness and second chances and home.
With a wit that defies age, Viorst navigates the terrain of loss. It’s a poignant dance between grief and levity that will resonate with those in their Final Fifth as well as anyone who has parents, relatives, or friends in their eighties and beyond. This is Judith Viorst at her best.
©2025 Judith Viorst (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioPeople who viewed this also viewed...
-
Necessary Losses
- The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow
- By: Judith Viorst
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on psychoanalysis, literature, and personal experience, Necessary Losses is a philosophy for understanding and accepting life's inevitabilities. In this book Judith Viorst turns her considerable talents to a serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are certain and necessary parts of life.
-
-
Transformational
- By Pamela on 07-03-16
By: Judith Viorst
-
Children of Radium
- A Buried Inheritance
- By: Joe Dunthorne
- Narrated by: Joe Dunthorne
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their harrowing escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. What he found in his great-grandfather Siegfried’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, nearly two-thousand-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg to uncover the sprawling, unsettling legacy of Siegfried’s work.
By: Joe Dunthorne
-
Bless Your Heart
- A Field Guide to All Things Southern
- By: Landon Bryant
- Narrated by: Landon Bryant
- Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Let’s discuss . . .” These two words began the viral sensation that is @LandonTalks led by the sharp-witted, down-home, Mississippi-born Landon Bryant. If there’s one thing Landon knows, it’s the South. His anthropological dissections of customs and traditions celebrating all things Southern are a mix of humor, history, and head nodding. In his debut book, Landon discusses everything you've ever wanted to know about the South, including why they say the things they say, why they eat the things they eat, and what it really means when someone says, "Bless your heart."
-
-
Love this
- By Todd Williams on 04-08-25
By: Landon Bryant
-
Dear Writer
- Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.
By: Maggie Smith
-
The Last Session
- A Novel
- By: Julia Bartz
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Allyson Ryan
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Writing Retreat, a white-knuckled locked-room thriller about a social worker who, after coming face-to-face with her dark past, must infiltrate a mysterious wellness center in the deserts of New Mexico.
-
-
So fun!
- By ACV on 04-09-25
By: Julia Bartz
-
Notes to John
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Julianne Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods.
By: Joan Didion
-
Necessary Losses
- The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow
- By: Judith Viorst
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing on psychoanalysis, literature, and personal experience, Necessary Losses is a philosophy for understanding and accepting life's inevitabilities. In this book Judith Viorst turns her considerable talents to a serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are certain and necessary parts of life.
-
-
Transformational
- By Pamela on 07-03-16
By: Judith Viorst
-
Children of Radium
- A Buried Inheritance
- By: Joe Dunthorne
- Narrated by: Joe Dunthorne
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their harrowing escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. What he found in his great-grandfather Siegfried’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, nearly two-thousand-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg to uncover the sprawling, unsettling legacy of Siegfried’s work.
By: Joe Dunthorne
-
Bless Your Heart
- A Field Guide to All Things Southern
- By: Landon Bryant
- Narrated by: Landon Bryant
- Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Let’s discuss . . .” These two words began the viral sensation that is @LandonTalks led by the sharp-witted, down-home, Mississippi-born Landon Bryant. If there’s one thing Landon knows, it’s the South. His anthropological dissections of customs and traditions celebrating all things Southern are a mix of humor, history, and head nodding. In his debut book, Landon discusses everything you've ever wanted to know about the South, including why they say the things they say, why they eat the things they eat, and what it really means when someone says, "Bless your heart."
-
-
Love this
- By Todd Williams on 04-08-25
By: Landon Bryant
-
Dear Writer
- Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.
By: Maggie Smith
-
The Last Session
- A Novel
- By: Julia Bartz
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Allyson Ryan
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Writing Retreat, a white-knuckled locked-room thriller about a social worker who, after coming face-to-face with her dark past, must infiltrate a mysterious wellness center in the deserts of New Mexico.
-
-
So fun!
- By ACV on 04-09-25
By: Julia Bartz
-
Notes to John
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Julianne Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods.
By: Joan Didion
-
The Last American Road Trip
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah Kendzior
- Narrated by: Sarah Kendzior
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is one thing to study the fall of democracy, another to have it hit your homeland—and yet another to raise children as it happens. The Last American Road Trip is one family’s journey to the most beautiful, fascinating, and bizarre places in the US during one of its most tumultuous eras. As Kendzior works as a journalist chronicling political turmoil, she becomes determined that her young children see America before it’s too late. So Kendzior, her husband, and the kids hit the road—again and again.
-
-
Thoughtful reflections of the times.
- By arna lewis on 04-16-25
By: Sarah Kendzior
-
The Usual Desire to Kill
- A Novel
- By: Camilla Barnes
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.
-
-
Excellent, subtle humor and heartbreaking family dynamics.
- By Eileen Clark-Nagaoka on 04-23-25
By: Camilla Barnes
-
Rabbit Moon
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Haigh
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin, Yu-Li Alice Shen
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
-
-
That it was mostly set on china.
- By Amazon Customer on 04-17-25
By: Jennifer Haigh
-
The Sirens
- A Novel
- By: Emilia Hart
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover’s throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister’s house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack—but Jess is nowhere to be found. As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess’s strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women’s voices on the waves.
-
-
Absurd!!
- By Lila on 04-17-25
By: Emilia Hart
-
Raising Hare
- A Memoir
- By: Chloe Dalton
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.
-
-
A beautiful reading of a heartfelt story. I didn’t want it to end.
- By Sparrow on 04-02-25
By: Chloe Dalton
-
Heartwood
- By: Amity Gaige
- Narrated by: Justine Lupe, Alma Cuervo, Rebecca Lowman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground.
-
-
Very good with details for folks who love hiking
- By Amazon Customer on 04-04-25
By: Amity Gaige
What listeners say about Making the Best of What's Left
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kyla Blattberg
- 04-07-25
Her voice
She’s a grande old dam but someone else might have read it better. I winced too often
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tybe Diamond
- 04-08-25
The honesty of this book is enthralling, exciting, wise and inspirational. Thank goodness we have Judith Viorst.
Her honesty and her grappling with the most profound questions in life. I enjoyed her fight for comments about wisdom and the losses and riches of aging.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!