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Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
- Narrated by: Ada Calhoun
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's summary
Inspired by her wildly popular New York Times essay "The Wedding Toast I'll Never Give", Ada Calhoun provides a funny (but not flip), smart (but not smug) take on the institution of marriage. Weaving intimate moments from her own married life with frank insight from experts, clergy, and friends, she upends expectations of total marital bliss to present a realistic - but ultimately optimistic - portrait of what marriage is really like. There will be fights, there will be existential angst, there may even be affairs; sometimes you'll look at the person you love and feel nothing but rage. Despite it all, Calhoun contends, staying married is easy: Just don't get divorced.
Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give offers bracing straight talk to the newly married and honors those who have weathered the storm. This exploration of modern marriage is at once wise and entertaining, a work of unexpected candor and literary grace.
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Story
Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Together, these essays, previously published in The Atlantic, Harper, Vogue, and The Washington Post, form a resonant portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love.
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Entertaining, engrossing, and elucidative essays
- By Bonny on 01-07-14
By: Ann Patchett
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Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
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Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
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Because I Come from a Crazy Family
- The Making of a Psychiatrist
- By: Edward M. Hallowell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control.
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Love and connection permeates through this book!
- By Steve Steinmetz on 06-29-18
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The Book of Separation
- A Memoir
- By: Tova Mirvis
- Narrated by: Tova Mirvis
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age 40 she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence.
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So many parallels
- By Cortney on 01-05-18
By: Tova Mirvis
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What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding
- A Memoir
- By: Kristin Newman
- Narrated by: Kristin Newman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Kristin Newman spent her 20s and 30s dealing with the stresses of her high-pressure job as a television comedy writer, and the anxieties of watching most of her friends get married and start families while she wrestled with her own fear of both. Not ready to settle down and yet loathe to become a sad-sack single girl, Kristin instead started traveling the world, often alone, for a few months each year, falling madly in love with attractive locals who provided moments of the love she wanted without the cost of the freedom she needed.
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Struggled to Finish
- By YITBOS on 11-21-15
By: Kristin Newman
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The Man I Never Met
- A Memoir
- By: Adam Schefter
- Narrated by: Adam Schefter
- Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 11, 2001, Joe Maio went to work in the north tower of the World Trade Center. He never returned, leaving behind a wife, Sharri, and 15-month old son, Devon. Five years later, Sharri remarried, and Devon welcomed a new dad into his life. For thousands, the whole country really, 9/11 is a day of grief. For Adam and Sharri Maio Schefter and their family it’s not just a day of grief, but also hope. This is a story of 9/11, but it’s also the story of 9/12 and all the days after. Life moved on. Pieces were picked up. New dreams were dreamed. The Schefters are the embodiment of that.
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Remembering a fallen father thru a family
- By Bob H on 09-07-18
By: Adam Schefter
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Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin
- A Memoir
- By: Nicole Hardy
- Narrated by: Nicole Hardy
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When Nicole Hardy’s eye-opening "Modern Love" column appeared in the New York Times, the response from readers was overwhelming. Hardy’s essay, which exposed the conflict between being true to herself as a woman and remaining true to her Mormon faith, struck a chord with women coast-to-coast. Now in her funny, intimate, and thoughtful memoir, Nicole Hardy explores how she came, at the age of 35, to a crossroads regarding her faith and her identity.
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This Book Spoke to Me
- By Allison on 04-08-14
By: Nicole Hardy
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Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
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Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
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The Book of Help
- A Memoir in Remedies
- By: Megan Griswold
- Narrated by: Megan Griswold
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir-in-remedies by a self-described "professional soul-searcher" that details a journey of self-discovery through more than 160 tonics, seminars, regimens, and transformative therapies. With a voice that is at once intimate and hilarious, Megan captures the openness and honesty necessary for people to take a new path in life. Listeners will open the audiobook with curiosity about all the different healing therapies that Megan tries, but leave with a new understanding of themselves.
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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride has some serious competition!
- By Elisa R. Goodman on 02-15-19
By: Megan Griswold
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Americanized
- Rebel Without a Green Card
- By: Sara Saedi
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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At 13, bright-eyed straight-A student Sara Saedi uncovered a terrible family secret: She was breaking the law simply by living in the United States. Only two years old when her parents fled Iran, she didn't learn of her undocumented status until her older sister wanted to apply for an after-school job but couldn't because she didn't have a Social Security number. Fear of deportation kept Sara up at night, but it didn't keep her from being a teenager.
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Corny Cheesy
- By Mina00 on 09-06-18
By: Sara Saedi
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Love, InshAllah
- The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women
- By: Ayesha Mattu, Nura Maznavi
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Piper Goodeve, Lauren Fortgang, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Romance, dating, sex and - Muslim women? In this groundbreaking collection, 25 American Muslim writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their search for love openly for the first time, showing just how varied the search for love can be - from singles' events and online dating, to college flirtations and arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist. These compelling stories of love and romance create an irresistible balance of heart-warming and tantalizing, always revealing and deeply relatable.
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Sex, Love, & Feminism, in the Muslim Women's World
- By Susie on 03-06-13
By: Ayesha Mattu, and others
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Committed
- A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government....
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Perfect timing
- By Nancy on 01-15-10
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Crazy Time, Revised Edition
- Surviving Divorce and Building a New Life
- By: Abigail Trafford
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this intelligent and insightful book, Abigail Trafford charts the emotional journey of a breakup of a marriage, identifying the common phases in the evolution from marriage to separation to divorce, and eventually to a new life. This revised edition includes the most up-to-date research on the personal and economic effects of divorce in adults and children's lives, addresses the special challenges of becoming single again in the age of the Internet, and broadens the experience of divorce to the breakup of all committed relationships.
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Better as an additional book
- By Ethan on 09-18-19
By: Abigail Trafford
What listeners say about Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- nate
- 06-06-17
anecdotal observational humorous real marriage
Quick, entertaining, insightful "read". Well and dryly narrated. No holds barred in a approachable way.
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- Mrs.Chablis
- 08-30-23
Highly recommend!
I just loved this. It reminds me of something Olivia Harrison said in a documentary about George Harrison and their life together. "People ask me, what's the secret to staying married? ... Not getting divorced!" There is something beautiful about honoring your vows, and that's been lost in this day and age when some people will get divorced over a ham sandwich. Ada Calhoun does a lovely job of looking back at the up's and down's of a life spent together.
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- Mike
- 01-23-20
fun, sometimes profound, lackluster performance
Full of surprising insights. Very honest. Sometimes hilarious. Read with a disappointing singsong rhythm, like she was bored with the whole thing.
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- Sunny
- 04-29-21
Great pre marriage read!
Listened to this book on our vacation drive with my fiancé and really helped put a lot of articulate words to things we were both consciously and unconsciously thinking/feeling. Really brought us closer together.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-20-19
Very Necessary
I have an aversion to doing what everyone else is doing. That’s why I’ve never seen Star Wars, The Terminator, or the Die Hard series of movies. It’s why I don’t have purple circle shaped bruises all over my back, or all the hair lasered off my body. And I couldn’t name for you a single song off the Hamilton soundtrack. It’s also why I am only now reading this book. I regret none of those decisions save one. I should have read this very necessary book much sooner. I believe it has saved me from divorce from so much more than my seemingly failing marriage, and brought me back to myself. Thank you for your brutally polite and beautiful honesty, Ada Calhoun. No exclamation point, because I truly mean it. xo
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- K S
- 07-19-22
Excellent!!!
Wonderful reflection on marriage. Highly recommend for all who are married! Funny, insightful, honest. Loved!
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