Garrison Keillor has narrated 15 audiobooks on Listento.it by 11 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 27 ratings. The most-rated is Lake Wobegon Days.
Lake Wobegon Days
Summary
Garrison Keillor is the consummate storyteller, gifted with the rare ability, both in print and in performance, to hold an audience spellbound with his tales of ordinary people whose lives contain extraordinary moments of humor, tenderness, and grace. This exclusive recording of Garrison Keillor reading a carefully edited abridgement of the book also includes a few segments taken from live performances recorded during a fundraising tour for public radio stations in 1985.
©1985 Garrison Keillor (P)1986 Minnesota Public Radio
Good Poems
Summary
Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds. Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. The poems are read by Keillor and a number of the poets included in the collection. Some are wise, some are funny, some are soothing or heartwarming. All were chosen for their wit, frankness, passion, and, in Keillor's words, their utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m.
©2002 Garrison Keillor (P)2002 HighBridge Company
Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny
Summary
On the 12th floor of the Acme Building, on a cold February day in St. Paul, Guy Noir looks down the barrel of a loaded revolver in the hands of geezer gangster Joey Roast Beef, who is demanding to hear what lucrative scheme Guy is cooking up with stripper-turned-women's-studies-professor Naomi Fallopian. Everyone wants to know - Joey, Lieutenant McCafferty, reporter Gene Williker, Guy's ex-girlfriend Sugar O'Toole, the despicable Larry B. Larry, the dreamboat Scarlett Anderson, Mr. Kress of the FDA - and Guy faces them one by one, as he and Naomi pursue a dream of earning gazillions by selling a surefire method of dramatic weight loss. In this whirlwind caper Guy looks death in the eye, falls in love, and faces off with the capo del capo del grande primo capo Johnny Banana.
©2012 Garrison Keillor (P)2012 HighBridge Company
That Time of Year
Summary
In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted 40 years, 750 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renee Fleming and once sang two songs to the US Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who'd learned English from listening to the show. He wrote best-selling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, "I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That's the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I'm heading for 80, and I still get up to write before dawn every day".
©2020 Garrison Keillor (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
A Christmas Blizzard
Summary
A wealthy and depressed man (thanks to the economy, he's not quite rich enough to expand his cache of paintings by Vincent Van Guy, the famed Dutch realist) bound for Christmas in the tropics is abruptly summoned home to North Dakota to visit an ailing aunt. He arrives just in time to be trapped there by a blizzard. The electricity goes out, and when it does, figures from his childhood appear, and historical figures too, for a festive candlelit holiday. In his reverie, our man reaches an epiphany worthy of the season - he hears the harkening angels sing, he is awed by the silence of the night (dead quiet: not even TV), and when he is finally rescued, leaves North Dakota resolved to simplify his life.
©2009 Garrison Keillor. (P)2009 HighBridge Company
Stories
Summary
In this delightful audio collection, Garrison Keillor reads 14 of his own favorite stories from his many years as a writer for The New Yorker and from two of his best-selling books, Happy To Be Here and We Are Still Married. These selections embody all of the qualities that make Keillor such a beloved storyteller; his effortless blending of humor and poignancy, his keen observations and gentle insights, and his rare ability to bring a sense of truth to every tale he tells.
©1976, 1979, 1982, 1984, 1986 -1989, 1991 Garrison Keillor (P)1992 HighBridge Company
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
Summary
Fourteen-year-old Gary, a self-described "tree toad" (lover of a perfect lawn, the soft-porn masterpiece of Carnal Cuties, his Underwood typewriter, and, above all, his rebellious cousin Kate), lives through one amazing Lake Wobegon summer. Gary preoccupies himself by spinning fantastic yarns about boogers, talking dogs, conversations between God and Jesus, and especially melodramas featuring himself as hero and Kate as distressed damsel. When the real Kate makes a terrible mistake, Gary learns a lot about love, heartbreak, and what it really means to rebel. In his latest novel, Garrison Keillor describes the making of a writer who comes of age in classic Wobegon style. It's just what his fans have been waiting for: trademark wit, brilliant humor, great storytelling, and an extended stay in "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve".
©2001 Garrison Keillor (P)2001 HighBridge Company
Johnny Appleseed
Summary
This is the touching story of the benevolent naturalist who roamed the Ohio valley in the early 1800s, planting apple orchards, making friends, and spreading goodwill along his way. Known to early settlers as a gentle soul with a reverence for all life, Johnny never missed a chance to save an abandoned animal or to savor a delicious apple pie. Garrison Keillor's narration is accompanied by original music by Mark O'Connor. Ages five and up.
©2012 Rabbit Ears Entertainment, LLC (P)2016 Rabbit Ears Entertainment, LLC
Pontoon
Summary
Garrison Keillor's latest book is about the wedding of a girl named Dede Ingebretson, who comes home from California with a guy named Brent. Dede has made a fortune in veterinary aromatherapy; Brent bears a strong resemblance to a man wanted for extortion who's pictured on a poster in the town's post office. Then there's the memorial service for Dede's aunt Evelyn, who led a footloose and adventurous life after the death of her husband 17 years previously. Add a surprise boyfriend and a band of newly arrived Mormon missionaries, and the gently rendered chaos is complete.
©2007 Garrison Keillor (P)2007 HighBridge Company
The Road Home
Summary
From America's favorite storyteller, here are 18 new tales of Lake Wobegon, handpicked from live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion.
©2016 American Public Media (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Dueling Anthologists Billy Collins and Garrison Keillor at the 92nd Street Y
Summary
Billy Collins, former United States poet laureate, and Garrison Keillor, host of A Prairie Home Companion, return to the Y to read favorite poems from their new anthologies 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Mr. Collins) and Good Poems for Hard Times (Mr. Keillor).
©2005 92 nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association (P)2005 92 nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
The Lake Wobegon Virus
Summary
Best-selling author and humorist Garrison Keillor returns to one of America's most beloved mythical towns, beset by a contagion of alarming candor. A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a Keep America Truckin' motorway and amusement park, estimated to draw 2.2 million visitors a year. Clint Bunsen and Elena the hometown epidemiologist to the rescue, with a Fourth of July Living Flag and sweet corn feast for a finale. In his newest Lake Wobegon novel, Garrison Keillor takes us back to the small prairie town where for so long American readers and listeners have found laughter as well as the wry airing of our foibles and most familiar desires and fears - a town where, as we know, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average".
©2020 Garrison Keillor (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Summary
Young Huck is an industrious, fiercely independent boy who escapes his abusive, drunken father and sets out on an unforgettable journey down the Mississippi River. Enjoying his freedom, he befriends a kindhearted slave named Jim, whose suffering teaches Huck powerful lessons about racism, personal liberty, and the complexities of life. Revolutionary for its realistic dialogue and uncompromising plot, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is arguably the greatest of all American novels, and a powerful sequel to Mark Twain's lighthearted classic, Tom Sawyer.
Public Domain (P)1991 Recorded Books, Inc.
WLT
Summary
In the spring of 1926, the Soderbjerg brothers, Ray and Roy, plunge into radio by founding Station WLT (With Lettuce and Tomato) in order to rescue their failing restaurant and become the Sandwich Kings of South Minneapolis. For the next 25 years, the "Friendly Neighbor" station produces a dazzling array of shows and stars: Dad Benson, Wingo Beals, Slim Graves and his Blue Movers, chain-smoking child star Little Becky, and household-tips maven Lucille Larson (who repeatedly broadcasts in her underwear). Brilliantly weaving together the real lives and radio lives of his characters, Garrison Keillor has given us a comic, poignant, and slightly steamy novel, full of romance, intrigue, tough business, and loose living.
©1991 Garrison Keillor (P)1991 HighBridge Company
Wobegon Boy
Summary
From the millions of listeners who follow the tales of Lake Wobegon and A Prairie Home Companion every Saturday night on public radio, and for fans of Garrison Keillor's literary take on life in our times, this audiobook will be most welcome. Wobegon Boy is the story of John Tollefson, last seen in Lake Wobegon Days leaving home, now a 40-something Norwegian bachelor public-radio manager living in upstate New York. Amidst his tribulations, his gloomily neurotic staff, his controlling boss, his bumpy relationship with his querulous father, his love affair with a Columbia University historian, John returns to Minnesota for a visit. There, sitting at the Sidetrack Tap and the Chatterbox Cafe, talking and listening to the people he has known his whole life, he discovers what is truly important to him.
©1997 Garrison Keillor (P)1997 HighBridge Company