The Stand Audiobook – Unabridged Stephen King (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator), Random House Audio (Publisher) & 0 more 4.4 out of 5 stars 504 customer reviews.
In Stephen King’s memoir, “On Writing,” he gives aspiring authors this advice: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
He might have added another tip, a practice he says has benefited him as a writer perhaps even more: listen.
Mr. King credits his decades-long obsession with audiobooks with sharpening his prose, improving the pacing of his narratives and helping him ward off lazy phrases and clichés.
“If you listen to something on audio, every flaw in a writer’s work, the repetitions of words and the clumsy phrases, they all stand out,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “As a writer, I say to myself, how will that sound?”
This week, Mr. King will find out whether his fans share his appetite for narrated books. In an unusual experiment, he released a new short story, “Drunken Fireworks,” as an audiobook exclusive on Tuesday morning, months before the story arrives in print.
Though he risks disappointing devoted fans of his print books, Mr. King is betting that “Drunken Fireworks” will turn more of his readers into audiobook converts.
“Every now and then, the discussion will come up, ‘Are audiobooks as good as books in print?’ and the answer to me is a no-brainer,” he said. “Yes, they are, and they might even be better.”
“Drunken Fireworks” unfolds as a detailed statement given to the police by a hard-partying man who is arrested for his role in a Fourth of July fireworks competition on a lake in Maine. The narrator, Alden McCausland, is a bumbling, unemployed man who spends his days drinking coffee brandy cocktails with his mother, and going to great, and illegal, lengths to outdo his nemesis’s annual fireworks display.
Mr. King wrote it for his coming short story collection, “The Bazaar of Bad Dreams,” but wanted to see if the story could stand on its own as a spoken performance.
“It’s an oral kind of story that should be listened to,” he said.
The arrival of “Drunken Fireworks” as a stand-alone work of audio is the latest sign that audiobooks, which were once little more than an afterthought for writers and publishers, are evolving into a vibrant and independent art form.
Digital audiobooks have become one of the fastest growing categories in publishing, bolstered by the growing use of smartphones. Revenue and unit sales for downloaded audio grew around 27 percent in 2014 compared with the previous year, easily outpacing e-books and print, a recent report from the Association of American Publishers showed. Production is up, too. Audiobook publishers released some 25,000 titles in 2013, compared with 3,430 in 2004, according to the Audio Publishers Association.
Brand-name authors like Mr. King are paying more attention to the form, and some have started catering to listeners as much as readers. Last year, the best-selling thriller writer Jeffery Deaver released an original, multicast audio drama, “The Starling Project,” with Audible.com. The science fiction writer John Scalzi will release a original audio piece with Audible later this year. And Mr. King’s son, the horror writer Joe Hill, will release an audio drama based on his graphic novel series, “Locke & Key,” with Audible in October.
With “Drunken Fireworks,” which costs $15 as a CD and $10 for the digital version, Mr. King and his publisher are testing whether audio can serve as an effective teaser for a future print book.
Mr. King decided to create a stand-alone audiobook out of the 12,200-word short story last year, when he was shopping in a discount chain store and saw a CD by the register that was narrated by his old friend and fellow Maine resident Tim Sample. He knew Mr. Sample, an author and comedian, could capture the necessary nuances of the Maine accent in “Drunken Fireworks,” and help anchor the story geographically with regionalisms like “rud” for “road” and “pitcher” for “picture.” Mr. Sample was game, and narrated the story in a flawless Yankee accent.
“The biggest mistake people make is they slip into a Southern drawl, when it’s closer to the British Isles,” said Mr. Sample, whose voice mail message says “have a wicked good day.” “There’s a kind of lumpy rhythm to the language, and it’s very nasal, way up in the nose.”
Mr. King was delighted with the performance. “I can hear that voice in my head because I’ve been listening to it my whole life,” he said.
Mr. King’s interest in audiobooks took root in 1981, when a nationwide air traffic controller strike grounded flights around the country. At the time, Mr. King was traveling from his home in Maine to Pittsburgh to visit the set of “Creepshow,” a George Romero film based on Mr. King’s screenplay. Stuck in the car alone for hours, he devoured audiobooks of novels like “The Thorn Birds” by Colleen McCullough.
Back then, unabridged audiobooks were scarce, so Mr. King had to settle for some amateur work. He paid his children $15 to $20 to record themselves reading novels for him. Somewhere in his basement in Bangor, Me., there are boxes full of cassettes narrated by his three children, including recordings of novels by James Ellroy, Wilbur Smith and Frank Herbert.
“The readings weren’t professional quality, but the kids got something out of it,” Mr. King said.
Mr. King’s sons, Owen and Joe, have become novelists themselves. Owen King, who published his first novel, “Double Feature,” with Scribner in 2013, credits his unusual childhood chore with shaping him as a writer. “It was a great job, and the pay was exceedingly generous when you take into account that when he first hired me, I was 9 or 10,” he said in an email message. “I also believe it improved my writing because it gave me the habit of testing the sentences I write by ear.”
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Preview — The Stand Unabridged Audio by Stephen King
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After a bio-engineered virus that acts like a revved up cold escapes from a U.S. government lab, it takes only weeks for almost all of humanity to suc...more
![The stand movie The stand movie](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/The_Stand_cover.jpg)
Dear Stephen,
I'm sorry. I just don't like you in that way. I know we've been friends for a long time, but I just never developed those kind of feelings for you, even after eleven hundred pages. I feel like we only moved forward in fits and stops, and we were just never able to sustain a kind of even-handed development of the kind of chills and thrills a person really likes. Shock someone enough times with snot running out of their nose, and it just becomes a little meaningless. And there are onl...more
I knew King had it in him, I am a fan of his brilliant 1977 haunted house thriller The Shining, but I did not expect this.
The best post apocalyptic novel ever?
Maybe, that is a broad category teaming with great work from talented writers, but King’s The Stand is an epic, genre defining work.
My friend Michael has a profile statement, something to the effect of finding our next 5 star rating. I like that sentiment, and am excited by the opportunity th...more
I caught it twice in the month it took me to read this book. Twice! I'm rarely sick so it's clearly a thing.
Post-apocalyptic book where most people die from a super flu. That part was my favorite.
It then becomes a battle between Good and Evil. Some fantasy elements were included. This part was still solid. I liked how we got to follow the characters and get to know them. I felt some similarities to Station Eleven so if you like The Stand I would give this on...more
The thing is, I didn't think I would like it because I barely remember the movie and am not sure I liked it. That was a long time ago and who the hell knows! I'm just extremely happy I finally read it.
Yeah! It's long, but most b...more
I first read THE STAND in the early 80's. It was during the Christmas break- I lived out in the boonies with my family, and after the holiday hoopla was over -I planted myself in my favorite chair and sat there for 4 days devouring every page-(only leaving for bathroom breaks, meals and sleep).
30+ years later my reading experience was a little different. I read it with my Goodreads friend Lisa- who had the uncut version, while I had the original- I stopped and started...more
M-O-O-N. That spells I am done with this MOONstrosity of a tome.
This is the biggest single book I’ve ever read in my life so far—It’s 470k words and it’s even bigger than Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson—and although it doesn’t go into my personal favorite list, I enjoyed the majority of the book.
The Stand is totally not what I expected. I really thought this would be a super thrilling plot-driven with a lot of actions book due to the nature that the story revolves around a plague out...more
1st Review
The end of the world where humanity takes a stand between good and evil.
I am a Stephen King fan and whilst I have read most of his books, The Stand has remained my all-time favorite. I read it when it was first published in 1978 and I was really happy when a longer...more
i thought the beginning started off really strong. i was enjoying seeing how the plague affected everyone differently and the lengths everyone had to take to survive the mass confusion and looming...more
Laws yes, I finished this huge ass book!
I’ve been wanting to read The Stand for years. I put it off because of the sheer size of the book. I finally kicked my ass in gear and read this post-apocalyptic tale of good vs evil.
I love post-apocalyptic/dystopian plots and I knew I needed to read this. I'm so glad I did!
I went into this book not knowing much about the plot or characters. I did not watch the TV mini-series of The Stand which was produced back in 1994. I'm glad that I didn...more
One of the things I like best about King's writing is the way he breathes life into characters and every day settings. For a horror wri...more
A plague has escaped a lab killing most of the population, only a few, a mere fraction of the whole,...more
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.
So I finally finished this gigantic brick. This freakin' gigantic heavy brick, and all I can say is, this is probably the best freakin' brick ever made. With a heaping 1439 pages, this book managed to hurt both my wrists, and probably injured some of my fingers. That's the price I had to pay to read this amazing novel. I never thought that I wouldn't finish this, fuck it I never even though...more
The Stand Unabridged: 3.5 to 4 Stars
I hope that Goodreads lets both of my star ratings of this book go through as I already rated The Stand Abridged years ago, but in case it doesn’t, I am combining my review of the two into one.
The original Stand is one of my top three favorite books of all time (the other two being Brave New World and 1984 – I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic/dystopian). I don’t think The Stand is the best introduction a person could have to Stephen...more
It's about almost everyone in the world basically catching a bad case of the Plague and dropping dead. This premise doesn't seem very far-fetched, which could make it either more or less entertaining, depending on your temperment.
Here's my opinion about good old Stevie King: he's got a real problem with endings. He'll spin these long, terrific stories, but way too often they're all ba...more
None of them match King's calibre as a story-teller.They don't even come close.
If somebody spins an intriguing tale, his characters get in the way of my enjoyment of it.
If somebody excels at characterization, his plotting is rather unconvincing.
If somebody plots a story well, then his writing turns out to be flat.
(...more
Original review can be found at Booknest.
Rating: 6/5 stars.
Yes, you read that right. Six out of five stars. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. M-O-O-N, that spells phenomenal.
Going into this book can be intimidating. It’s 1153 pages in its complete and uncut edition, making it one of King’s largest books. It is also considered by many King fans to be his best work. There’s disagreement, of course. Some swear by King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower, while others ha...more
I bought The Stand a few years ago but i was never really interested in reading it. I was intimidated by the amount of pages it has. [Yes, i’m a fucking p*ssy alright]. I hate myself for not picking it up earlier but it is what it is. Anyway, I’ve FINALLY finished...more
Let’s take a stand against evil!!
5 epic stars for THE STAND by STEPHEN KING as we all thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience of reading this masterpiece of a novel together.
With not too many of Stephen King’s novels read and not really being all that familiar with his work, when we thought of King we thought of horror, disturbing, and very frightening came to our minds. THE STAND is much more than that and not what we expected at all a...more
I decided to start reading The Stand when I started my new course at university – one much harder than one the previous. The last two months have consisted of late nights, copious amounts of coffee and naps during physiology class. But The Stand has been my constant and loyal companion; one that I have used as a pillow in the aforementioned physiology class. Finishing the book felt like saying goodbye to a friend that had not once let me down. I’d like to s...more
The subtitle of The Stand really should be A Very Norman Rockwell Apocalypse. It’s a political fantasy set in the aftermath of a GM plague: a mutating flu virus with 99.4% transmissibility. Needless to say, 75% of the world’s population dies....more
This is my second time reading this ridiculously long piece of apocalyptic fiction, and I’m still not sure why I decided to read it again (listen to it, actually... I had someone read most of it to me this time through headphones directly into my ears). My review from two years ago is below, and it is honest. It’s how a felt when I finally reached the end of the book.
I think I rushed the ending last time. Hell, I think I rushed a lot of the book last time. It’s long, oka...more
The Stand Unabridged: 3.5 to 4 Stars
I hope that Goodreads lets both of my star ratings of this book go through as I already rated The Stand Abridged years ago, but in case it doesn’t, I am combining my review of the two into one.
The original Stand is one of my top three favorite books of all time (the other two being Brave New World and 1984 – I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic/dystopian). I don’t think The Stand is the best introduction a person could have to Stephen...more
The Stand is a post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel by American author Stephen King. It expands upon the scenario of his earlier short story 'Night Surf' and outlines the total breakdown of society after the accidental release of a strain of influenza that had been modified for biological warfare causes an apocalyptic pandemic, which kills off the majority of the world's human population. King dedicated the book to his wife, Tabitha: 'For Tabby: This dark ch...more
I have heard of Stephen King a many times. He is one of most popular authors. I never thought I would have read his book one day. This is the first book I have read by Stephen King.
Stephen King has used very powerful vocabulary and it is very unusual style of vocabulary.
Stephen King is a good writer. He has a very good imagination and the way he has created horror atmosphere is wonderful. King has created horror atmosphere and feel brilliant also he kno...more
I was kindly offered the opportunity to become part of the “traveling sister read” earlier this month. Such a great concept and what an incredible experience. I enjoyed every minute of it. All of our discussions, opinions and back-and-forth chats. So interesting to share each other’s thoughts as we made our way through the book together. With such an incredibly long book we managed to keep...more
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