9780062798008
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Census audiobook

  • By: Jesse Ball
  • Narrator: Chris Andrew Ciulla
  • Length: 4 hours 52 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: March 06, 2018
  • Language: English
  • (2485 ratings)
(2485 ratings)
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Census Audiobook Summary

A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns.

When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son–a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son.

Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach “Z,” the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son?

Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.

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Census Audiobook Narrator

Chris Andrew Ciulla is the narrator of Census audiobook that was written by Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball is the author of fifteen books, and his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction and the Gordon Burn Prize, and was long-listed for the National Book Award. 

About the Author(s) of Census

Jesse Ball is the author of Census

Census Full Details

Narrator Chris Andrew Ciulla
Length 4 hours 52 minutes
Author Jesse Ball
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date March 06, 2018
ISBN 9780062798008

Additional info

The publisher of the Census is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062798008.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Angela M

February 14, 2018

There were a few times that I wanted to put this book aside because I wasn’t getting what was happening in this society, this country with unnamed towns designated by letters from A-Z. I wasn’t understanding what this census was all about, why this unnamed agency of the government was conducting it. It was just too philosophical in places. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jesse Ball tells us in the introduction: “It occurred to me last month that I would like to write a book about my brother. I felt, and feel that people with Down syndrome are not really understood. What is in my heart when I consider him and his life is something so tremendous, so full of light, that I thought I must write a book that helps people see what it is like to know and to love a Down syndrome boy or girl. It is not like what you would expect, and it is not like it is ordinarily portrayed and explained. It is something else, different than that.” I’m so glad I continued reading because I found moments of beauty and of joy among the things I didn’t quite get and a poignant tribute to Ball’s late brother. That tribute is depicted in the journey of a man, a widower, who is ill and near the end of his life, a surgeon who becomes a census taker for some unnamed agency of the government. He decides to do this so he can spend time with his adult son who has Down Syndrome. Like the places they travel through, the father and son are also unnamed. While I didn’t get the census thing or what this society was about, this journey and the people they meet and count along the way become a revealing mechanism for learning about his son through the reactions of the people to his son and the reactions of his son to them. They meet people who are accepting, people who are hostile, children who laugh with him and don’t want him to leave, a woman who understands in her heart because of her daughter who passed away and was “like” his son. They meet people who knew the man’s wife and we get to know her a little more through his reminiscences about her and her relationship with their son. The son is kind. He lets the man he is playing checkers with call it a draw when he is winning. The son is inquisitive. His father tells us : “My son has gotten lost on many occasions....that thing he loved to do is wander off...When he is found it is clear that he was if anything, working adamantly to not be found, but in an entirely passive way. By that I mean, he joins the scenery of the place, delighted to learn the things he can learn there....I have never sought to change what is essentially to my eyes, a basic resourcefulness that finds at any moment something profound.”The unconditional love and understanding of this man and his deceased wife for their son is touching and beautiful. I recommend that you watch Jesse Ball tell you about his brother Abram and hear him read an excerpt. You might not be able to pass up this book. It’s a meaningful story. http://youtu.be/47-ygyE-iUY(The quotes are from an uncorrected proof.) I received an advanced copy of this book from Ecco/HarperCollins through Edelweiss.

Meike

September 29, 2019

Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize 2018Jesse Ball's brother Abram, who suffered from Down syndrome, was only 24 years old when he passed away. Ball dedicated this book to him, and as he had planned his life assuming that he will one day become Abram's primary caretaker, this is not story about two brothers, but about a father with a son who has trisomy 21 - Ball thought this would be more suitable to mirror the relationship he and Abram would have had in the future. In the book, the father, a surgeon, is diagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to become a census taker in order to be able to travel the country with his son. The mother has already passed, so the father is very worried about his son's future. While they are travelling they encounter numerous people from all walks of life, and we learn more about the past of the whole family. Ball chose a very particular pacing that the reader needs to embrace, but then the flow of the text becomes absorbing. We also do not get any names, neither of people nor of the country they are crossing - they are simply traveling from A to Z. I was fascinated by the metaphor of the census, because the father is clearly not doing the work you might expect. Rather, the census stands for a mode of encountering people, one the father learnt from "my son who showed me, not in speech, but in his daily way, that we are by our nature a kind of measure, that we are measuring each other at every moment."This measurement is crucial in all human relationships, because "there is a way in which each person wants to be known", so in this census, "my failure to obtain the quintessence of any individual interviewed is a very real failure." When one of the people interviewed tells the father that he has always been a census taker, I could not help but feel that what she meant is that all of us are census takers - at least when it comes to this kind of census. The significance of this becomes even clearer when you read the father's stories of how his disabled son has been ridiculed and treated cruelly by others. Whenever the father and the son have talked to someone, they mark this person with a tattoo to indicate that they have been registered. In my quest to understand the meaning of this, I found this quote: "Telling stories is a visitation of this sort - for the stamp bears the impression not just of what it was to begin with, but of its every use." - just as the census takers left their mark on the person, the person changed the census takers who now carry on the story, in their own way. It might sound cheesy, but these census takers can only do their task because they open up to people, which means that they are vulnerable and might get hurt: "In the census taker the modern martyr was found." Again, there's a parallel to the destiny of the son and what he has been through because of his condition: "It is so easy for humans to be cruel, and they leap to it. They love to do it. It is an exercise of all of their laughable powers."And then there's the cormorant on the cover, which seems to stand for nature and is accordingly brought up in the context of a character named Mutter (German for "mother"). Mutter wants to be a cormorant, but she is aware that "anything changed becomes artifice, becomes less than it was, when it is made to suit the human hand. Our human victories by their nature have no glory." Society also tried to change the son - but this would make him less than he already is. His deceased mother was a famous clown, and she knew that a real school must teach its pupils "to become a library of shapes", which is a little like - and now we've come full circle - the census.As you see, this is a book full of puzzles, metaphors and ideas, and I really enjoyed trying to solve all of them. When the last sentence of this fascinating text brings tears to your eyes (which happened in my case), be careful to look at the pictures at the end of the book - I did not see that coming.

Jennifer

April 03, 2018

Absolutely stunning. Census is a deeply personal novel for Jesse Ball and you need to know this before starting the book. Mr. Ball has a thorough introduction that shares his inspiration for this novel: his brother Abram. Unfortunately, Abram is now deceased but Mr. Ball gifts readers with a loving and tender meet-and-greet with this beautiful soul throughout the story. Abram lived with Down syndrome which gave Mr. Ball a front-row seat to how Abram innocently experienced the world and how the world chose to experience Abram. Census was written to pay tribute to Abram and also to provide gentle education and perspective to readers about how people with Down syndrome are often misrepresented and not understood. This story may be fiction in its dystopian father/son road trip setting and census-taking tasks but the emotions it solicits are as real as they come: joy, humor, worry, fear, and a soul-aching longing for the world to be a better place for your favorite person. Census is my absolute favorite Jesse Ball novel to date. Please check it out ♥My favorite quote:"It is possible. The good is possible. It must be."

Jill

March 29, 2018

I am an unabashed fan of Jesse Ball. I’ve read many of his books – The Curfew, The Lesson, Silence Once Begun, A Cure for Suicide, How to Set a Fire & Why – and have often marveled at his metafictional, fablelike, and sometimes provocative works.But this time it’s personal – for the author and perhaps for this reader, too. Jesse Ball dedicates the book to his deceased brother, Abram Ball, who had Down Syndrome, and in the prologue, writes about the struggle to create this book and how he solved it: “I would make a book that was hollow. I would place him in the middle of it, and write around him for the most part. He would be there in his effect.” Like Jesse Ball, I have a loved one – a young nephew – with Down Syndrome and I was curious to see how he would develop this concept.This is how: an ill widower, a doctor, takes on the role of census taker and sets off with his Down Syndrome son to take the census, from point A to point Z. Each census taker must forego his or her rights of protection. Consider the census as “a large instrument made up of living cells—and each cell is a census taker.” Yet half way through the book, the unnamed narrator develops a new method of the census – not gathering certain information but instead, deciding what information to look for. The journey into less urban, more unplanned areas is a metaphor for the father’s own journey into the edges of where life and death convene.To that end, Census becomes a tapestry of representation – who will stand up and be counted. Indeed, father and son are discovering the heart and soul of America – the kindness, the anger, the humanity, the fear, the gentleness, the ignorance, and the brutality. Each person who participates in this census must allow the census taker to leave a tattooed mark. And indeed, the mark may well be a reminder of how they reacted to life and treated a boy who was not viewed by them as part of the norm.The conceit is not quite as accessible than Mr. Ball’s previous works and if truth be known, there were times when I wondered what Mr. Ball was trying to tell me…and found myself admiring the book more than loving it. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and by the end of the book, I believed I knew. He was writing about the inevitability of saying goodbye and of being part of a world that demands we deal with the good and the bad.

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer

December 03, 2018

“ “My son showed me, not in speech, but in his daily way, that we are by our nature a kind of measure, that we are measuring each other at every moment” Where this book really stands out in its portrayal of the experience of living with a family member with Down's syndrome. This is outlined in an incredibly moving forward to the book, where Jesse Ball beautifully explains his own relationship with his brother and the way in which he felt he could only convey the profound experience of that relationship by writing a book where that character would be the hollow at the centre of the novel, around which the novel is written; as well as by transposing the relationship to a father/son one which more closely reflected the role he had always assumed he would take in his brother’s life. The book is set in an unnamed country and time (albeit the author has made it clear that he sees it as a fictional representation of present day US) and opens with the first party narrator digging his own grave. The narrator was a surgeon, and married to a well-known “clown” (more of a performance artist mimic). His son, although never specified, has Down’s syndrome and for years the three formed a tight and loving family unit, in one of many, many poetical and emotional phrases, he tells us “Ever since he was born, our lives, my wife’s, mine, bent around him like a shield”.The man’s wife has died sometime earlier and when he realises that he too is dying, and having arranged for someone to look after his son after his death, the man sets out on a road trip with his son, the man applying for and taking a role as a Census Taker – a role which consists of him travelling through the country through regions labelled (B to Z) to interrogate the occupants of the homes they visit, record their stories and lives and mark them with a tattoo.As the book unfolds we: hear the life stories of those they visit; find more about the man, his son and his wife and their lives together; gain a greater understanding of the slightly Kafkaesque census process; find out perhaps more than we want about a (fictional) German writer’s study of the cormorant; understand more of how his son sees the world; and perhaps most importantly see something of how the world sees and treats him (and how this shows the real worth and reveals the real heart of people).And this I think ultimately is the message of the book. The son is someone without artifice “I have a sense of myself and I’m sure you have a sense of yourself, and in some ways we attempt to obtain from others a recognition of it. I attempt in meeting you ro ensure that you see who I think I am when you look at me. You do the same. But he does not appear to try very hard to do that.” And the way others react to him and his vulnerability reveals humanity …At its worst: “It is so easy for humans to be cruel, and they keep to it. It is an exercise of all their laughable powers” “How can this enormous conspiracy exist – where everyone has agreed ahead of time that it is completely alright to be hurtful to those harmless people who hurt no one?” And its best: “This is a proof of something I have long believed: that reason and sensical behaviour are not always necessary if there exists some small flood of kindness”“It is true, though, that there is another side, which is that it made it easier to find people who are worthwhile, as they were and are in no way troubled by him, and would enter into an immediate camaraderie. Such a person is difficult to guess at – I would not always have known them from their appearance, for people with innate gentleness and sensitivity are often compelled to hide or disguise it” And I feel that the real meaning of the census lies in here – the manner in which society and individuals react to the son and what it says about their values and worth is the real census being taken. As Ghandi said “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members' or as Jesus said in a parable “The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me"The text ends as it begins, with the man facing his own grave and thinking of his son’s future. And then the book ends as movingly as it begins – with a series of black and white photos of the author’s brother, photos which feature in the text of the novel.Highly recommended – an outstanding read – 4.5*.Three additional comments: I first read this book as a NetGalley ARC – the ARC was badly formatted (as many of the Kindle editions are) but in this case also had what seemed to me sections written out of order – for example two runaways who start interacting conversationally with the man a few paragraphs before they are introduced. I was fairly sure that this was an error in the ARC as it did not seem to fit with the narrative style and eventually abandoned the book with regret, noting that based on what I had read it was a 4-5* read. I was pleased on reading a hard copy to have my suspicions about the errors and my hopes for the book confirmed.The book reminded me very strongly of China Mieville's "This Census Taker" both in title/subject matter but also very much in style. (to the extent I was surprised not to see some form of acknowledgement of this I can only assume entirely coincidental link).The book recently won the Gordon Burn Prize – a prize to remember the North East writer Gordon Burn who moved across the boundary of fiction and non-fiction – and which “seeks to reward .. fiction or non-fiction .. which represents the spirit and sensibility of [his] methods …. novels which dare to enter history and to interrogate the past and non-fiction brave enough to recast characters and historical events to create a new and vivid reality. Although I am entirely unfamiliar with Gordon Burn’s work, the past winners (Ben Myer’s Pig Iron. Paul Kingsnorth’s “The Wake”, Dan Davies “In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Saville”, David Szalay’s “All That Man Is”, Denise Mina’s “The Long Drop”) had given me a certain impression as the type of book the prize rewarded, which was very different to this book. I was surprised to see it shortlisted and happily surprised to see it win.

Krista

July 05, 2018

It was my son who prepared me for this work, my son who showed me, not in speech, but in his daily way, that we are by our nature a kind of measure, that we are measuring each other at every moment. This was the census he began at birth, that he continues even now. It was his census that led into ours, into our taking of the census, our travel north.It was his life, his way of thinking that made the work of the census seem possible, even inevitable. In the introduction to Census, “fabulist, absurdist” author (so it says on his website) Jesse Ball explains that when he was growing up, he idolised his older brother, Abram, who just so happened to have had Down syndrome. As he got older, Jesse understood that he would eventually be responsible for his brother's care, but health problems piled up for Abram and he died in 1998, aged twenty-four. Lately inspired by this caretaking journey he was never able to take, Jesse Ball decided to write a book about a father and his developmentally challenged son who hit the road – as census takers in an off-kilter world – and have the way that strangers react to and interact with the son illuminate what Abram's own life must have been (or perhaps, might have been). Ball writes: It is not easy to write a book about someone you know, much less someone long dead, when the memories you have of him are like some often trampled garden. I didn’t see exactly how it could be done, until I realised I would make a book that was hollow. I would place him in the middle of it, and write around him for the most part. He would be there in his effect. This concept is familiar to me from Rachel Cusk's recent Outline series and its use of annihilated perspective, and is made even more manifest when the father explains that he had read that, “A census taker must above all attempt, even long for, blankness”, in an effort not to mar their impressions of the scenes they enter; this is not a census in the usual sense of gathering names and ages, but an attempt to survey the world and how accepting it is of those who are different. I am glad that Ball put all of this into his introduction – so that I wouldn't have mistakenly thought I was simply reading about a road trip in which not much happens – and after building to a moving ending, I have to conclude that he succeeded in this effort. We felt lucky to have had him, and lucky to become the ones who were continually with him, caring for him. I have read some books of philosophy in which the freedom of burdens is explained, that somehow we are all seeking some appropriate burden. Until we find it, we are horribly shackled, can in fact scarcely live. As Census opens, an aged surgeon (no one is named in the story), recently widowered, is given a terminal diagnosis concerning his heart condition, and he decides to check his adult son out of the group home he's living at and enlist him as his assistant in conducting a census along the road north from their capital city of A; planning to hit every small town from B to Z, where the son will be able to board a train back home and meet up with the neighbour who has offered to take on his care. In the far-flung communities that they enter, some residents are friendly and accommodating, some are hostile and paranoid, and along the way, the father fills in events from his son's life: the joys he and his wife took in raising the boy, the playground cruelties to which he was subjected. Too, the father relates much of what he sees to the nature writings of an author who has long intrigued him: Gerhard Mutter, seemingly a man, but in fact, the pen name of Lotta Werter, who led a public life as the mayor of a German town near Stuttgart, wrote compulsively her entire life about cormorants. To her, everything applied to them. Whatever principles she discovered day by day, they seemed mysteriously entwined with those dark nimble eyes, with that whispering, wild ungraspable diving. It must be a terrible thing, she writes, again and again in the same words (she uses the same sentences again and again – to the point where it ceases to be self-plagiarism and must be seen as a refrain), it must be a terrible thing, she writes, to be a fish, and know that a cormorant has observed you. It isn't terrible to die, she thinks. It is simply terrible to be observed, and therefore to be somehow in helpless peril. There is no distance a fish can go, she writes, that will save it. From the moment at which it is noticed, the fish is permitted a sort of grace that will be concluded, excruciatingly, with the bayonet of the beak. So too, I suppose, has the dying father been “permitted a sort of grace” in being afforded this trip, but I confess to being among those readers who don't quite get the ongoing theme of Mutter and her cormorants. If it is dangerous to be observed, it seems ironic that “observation” is the father's hidden mission; that the dead mother had been a much-celebrated performance artist (called a clown, but she was so much more). And this world is dangerous: children can die from the chemicals their father brings home on his work clothes; young people have their thumbs cut off to save them from the killing floors of the local rope factory; a stage actor playing a piece of food must dodge the impaling cutlery swooping from the theater's rafters. And, of course, our world is dangerous: we're all just journeying blindly through life from A to Z, and the best we can hope for is to be put on a train at the end of the road and eventually be met by someone who loves us; shouldn't we all be kind to one another along the way?I have to say that I admired this read more than truly loved it, but it's four stars nonetheless.

Joachim

May 08, 2017

After Silence once begun and A Cure for suicide I had high expectations of the latest Jesse Ball, but Census didn't disappoint at all. It's an absolute triumph of imagination, writing skills and finesse. More than with his previous books there is a lot of -personal- emotion involved.Don't miss this one!

Paul

June 04, 2019

My final read of 2018 / first review of 2019, and a great end/start to each year.The fact that we mar our impressions, mar the scenes we enter by even our presence alone—it is something census takers carefully, gently even, pretend not to know. If we knew it, we could not even begin our basic enterprise. For us, the census is a sort of crusade into the unknown. Someone once said about it, into a tempest with a lantern. Into a tempest with a lantern—these are words I have said under my breath many times, though for me the feeling is not heroic but comedic. There is a helplessness to the census taker. The limits of what can be done are very clear. Perhaps it is this very element that draws those who do it to this terrible and completely thankless work. For it is clear that whatever good it might appear to do, there can really be no meaning in such a thing, much less in some infinitely small part of such an impossibly large endeavor. My wife, now dead, would laugh to see me in an old coat approaching houses. But, I feel it still, the warmth of the little lantern, the storm of the tempest.Most of all it was my son who prepared me for this work, my son who showed me, not in speech, but in his daily way, that we are by our nature a kind of measure, that we are measuring each other at every moment. This was the census he began at birth, that he continues even now. It was his census that led into ours, into our taking of the census, our travel north.Jesse Ball's Census is explicitly a tribute to his brother as he explains in the introduction (reproduced here https://lithub.com/census/), and certainly the warmth of the writing, and the inclusion of real pictures at the end, ones integrated into the story, make for a powerful experience.But the book is much more than that and I think deserves to be assessed irrespective of the back story, on its pure literary merits. And there it scores very strongly.Ball's own acknowledged influences are many and impressive - many my own favourite authors - Gogol, Walser and Kafka, Sebald, Calvino, Agota Kristof and, perhaps above all, Thomas Bernhard and from the present day, Fleur Jaeggy and Samanta Schweblin. Some influences are more obvious than others - the nods here to the Castle and the Penal Colony, the Calvinoesque structure, the basic plot from Bernhard's Gargoyles (the 2nd book in recent days I have read where that plays a key role). But Ball very much creates his own world and style - one not so much a coherent world-build (and all the better for not attempting it) but rather a series of (yes Kafka like) aphorisms told as parables as the narrator and his Down syndrome son journey to the remote town of Z, and the narrator's expected, but nevertheless poignant (in that he leaves his son behind) death.Recommended - and Ball is an author I plan to revisit.

Claire

December 26, 2019

This is an immensely moving novel which I enjoyed much more than I expected to. Although it’s a four star read for me at this stage, Census is almost definitely a novel that will reward rereading, perhaps even repeated rereading, and I can genuinely see myself revising this rating up, as I come to greater grips with the many layers of meaning that exist in this book I’ve just read.Census requires a high tolerance for plotless narrative from its reader. In this manner, I’ve been relatively blessed. As a reader I lean towards ideas and people, and this is certainly the basis of Ball’s novel. I admit, Ball absolutely had me from his immensely personal introduction, which I’ve already quoted on a range of platforms, but will do so again here. “A life is long, and we are many people, variously, in our guises, in our situations, but some part of us is the same, and what I felt as a boy I find myself able to feel now- a sad and powerful longing for a future that did not ever come, with all its attendant worries and fears.”This for me, really encapsulates the essence of this novel. Census is a meditation on the human condition. It is about the elusiveness and sometimes triviality of the many and disparate things that make us who we are, and the complexity of the ways we interact with each other on both personal and more broadly societal levels. Ball’s triumph in his examination of this complex set of ideas is evident in the immense quotability of this book. There are innumerable moments, where Ball perfectly captures some of the most complicated and personal, emotional ways that we respond to the often senseless cruelty of being alive. Every one of these moments I felt that Ball had captured a moment in my own life, although my experience differs so much from the context of this novel.Did I entirely understand this? Absolutely not. Do I even know what the census is? I really don’t think so. Does any of that matter? Not at all.

Jessica

March 13, 2018

It's no secret that I'm a Jesse Ball fanatic. I think he's one of the most exciting living writers. I hold his novels on a high pedestal, and find that he is unmatched in his ability to write surreal, experimental, abstract, yet still accessible works of fiction.I liked Census quite a bit, but it's not the most intellectually exciting Ball novel, nor is it one that I would recommend to first-time Ball readers. Like most of his other books, there's a sense of mystery and unknowing, but the difference is that it remains largely unresolved. It's not the point. The characters (a father and his son with Down syndrome) are the point.The father, knowing he is dying, gives up his job as a doctor and becomes a census taker so that he and his son can spend time together on the road. It's unclear what the point of the census is in Ball's world. It's different than how we know it—it's mysterious, perhaps authoritarian. But again, none of that is really the point.As the father and son travel the county, they meet different people. Each town they enter, each person they meet serves as a sort of parable for human experience. There's not a lot of narrative here, mainly disparate encounters.Ball wrote Census as a tribute to his brother with Down syndrome, who died when he was still young. You can feel that this is personal for him. Tenderness and sincerity fill every page.Never do we learn the true purpose of the strange and elusive census, apart from what the father gains from it. Through the census, he explores the essence of life, humanity, and goodness. He copes with his own mortality, and with the gravity of leaving his son in this world alone.A blurb on the back of Census described Ball's world view as "tender nihilism," and this is indeed a fitting description. Census is deeply meditative and moving; though not one of Ball's more bizarre and intellectually stunning stories, it's quietly profound and emotionally resonant.

Kasa

April 22, 2019

How prescient this book's title? Census. When was the last time this process generated controversy. A correct census is necessary for so many reasons, but none of them are the focus of Jesse Ball's humane and bewitching novel. The landscape is rustbelt, but with a difference. Our unnamed narrator, a widower, has received a final diagnosis. Having been a surgeon, he is aware of the implications and doesn't question it, and decides to ditch his professional life and take up the position as a census taker. Thus he and his beloved son who has Down Syndrome take to the road. In a wrenching preface, Jesse Ball gives his personal motivation for the book, and the afterward photographs render the novel a metafictional quality that will remain for a long time. Challenging, and worth it.

Darryl

May 22, 2019

The best book I've read this month. One of my favorite books read this year.One of the most moving books I've ever read.--I adored Census. I’ll always value Census. It deeply moved me. The last paragraph shattered me. And what comes after the last paragraph destroyed me. If you plan on picking up this book, do not flip to the back to see what I’m referring to. Please. Census is a novel about a dying man and his son with Down syndrome, who take a trip across an unnamed country, in order to fulfill the father’s vocation as a census taker. The real reason for this journey, however, is for the man to embark on one “last season” with his son before his impending passing. The foreword is written by Ball himself, who explains his inspiration for telling this story. Ball’s older brother, who died at age twenty-four, had Down syndrome. Many of the hurdles and wonder discussed in the novel, Ball witnessed first hand through the eyes of his brother. He also explains why he chose to write this as a father/son story and not a brotherly love tale, and his reasoning makes it an even more tender artistic choice.Census is one of the most emotionally rich and fulfilling books I’ve ever read. It takes on a unique approach to the road trip genre, with its unconventional storytelling (no character/location names). We learn about the lives of the townspeople from the interviews the protagonist conducts with those he encounters. From these sequences we witness various degrees of unflinching humanity. The heavy use of imagery and metaphors, including what the census symbolizes, will be stimulating puzzle pieces for readers to try to decipher (I don't have all the answers myself). Once I finished this book, I was saddened; not only because of the heart-rending power of the story, but from knowing that I will probably never catch this kind of reading experience again. There are so many passages that should be underlined, highlighted, written down, read aloud; that need to be shared; paragraphs that divulge morsels of raw human truth. I can honestly say this is one of the best books I have ever read. And it is a book I’ll definitely make the time to travel back to.https://www.instagram.com/p/BxyIpnNAT...

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

  • 1. Download your favorite audiobook app such as Speechify.
  • 2. Sign up for an account.
  • 3. Browse the library for the best audiobooks and select the first one for free
  • 4. Download the audiobook file to your device
  • 5. Open the Speechify audiobook app and select the audiobook you want to listen to.
  • 6. Adjust the playback speed and other settings to your preference.
  • 7. Press play and enjoy!

While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
However, most audiobook apps work across multiple devices so you can pick up that riveting new Stephen King book you started at the dog park, back on your laptop when you get back home.

Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

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