Audiobook4 hours
Nothing with Strings: NPR's Beloved Holiday Stories
Written by Bailey White
Narrated by Lorna Raver
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
For more than a decade, Bailey White has delivered a story each Thanksgiving to National Public Radio's All Things Considered listeners. Long awaited by her many fans, Nothing with Strings is the entire collection of these Thanksgiving stories, published together for the first time.
With wit and charm, White writes about an almost-gone little town where a spoon player is a guardian angel, an old woman fears that John James Audubon is living in her attic, and a homely governess wins a baby bull in a raffle and loses her heart. It's the kind of place where Heavenly Blue morning glories grow in through the windows of old houses and funeral food is shared on a Greyhound bus on a fall afternoon. You may not have ever been there, but you will feel right at home. White's beautifully written stories, teetering on the edge of the unreal, are sure to bring back memories you don't really have.
These are the stories that can be found in Nothing with Strings:
"Meals-On-Wheels"
"The Long Black Veil"
"What Would They Say in Birmingham?"
"The Progress of Deglutition"
"The Telephone Man"
"Miss Wigglesworth's Bull"
"Bus Ride"
"Return to Sender"
"Lonesome Without You"
"The Garden"
"Nothing with Strings"
"The Green Bus"
"Almost Gone"
With wit and charm, White writes about an almost-gone little town where a spoon player is a guardian angel, an old woman fears that John James Audubon is living in her attic, and a homely governess wins a baby bull in a raffle and loses her heart. It's the kind of place where Heavenly Blue morning glories grow in through the windows of old houses and funeral food is shared on a Greyhound bus on a fall afternoon. You may not have ever been there, but you will feel right at home. White's beautifully written stories, teetering on the edge of the unreal, are sure to bring back memories you don't really have.
These are the stories that can be found in Nothing with Strings:
"Meals-On-Wheels"
"The Long Black Veil"
"What Would They Say in Birmingham?"
"The Progress of Deglutition"
"The Telephone Man"
"Miss Wigglesworth's Bull"
"Bus Ride"
"Return to Sender"
"Lonesome Without You"
"The Garden"
"Nothing with Strings"
"The Green Bus"
"Almost Gone"
Author
Bailey White
Bailey White was born and raised in Thomasville, Georgia. She has worked as a schoolteacher and a writer. Her essays and stories have appeared in magazines and on NPR's All Things Considered. She is the author of two story collections, ama Makes Up Her Mind and Sleeping at the Starlite Motel, and a novel, Quite a Year for Plums.
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Reviews for Nothing with Strings
Rating: 3.3636362484848483 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
33 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/52½ stars.
Lorna Raver did a good job with the narration but unfortunately, I found the stories themselves were only OK. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5These stories may have broadcast around the holidays, but the actual stories have nothing to do with Thanksgiving or Christmas. And if you are looking for heartwarming and cheerful tales, keep looking. These poignant snapshots of people’s lives are well written, but are so sad they verge on being depressing. Abandonment, dementia, and death figure largely in them. And don’t expect the collection to be neatly tied up in a satisfying end, either. I wish whoever titled it and chose the cover art had picked something more descriptive to the book and less misleading. Perhaps dead roses on a grave in a cemetery would have enlightened readers as to what lay inside its cover. Yes, it’s well written for what it is, and the narrator is quite good, also, but in keeping with the holiday theme, I’m thankful it was only five hours long.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5From the title, I was expecting a collection of holiday stories. Nope. Not here. Only one story revolved around the holiday season. What I got was a collection of random stories that would be classified as Southern fiction. Most of the stories left me wondering what just happened. A lot of them felt incomplete. Most of them went over my head. I wouldn't have finished the collection, but I needed it for a challenge. The one story I did enjoy was "Bus Ride". It was a simple story that revolved around a group of strangers on a bus ride together.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I loved many of these stories: title story, the hippies, Queen of the Roses, the first story with the substitute meals-on-wheels delivery person, the evolution of the garden and many of the others which showed growth and adventure at any age. Holiday stories? No, only in that they may have been broad cast during the holidays, but Bailey Whites colorful perceptions abound.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a neat collection of southern short stories I’m not sure why they say they are holiday themed because really they’re not, but good none the less. I would say the theme is aging & gardening, southern style.Some of these stories were sad/touching, some were funny, most were both but all left me wanting more. Just a warning these aren’t happy stories but they are good stories I would recommend this for southern fiction lovers. I listened to this one on audio narrated by, Lorna Raver who as always does a great job.3 ½ Stars
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing with Strings is a collection of short stories written by NPR contributor Bailey White. These beautiful little stories are about people who can see the magic and mystery in everyday life. Where some see an elderly lady whose mind is slipping, Bailey White conjures a Thanksgiving picnic with a mysterious dancing girl. From a replica of a 1909 Sears catalog comes a black carriage with red stripes and a black and white prancy pony, a rose queen is discovered in a nursing home, and a lady wakes to find Richard Nixon cooking scrambled eggs in her kitchen. Squint your eyes a little and allow the lines of reality to blur and who knows what you could find between the pages of this book?