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A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE BOOK that INSPIRED the HILARIOUS CLASSIC FILM (audiobook) by Jean Shepherd

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Published by Listening Library in 2004. Read by Dick Cavett Duration: 3 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) A lot of people aren't aware that the plot for the classic Christmas movie A Christmas Story was not written as a coherent novel but was actually a collection of short stories that the author had written about his childhood in northwestern Indiana during the Great Depression over the years that were then skillfully edited into a movie. These stories don't follow the plot of the movie exactly, but all of the high points are here, including the infamous lamp, the bully, the BB gun, the visit to Santa and the Bumpus hounds.  Interestingly, this audiobook was not read by Jean Shepherd, who was a professional radio personality and told most of these stories over the air (he is also the narrator in the movie). Instead, it is read by television host Dick Cavett. At first, I was disappointed but Cavett did a great job. This audiobook was a lot of

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters by Jean Shepherd

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Excellent. Absolutely Excellent . Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters is written by the man who co-wrote and narrates   the classic movie A Christmas Story , Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) . Shepherd's book  In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash  is the inspiration for that movie, although the infamous dogs in the kitchen scene comes from  Wanda Hickey. If you love the movie  A Christmas Story, you will absolutely enjoy this book. Set in Hammond, Indiana (he fictionalizes it as Hohman, Indiana) in the 1930s, Wanda Hickey is actually a set of 8 semi-fictional short stories loosely based on actual people and events in Shepherd's life. Hohman is described as being "nestled picturesquely between the looming steel mills and the verminously aromatic oil refineries and encircled by a colorful conglomerate of city dumps and fetid rivers" which is an unkind, but not inacurrate description of Indiana's industrial northwest corner. Jean