A trio of recent audiobook standouts includes a bio of a beloved actress, a hymn to all things soft and snuggly and a tribute to the unsung women of Disney.
★ Carrie Fisher
Even if Carrie Fisher had never starred in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time, she still would have lived a life worth writing about, and author Sheila Weller tells the full story in Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge (Macmillan Audio, 13.5 hours). Fisher was a witty novelist, a top Hollywood script doctor, an addict, a child of celebrities and a performer of a one-woman show. She was also bipolar, an extremely thoughtful gift-giver and a thrower of legendary parties. I think Fisher would have appreciated the humor with which Weller portrays her life and the way she balances darkness with light. Award-winning narrator Saskia Maarleveld nimbly strikes this balance as well, giving the darker moments of Fisher’s life the weight they deserve while ably delivering her jokes, a vital skill when quoting this beloved icon.
Cosy
Cosy is a necessary counterpoint to the sleek, minimalist, Danish modern style of interior design that’s so popular today. This audiobook teaches you not only how to decorate your home for maximum comfort but also how to live your life to its “cosiest” (the British spelling, please). After listening to it, I was ready to throw out all my Ikea furniture and curl up in a Welsh woven blanket with a pot of tea and one of the cosy books recommended by author Laura Weir. She offers suggestions for cosy charities (because giving back makes you feel good), cosy vacation stays, cosy recipes and cosy clothing, all with a lighthearted sense of humor. Narrator Michelle Ford’s peaceful, meditative voice is the perfect guide through ultimate cosiness.
The Queens of Animation
The women behind Disney’s most famous animated features finally get their due in this well-researched book from Nathalia Holt. Even if you’re not already interested in animation, The Queens of Animation is worth listening to for its insight into the changing roles of women in the workforce throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. Many creative women have been involved in the menial tasks of animation since its early days, but this book focuses on the women who were integral to the look of Disney’s earliest films, despite Walt Disney’s original policy of not hiring women for creative roles. Surviving in a male-dominated industry, the women are linked by their talent and gumption. Narrator Saskia Maarleveld has a compelling way of telling the story—one that pulls you in further, like she’s confiding a dark secret.
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Of all the quarantine reading and listening I’ve done, no audiobook has inspired more people to ask me for more information than You Never Forget Your First, Alexis Coe’s myth-busting biography of George Washington. Coe contextualizes and humanizes Washington’s victories and losses on the battlefield, his many (many) illnesses, his politics and home life in a whole new way, and it’s made all the more accessible by Brittany Pressley’s wry, clear narration. Most importantly, you’ll explore the hypocrisy in Washington’s fight for liberation from British rule while keeping black people enslaved. For readers interested in thinking critically about American history, this is a good start.
I didn’t think it was possible to be more chained to my phone—and thus, more uncomfortable with my relationship to social media—but here we are in a pandemic, and nearly all our social interactions are now on screens. Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing has helped temper those feelings by providing guidance to resist the guilt of feeling unproductive and the demands on our attention. I find Rebecca Gibel’s narration to be hypnotic in its dryness, allowing me to reprioritize and realign where I give my focus.
My thoughts have increasingly strayed to the week each year my family spends at a condo on the Florida gulf—specifically, to the books I read on last summer’s trip, one of which was Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, which feels like an Aaron Sorkin production with the more melodramatic moments of “The Crown.” When I decided to reexperience it via the audiobook, I’m not sure whether I was motivated by a desire to return to the world McQuiston’s ebullient romance between the president’s son and an English prince, to return to the beach itself or to transport myself to a happy moment in a simpler time. Probably a bit of all three. Regardless, the absorbing and rapid-fire story, paired with Ramón de Ocampo’s warm, exuberant narration (and fantastic British accent, when performing Prince Henry’s lines) made for the perfect, swoonworthy escape.
Ninth House is an addicting mystery set at a magical secret society at Yale University, author Leigh Bardugo’s alma mater. Narrators Lauren Fortgang and Michael David Axtell alternate between Galaxy “Alex” Stern and Daniel “Darlington” Arlington; of the two, Fortgang is the standout. Her performance is as sharp as Alex herself, who’s been through a lot before arriving at Yale. Scenes where Alex lets her rage and trauma surface are riveting as Fortgang snarls and performs through clenched teeth. Fortgang’s visceral performance of Alex’s anger makes the rare moments of genuine affection that Alex permits herself—particularly toward Hellie, a close friend, and Pamela Dawes, the society’s in-house researcher—moving in their tenderness, as Fortgang softens her voice to convey Alex’s vulnerability. Anyone looking to be swept up in a story of dark magic in which nothing is as it seems should give Ninth House a try.
I read a hard copy of Kiese Laymon’s memoir Heavy when it came out in 2018 and loved it—in that had-to-lie-down-for-two-and-a-half-hours-afterward kind of way. (The book is aptly named.) When my professor assigned it for a graduate class I took this spring, I decided to give the award-winning audiobook a try for my second reading. Hearing Laymon’s words in his own voice was even more affecting than reading them on the page. In the audio version, you get the full playfulness of he and LaThon’s middle school riffing on words like “galore” (gal-low), “meager” (mee-guh) and “y’all don’t even know.” You also hear the full tenderness of Laymon’s conversations with his mother, in which they try to tell each other the truth about addiction, abuse, deception and love. When I finished listening to Heavy this time, I still had to lie down afterward to digest its contents—white supremacy, disordered eating and violence against Black Americans, among other things—but since a late afternoon stress-nap was already a staple in my quarantine routine, it turned out to be a perfect pandemic listen.
I was two chapters into my hardcover of Trick Mirror when the audiobook became available to check out from the library. (Apparently, I had placed it on hold during pre-COVID times and then, along with all the other trappings of normal life, forgot about it.) Jia Tolentino’s nuanced essays are the sort of reading you want to absorb every word of, so I wasn’t sure the audiobook would be the best fit. But out of curiosity (and a desire to make good on the library’s monthslong waitlist), I checked it out and grabbed my headphones. Next thing I knew, I was three hours in and plumbing the depths of my to-do list for more things to work on so I could keep listening. With an engaging balance between the personal and the reported, Tolentino’s exacting explorations of feminism, the internet and the self lend themselves nicely to audio, as it turns out. And as for my to-do list, her intellectual, no-frills narration provided the perfect soundtrack for taking a walk, doing the dishes, brushing the cats, making banana bread and mending that tear in my duvet cover.
