From lowbrow to highbrow TV, from comic books to rock ’n’ roll, here are five audiobooks to feed your pop culture diet. Whether your ears are tuned to licentious behind-the-scenes stories or erudite critiques, there’s something for anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the last century.
Bachelor Nation, written and read by Amy Kaufman
This is an absolute must-listen for anyone who’s ever watched “The Bachelor” and wondered what goes on behind the scenes, and for anyone curious about the tricks employed by reality TV. We learn how producers use editing to tell whatever story they want to tell, no matter what was really said. Any casual viewer knows how petty the contestants can be, but this book reveals just how ruthless the people behind the scenes can be, too. If you ever audition for the show, never reveal your fear of heights, unless you want to be the one selected for the sky-diving date. Whether you love the show or love to hate it, the juicy, tell-all nature of this audiobook makes it hard to press pause.
I Like to Watch, written and read by Emily Nussbaum
Emily Nussbaum, TV critic for The New Yorker, shares a collection of essays that treats television with respect, acknowledging it as the art form it has become. Twenty years into what many call TV’s second golden age, this is the perfect time to look back on the pivotal shows like “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City” and even “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” all of which set TV on the path it’s on today. She delves into the difficult question of the #MeToo era: Can we still consume art by bad men? I found myself nodding along to the whole audiobook. It’s a thoughtful, opinionated collection of essays and a masterclass in critical writing.
Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, written by Joe Hagan, read by Dennis Boutsikaris
Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner’s life makes for a fascinating lens through which to view the changing music- and magazine-publishing industries in the later half of the 20th century. He created legends, cementing John Lennon’s legacy as a rock god and building up the mythology behind rock ’n’ roll and the 1960s as a magically creative time. He lifted up the careers of Annie Lebowitz, Cameron Crowe and Hunter S. Thompson. He’s also a total narcissist, and this book pulls no punches. He puts profits over friendship time and again. He’s a successful business mogul, but at what cost? Joe Hagan had incredible access for this book and doesn’t hold anything back.
The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, written and read by Glen Weldon
This book tracks the history of Batman from his origin as a Shadow knock-off, created to compete with Superman, and through all his permutations in comics, movies and cartoons. Author Glen Weldon posits that the most essential part of Batman is his pledge: When his parents are murdered, he vows to defend the defenseless. The adaptations that have ignored this part of his character are the ones that fail to connect with readers and viewers. Weldon draws a distinction between male and female fans: Male fans complain, make death threats and beg creators for the version of Batman they most relate to; female fans create their own versions, with stories they want to hear, using the characters they love in fan fiction. Weldon is a dynamic narrator, adopting New York and Scottish accents when quoting comic book authors. His “mad fan” voice is particularly skewering.
My Life as a Goddess, written and read by Guy Branum
Writer/comedian Guy Branum uses pop culture as a framing device for his memoir. As a kid, he watched old TV shows to learn about the world. His essay “The Man Who Watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” is a beautiful portrait of his relationship with a father who didn’t quite understand him but was proud of him. He does a line-by-line breakdown of “Bohemian Rhopsody” by Queen, interpreted as a coming-out tale that shines a whole new light on the song. Branum’s repeated line “and then I remembered, I am a Goddess” is an inspiring mantra that will boost any listener’s self-confidence. He has a way of throwing out biting asides that make this audiobook that much more fun than the book.
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.
