This week’s Audiobooks! newsletter is sponsored by TryAudiobooks.com.
Have you ever taken a road trip with your family that seemed to go on forever? We all have! Audiobooks can solve that problem by providing entertainment for the whole family. Visit TryAudiobooks.com/family-travel for a free full download and start listening with the whole family on your next car ride.
Hello again, audiobook-loving friends. You know how we were commiserating about how hard it is to find audiobooks that everyone in the family can listen to together? I remember it just like it was a few weeks ago. (Oh wait, it was!)
100 Family-Friendly Audiobooks, You’re Welcome
Librarian and Book Riot contributor Molly Wetta has come to the rescue with 100 family-friendly audiobooks that are fun for kids, but are also engaging enough for adults. Many have voices you’ll recognize – like Kate Winslet (Matilda!), Tim Curry (Sabriel and A Series of Unfortunate Events!), and Stephen Fry (a bunch!). Whether you’re in the car with five-year-olds or teenagers, Molly promises something for everyone that will make your trip fly by.
Lindy West’s Shrill is Kind of the Most Fantastic Thing Ever
If you are a person who appreciates unapologetic feminism, body positivity, and a well-placed poop joke, Lindy West’s Shrill might wind up being the best book of essays you have ever listened to in your life. Sandwiched between HILARIOUS jokes about reading high fantasy by Robert Jordan on the bus, and the situation with deeply disturbing high school choir outfits, Lindy has gifted us a “fat feminist abortion manifesto” (her words), because “people don’t expect to hear from women like that. And I want other women to see me do that and I want women’s voices to get louder.”
I love Lindy West’s amazing comedic timing in her writing for The Stranger, Jezebel, and The Guardian, and listening to her deliver her jokes on audio was kind of the most fantastic thing ever. She confesses that she never wanted to be the poster child for fighting virtual trolls and calling out rape jokes, yet she does it every day for everyone who wants women’s voices to get louder. She’s doing it for me, and she’s doing it for you. Thank you, Lindy West <3
A Brief History of the Audiobook, With Mustache Jokes
From a 1940s New York Public Library project that recorded textbooks for blind soldiers, to a record company that produced talking books by Dylan Thomas, Eudora Welty, T.S. Eliot, and William Faulkner in the 1950s, Book Riot contributor Aram Mrjoian has turned up some fascinating tidbits about the history of audiobooks (complete with jokes about Tom Selleck’s mustache, because Book Riot).
Maggie Gyllenhaal Reads Anna Karenina and I Can’t Even
When mermaid unicorn goddess Maggie Gyllenhaal recorded Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar earlier this year, I freaked out a little. How does it get more perfect than that, right?? Here’s how: Gyllenhaal just recorded a brand new edition of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and now I don’t even know what to do with myself. Hold me.
I just watched BBC’s gorgeous new War & Peace mini-series (Gillian Anderson as Anna Pavlovna!), and this recording of Anna Karenina is the best possible follow-up. That smoky voice, reading those famous opening lines… It’s up for pre-order now, and will be officially out from Audible on July 12. Confetti canon!