This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by TryAudiobooks.com.
Traveling for the holidays? Make your trip more enjoyable with an audiobook! Plug into a bestseller to catch up on some reading or play a title the whole family can enjoy! Visit TryAudiobooks.com for a full free download for your listening pleasure.
Hello, audiobook friends! My family just got back from a whirlwind Thanksgiving road trip, and I was in charge of picking the audiobook. “David Sedaris,” I thought, feeling like a genius, “You can’t go wrong with David Sedaris, everyone loves that guy.” And truly, Sedaris is a brilliant audiobook pioneer far ahead of his time.
So I congratulated myself for being a genius and queued up Holidays on Ice, a short collection of six Christmas-themed essays that opens with an excerpt from The Santaland Diaries, in which a young Sedaris moves to New York as an aspiring soap opera writer and instead winds up as a department store elf. We were all on board, everyone was laughing, great pick Rachel, high five! Then came the second essay. Ah yes, the second essay. The second essay of Holidays on Ice is ACTUAL FANFICTION about David Sedaris’s favorite soap opera, One Life to Live, in the form of a scheming matriarch’s Christmas newsletter. Suddenly, not everyone in the car was still on board with my audiobook choice. (Their loss.)
The takeaway, dear readers, is this: sometimes everyone is game to listen to experimental soap opera fanfiction together. And sometimes they are not. Best wishes with wherever your group listening takes you this winter!
10 Adventure Audiobooks That Will Make You Clutch Your Heart As Time Soars By
Look, we all like audiobooks here, we’re in on the secret that they can suspend time and transport you to a new world. Add an adventure story to the mix, and you’re in for an adrenaline-pumping, heart-pounding, shortest-car-ride-ever trip of your life. I thought you guys could use a roundup of some of my faves, from super-powered female assassins to secret nuclear cities and everything in between. Still with me? Great, hang on and keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times!
There’s a Lesbian Audiobooks Facebook Group, You’re Welcome
PSA, PSA! One of my fellow Book Rioters just casually mentioned a Lesbian Audiobooks Facebook group the other day, and I was all, 1) Wait a second. 2) Rad! 3) MUST TELL MY AUDIOBOOK PEOPLE, THEY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THIS. (Sorry for the all-caps, I am just that excited about it.) The group is closed to protect from trolls and spammers, so just click the “Join Group” button and they’ll welcome you in <3
We Heart Rachel McAdams as Anne of Green Gables
Did any of you catch the new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables on PBS last week?! I am HERE for Anne and all her shenanigans on Prince Edward Island, butting heads with the uptight Cuthberts who thought they were adopting a boy to help on the farm. (Really, Cuthberts, that’s how you’re going to play this?) A new AoGG mini series is in the works at Netflix, too, written by Moira Walley-Beckett of Breaking Bad.
Ergo, there’s no time like the present to brush up on the original! And you’re in luck because Rachel McAdams of True Detective reads a brand-new audiobook version that just came out last week. Listen to an excerpt here to see if you love her interpretation of Anne as much as I do! (You will probably love it.) Bonus: McAdams is Canadian, aww yis.