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.
Listen while you cook! While spending hours in the kitchen prepping meals for the holidays, put on a good audiobook and let the story help you along. Cooking for Picasso and The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living are great cooking memoirs or you can listen to Where Am I Now? read by Mara Wilson herself! Let audiobooks be your secret ingredient this holiday season. Visit 
I may or may not have a giant Moby-Dick tattoo.
Reading is scientifically shown to increase empathy
You know it’s serious when you re-up your lapsed audiobook subscription for just one book. It was so worth it for 
You know the type — you’re listening to a kickass audiobook when, oops! You blow right past your exit on the highway. That, or you listen in the parking lot for 15 extra minutes while you laugh / cry / freak out. These are the moments Book Riot contributor Kristy Pasquariello lives for; here are 
We’ve all been there, staring at the audiobook and the book for an eternity, debating which to get. Or maybe you just got the print when someone says, “I listened to that on audio and the narrator was AMAZING!,” instilling you with deep regret and a desire to switch to the audio immediately.
Get your book fix on the go with 
Invisible Man is a perennial Book Riot favorite (because it’s amaaaaaazing!), and it’s free from Audible for the rest of 2016! If you’re new to the awesomeness of Ellison, Invisible Man is a 1952 classic about an unnamed narrator whose black skin makes him invisible in a segregated society. It’s universally beloved as one of the greatest American novels of all time, and the audio is performed by Joe Morton (a.k.a. Olivia Pope’s dad on Scandal!). And just to throw in a cool li’l factoid, the guy who founded Audible was Ralph Ellison’s student at NYU. He says Ellison’s love of oral tradition and spoken word are what inspired him to create Audible in the first place (!). Now 
Please welcome Maddie to the audiobook clubhouse, y’all. Book Riot contributor Maddie Rodriguez decided 2016 would be her year to break out and experiment with audiobooks. And, lucky us, she has just reported back with some helpful observations! Whether you’re just starting out with audiobooks, you’re still considering taking the plunge, or you’re already a pro, you’ll want to take a peek at Maddie’s 
Book Riot Contributor Kristen McQuinn kind of blew my mind when she casually dropped that she was enjoying Celeste Ng’s audiobook 
When it comes to taste in YA books, librarian extraordinaire Molly Wetta is just about flawless. While she didn’t always love audiobooks, she’s now a total convert. Don’t miss her list on Book Riot of all-time favorite YA audiobooks. Yep, these books are amazing in print, but 
I’ve already mentioned the joyful news that Nick Offerman is the voice of Tom Sawyer on a 
Hello, my audiobook nerds! I have no chill today, I’m just gonna cut right to the chase and tell you guys about two Very Important Audiobooks. First up: 
In other Very Important Audiobook news, drop everything and run (don’t walk) to the nearest recording of 
You guys, there are so many more audiobooks in the world than there used to be. Only 7,000 audiobooks were published in 2011, compared to 35,000+ that were published last year! I love this boom for many reasons, especially because we have so many more listening choices than we used to. The aughts were all about mainstream bestsellers by white authors. Not so 2016, friends. Book Riot contributor Casey Stepaniuk has rounded up 
Do you time your audiobooks to match up with your life? Like, let’s say you drive 30 minutes to work every day — do you look for books that go down in easy half hour chunks? Book Riot contributor Trisha Brown is a self-described excessively efficient reader, and she’s nailed the art of matching audiobook length and tone to the flow of her daily life. 25 minute walk to work? 
We at Book Riot heart 
This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by 
Hello hello! The sunflowers are out here in Kansas, baristas are brewing pumpkin spice lattes, and I even had to wear real pants the other day. I’ve been celebrating the chill in the air with some fantastic female-driven thrillers. 
These days a lot of celebrities are getting in on all the audiobook action, which is a trend that I love. That being said, just because someone is a fancy celebrity doesn’t automatically guarantee they’re going to be fantastic on an audiobook. (If we are at a party together and I’m a little tipsy, you might even be able to get me to name a few duds I’ve heard.) But when it does work, the combination can be completely MAGICAL. Bryan Cranston and 
One of the books I’m most excited about this fall is 
Have you guys read Rupi Kaur’s 
Remember 2 seconds ago when I was talking about audiobooks that are COMPLETELY CAPTIVATING? This is fully true of 
This week’s Audiobooks! newsletter is sponsored by 
he kills on 
A few weeks ago we had a little chat here about the need for diverse voices on audiobooks. Listening to different accents, rhythms, music, and soundscapes is such an excellent way to become immersed in someone else’s world. Jamie at Book Riot has rounded up 15 books that do just that — from Mexico to Australia, Nigeria to Korea, 
“I’ve been asked this question a lot and I hate it,” writes University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham about whether or not listening to audiobooks is “cheating.” In a fascinating blog post, he unpacks this idea of “cheating” itself: it assumes that the listener got some reward without putting in enough effort. He goes on to explain why, from a cognitive perspective, there’s no real difference in the work it takes to read a book versus listen to it once you become an adult.
Hi, audiobook lovers! By the time you read this, I’ll be in the middle of a 5-day staycation: knitting gloves for the cooler temps ahead, drinking a cold beer, and listening to the rest of Imbolo Mbue’s fantastic debut 
I’m guessing you can completely relate to these feels of Book Riot contributor Jamie Canaves: “Where once I used to hope that a book would someday be available as an audiobook now I find myself having the conundrum of deciding whether I want to read recent releases with my ears or eyeballs (or both!).”
Amy Schumer’s memoir 
Want to add more science fiction and fantasy to your reading list? (Yes, the answer is yes.) Kay Taylor Rea is a Book Riot contributor, a Slytherin, and a self-described SFF nerd. She also recommends 
This week’s Audiobooks! newsletter is sponsored by 
As the need for diverse books grows ever more apparent, I often find myself thinking about diverse voices on audiobooks, too. I’m actively working to be inclusive with my reading choices, and this includes my listening choices. And I’ve come to love the immersive experience of hearing the vast range of inflections, cadences, and accents of all the characters who are represented in inclusive audiobooks.
When I started listening to a lot of audiobooks, one of the weird things that happened is that I started a mental To-Be-Read list of not just authors that I wanted to check out, but narrators too. I started picking up on names that have been recommended by my audio buddies, shown up in reviews, and won awards. This week I finally got to cross narrator Katherine Kellgren off my audio TBR, and she was just as stellar as I’d hoped she would be!
Book Riot’s Head Honcho (aka Editor-in-Chief) Jeff O’Neal suggests 10 great listens not only for recent graduates, but for the rest of us, too. “Whatever comes next is the beginning of what will be the bulk of their lives,” he writes. “In short, there is a lot of living left to do.
I’m in Mad Men withdrawal, and I can’t believe the final episode aired a little over a year ago. Somehow it feels like it was both longer and shorter ago. I just got a little pick-me-up, though, because Mad Men’s creator, Matthew Weiner, just recorded a brand new audiobook of Frank O’Hara’s lovely