Category: Audiobooks

This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by Unbound Worlds: Cage Match.

Cage Match is back! Unbound Worlds is pitting science fiction characters against fantasy characters in a battle-to-the-death tournament, and you can win a collection of all 32 books featured in the competition. Enter now for your chance to win this library of sci-fi and fantasy titles!

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Hey hey, audiobook fans!

Have you heard about the bill that would ban the works of Howard Zinn in Arkansas public schools? Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States presents U.S. history from the point of view of the oppressed: Native Americans, slaves, women, immigrants, the poor, and Civil Rights activists. It’s also been climbing the bestseller lists since January.

With all the interest in Zinn’s work, there’s no better time to check it out. But with the print at almost 800 pages and the audio at almost 35 hours (!), I offer you an alternative: the fabulous A People’s History of the United States: Highlights From the 20th Century read by Matt Damon and Howard Zinn! Zinn was an inspiration for Good Will Hunting, and the two were neighbors during Damon’s childhood in Boston — they have great chemistry on the audiobook. The best part? It clocks in at just over 8 hours.

If you’re in the mood for the full version, you can’t go wrong there, either — it’s read by Howard Zinn’s son, Jeff.

10 Audiobooks for When You Have the Sads

Do you turn to books when you’re feeling blue? So does Book Riot Contributor Katie MacBride, who writes that she’s been having “just a sort of gray, lethargic feeling of uninspired, overwhelmed blah.” She’s been craving audiobooks in particular, since they’re so great for lounging around the house, staring listlessly at all the things that you should be doing. (YUP, I feel those feels.) Read on for 10 audiobooks that Katie and her fellow Rioters recommend to help you through a funk!

8 Historical Fiction Listens For Readers of All Ages

Little House In The Big Woods kicks off Book Riot Contributor Kristy Pasquariello’s round-up of historical fiction that readers of all ages can listen to together. She’s found that holy grail, the magical mermaid-unicorn (idk, just go with it) of audiobooks that will satisfy everyone who has to be in the same car together. Read on to immerse yourself and your traveling companions in another time and place.

Try This If Audiobooks Make You Fall Asleep

Picture this: a sunny kitchen table, a pencil case packed with bright colors, and an audiobook queued up nearby. Book Riot Contributor James Wallace Harris has discovered that he loves coloring black and white illustrations from classic books while listening to audiobooks, which he incorporates into his daily practice of mindfulness. It’s his time to turn off his thinking mind, enter a meditative state, and simply listen while coloring within the lines. Bonus: he doesn’t nod off. Get the details here.

Smalls out! Thanks for another week of audiobook nerdery. If you want to stay in touch and swap audiobook recommendations before the next Audiobooks! Newsletter, you can find me on Twitter at Rach_Smalls or on Instagram at LadybitsKnits.

High five,
Rachel

Howdy, audiobook friends. Pinch me, because I think I might be a ghost stuck in the bardo… I’m still recovering from talking to George Saunders about the making of his 166-voice celebrity studded audiobook, Lincoln in the Bardo (!!!). I loved this funny, spine-tingly listen more than I can say, and am so excited that George Saunders and executive producer Kelly Gildea kindly gave Book Riot this behind-the-scenes look at the making of this special audiobook. Enjoy!

Twin Peaks Fans: You Need This Audiobook

Hunker down with a slice of pie and a coffee percolator, because there’s a new Twin Peaks audiobook you need to check out. Book Riot contributor Leila Roy talks about why she needed — NEEDED! — The Secret History of Twin Peaks in both print AND audio, which has Twin Peaks stars Kyle MacLachlan, Russ Tamblyn, Michael Horse, and David Patrick Kelly on its roster of narrators. Read on for Twin Peaks-related swooning and heart eyes (plus a clip from the audiobook).

The Underground Railroad Is Available On Audio For Free

This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill! For a limited time, you can listen to The Underground Railroad for free from BBC Radio’s website. Book Riot contributor Nicole Froio writes, “Colson Whitehead’s gut-wrenching, award-winning novel tells the story of Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia, by mixing brutal depictions of suffering and oppression with a sci-fi-esque re-imagined and fully functioning underground railroad.”

This original audio production is different from the audiobook version US listeners might already know. Read by The Wire’s Clarke Peters, it’s been adapted for radio in 10 mini episodes that are streaming for free thru March 22. Get listening!

Six Weeks of Free Audiobooks from Penguin Random House

Here’s another cool freebie: Season of Stories is back, this time with a collection of short daily listens from exciting authors like Yaa Gyasi, Margaret Atwood, Jhumpa Lahiri, Adam Johnson, and more. The idea is to start each week with a new story, and follow along until that story ends on Friday. Six weeks, six free stories from Penguin Random House. I dig it.

That’s a wrap on audiobook goodies for the week. Thanks for hanging out to chat audiobooks! If you want to stay in touch and swap recommendations before the next Audiobooks! Newsletter, you can find me on Twitter at Rach_Smalls or on Instagram at LadybitsKnits.

High five,
Rachel

This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by Playster.

Playster is the world’s first all-in-one entertainment service. It takes care of everything — ebooks, audiobooks, music, movies, TV shows and games — and gives you unlimited access to millions of titles for one flat monthly fee. That’s right! Playster lets you enjoy unlimited audiobooks and ebooks — no restrictions, no credit systems.

The service is accessible through all web browsers, and Playster’s Android and iOS apps, on virtually any device. What’s more, the offline mode lets you save all of your favorites for on-the-go reading when there’s no Internet access around. Sign up today to get your free 30 day trial!

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Hi fellow listeners, the Audie Award finalists were announced late Wednesday to honor the best audiobooks of the year, and I have some first impressions to share with you!

I’m amped that The Underground Railroad and Another Brooklyn have each received TWO nominations, both for Literary Fiction/Classics and Best Female Narrator. And I’m excited to see several more of Book Riot’s favorite listens, too, like You Can’t Touch My Hair, Around the Way Girl, Shrill, Sleeping Giants, IQ, and Homegoing.

Filed under “surprise,” Born a Crime and Behold the Dreamers didn’t get any nods. Born a Crime likely came out too late in the year, but Prentice Onayemi’s performance on Behold the Dreamers is a Book Riot favorite. I also did a double take at the category for Shrill… the humorous feminist essay collection is a finalist for Business/Personal Development??

On the inclusivity front, the Audies did really well in some categories but is still very uneven in others. We like the inclusivity we see in Literary Fiction/Classics and Humor, but too many categories are still 100% white and male (or 100% white and female). See the full list of finalists here.

Finally, You Can Listen To The Full Little House on the Prairie Series

Fans of Laura, Pa, Ma, Mary, Carrie, and Jack: all nine books of the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder are now available on Audible, read by the fantastic Cherry Jones! We’ll always have a soft spot for these books told from Laura’s point of view about her pioneer family’s life in a little log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods in the late 1800s. I might not fall asleep to the sound of Pa’s fiddle at night, but I wouldn’t mind drifting off to Cherry Jones reading these familiar stories <3

John Cleese’s New Audiobook: “I Think It’s the Best Thing I’ve Ever Done”

Calling all Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fans! When he finished writing his memoir So, Anyway…, John Cleese felt creatively drained, and that wasn’t the mental place he wanted to be in while recording the audiobook. So he gave himself permission to wait until he was recharged and ready to do it properly. The payoff? “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” he told Book Riot’s Swapna Krishna.

Read on for John Cleese’s thoughts on comedy, self care for creatives, and why So, Anyway… is even better on audio! (Hint: he miiight have rewritten it a little bit as he went along.)

These Audiobooks are Up for Grammys

The Grammy Awards are this Sunday, and books by Amy Schumer, Carol Burnett, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, and John Doe are all up for Best Spoken Word Album. You can listen to excerpts from all five titles at EW (if you’re not blinded by all that whiteness).

Smalls out! Thanks for nerding out about audiobooks with me. If you want to stay in touch and swap audiobook recommendations before the next Audiobooks! Newsletter, you can find me on Twitter at Rach_Smalls or on Instagram at Ladybits Knits.

High five,
Rachel

This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by Mother Nile, a dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The War of the Roses.

Mother Nile is the story of Si, the American-born son of an Irish father and Egyptian mother, who goes on a journey through the City of the Dead to solve a half-century-old mystery. When his mother makes an urgent plea on her deathbed, Si knows that he must go to Egypt to uncover the truth about his long-lost half-sister, conceived during his mother’s affair with King Farouk. This book goes on a journey into a world of sex, power, politics, drugs, and Egypt.

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Hi audiobook friends! I’m having the most fun listening to Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. A team of scientists is studying a giant metal hand that was found in South Dakota. Weirder yet, the hand appears to be just one piece of an enormous alien object hidden all over Earth. The researchers are on the brink of a huge discovery, but they don’t know if their work will be used for peace or mass destruction. Cue the juicy ethical dilemmas!

This book works so beautifully on audio. It’s performed by a full cast through a series of case files and interviews, and it feels just like binge watching Westworld or Battlestar Galactica. If you listen to Sleeping Giants now, watch for the sequel this April <3

Get (Audio-) Booked

I recently got to hang out with Book Riot Editor Amanda Nelson on Get Booked, our weekly book recommendation podcast, for an episode all about audiobooks (!). Readers wrote in asking about how to get into fiction on audio, recs for long commutes, what to give family who are just getting into audiobooks, and more. If you love podcasts as much as you love audiobooks, this episode was pretty much made just for you.

Hidden Figures Narrator Robin Miles on Vulnerability and When to Go Big

Muppet arms for Hidden Figures on its three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture! If you’ve already seen the movie, next you’ll definitely want to queue up the audiobook read by Robin Miles and take a deep dive into the lives of five African-American women who were NASA mathematicians during the space race.

Book Riot contributor Erin Burba recently caught up with Robin Miles about what it’s like to perform books by Roxane Gay, Jacqueline Woodson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, i.e. allll the rad authors. The result is one of the most moving conversations about audiobooks I’ve ever encountered. Go check that out, then listen to an excerpt of Hidden Figures here.

The Most Bananas Audiobook Cast Ever, With Carrie Brownstein, Bill Hader, Julianne Moore, Nick Offerman, and 160+ (Wut?!) Others

Book Riot already loves George Saunders with our whole hearts, and his first full-length novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is hands down one of our most anticipated books of the year. So when we found out the audio is read by a record-breaking 166 actors, we flailed around in stunned excitement for a full minute before we were able to collect ourselves enough to start sharing our joy.

Lincoln in the Bardo takes place over a single night when President Lincoln visits the graveyard where his son’s body has been laid to rest. Catch the extended cast list and more in this run-down by Book Riot Contributor Emma Nichols.

The Handmaid’s Tale Podcast You Didn’t Know You Needed

There’s never been a better time to brush up on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, can I get an amen? We’re all SUPER EXCITED about The Handmaid’s Tale adaptation coming to Hulu in April starring Elisabeth Moss. But there’s another adaptation you can enjoy right now! Book Riot Contributor Patricia Thang has been loving a podcast adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale on Secrets, Crimes & Audiotape that started January 3 and runs for six weeks. Get the full scoop here.

This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by Audiobooks.com.

Get your book fix on the go with Audiobooks.com! Whether you’re in the car, at the gym or on the couch, Audiobooks.com makes it easy to listen to over 100,000 titles on their user-friendly apps for iOS and Android. Stream books live or download for offline listening, and enjoy cool features like sped-up narration and custom bookmarking. You can browse by genre or curated lists, check out promotions and giveaways, and switch seamlessly between devices with cloud-syncing technology. And best of all, your first book is free! Try Audiobooks.com today.

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Happy New Year, audiobooks friends! I had a wild and crazy New Year’s Eve — I went to a train restaurant with my toddler and stayed up late to finish listening to Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. It was BASICALLY the best NYE ever, this book was a sneak attack of awesomeness that stands out as one of the best of 2016.

Most U.S. listeners know Trevor Noah for taking over The Daily Show from Jon Stewart. Those are giant shoes to fill, and it seems like most Americans think of him as “the guy that I don’t love as much as Jon Stewart.” I’m so happy that we get to know him a little better through this memoir, and I’m now a 100% converted fan.

In Born A Crime, Trevor Noah is at turns deeply insightful and ridiculously funny. He grew up in South Africa under Apartheid as the child of a black mother and white father — in other words, it was LITERALLY a crime for him to exist. In between brilliant commentary about race and Apartheid, he entertains with stories about being a smartass kid at a Catholic school, his side hustle selling pirated CDs in high school, and his spectacular failure at the senior prom.

At the heart of Born a Crime is Noah’s relationship with his mom, a devout Christian and stubborn non-conformist. His love for his mom burns brightly on every page, even as they constantly butt heads. The book closes with a shocking story about his mother’s troubled marriage that still sucks the breath out of me.

Trevor Noah is a fantastic storyteller and an even better narrator. You’ll be SO glad you put this on your to-be-read list.

10 Audiobooks for Podcast Listeners

Book Riot contributor Rebecca Hussey is drawn to a particular kind of audiobook: the kind that reminds her of a podcast! Lately she’s loving memoirs and essays that are chatty, topical, and told in an original — often humorous — voice. They keep her listening without demanding intense concentration. If this sounds like your cup of tea, check out these 10 audiobooks she recommends for podcast listeners.

4 Dangers of Listening to Audiobooks in Public

Has an audiobook ever made you sob in public?

Book Riot Contributor Susie Rodarme drew these rad original cartoons about the dangers of listening to audiobooks in public that are possibly (definitely) based on her real life experience, check ‘em out!

‘Square’ is the New ‘Rectangle’: How Audiobook Covers are Made

Raise your hand if you love iconic book covers! My heart thumps for the covers of The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man, and The Handmaid’s Tale, to name a few. And one thing these covers all share is that they’re rectangular — NOT square. So what’s a cover designer supposed to do with that? (It’s like when Instagram wants you to crop your perfectly framed photo, no thank you, I don’t think so, WTF.)

Fortunately, cover designers are non-evil geniuses who can piece together complicated puzzles to create square artwork that scales from a mobile phone screen to a traditional CD box to a freaking huge Times Square billboard. All while looking awesome. You can get a closer look at the cover design process over on Audible’s blog.

This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by Penguin Random House Audio.

Start off the new year with some inspiring audiobooks! From personal improvement, to spiritual listens, to health and fitness advice, audiobooks are a great way to digest this useful content while on the go! Visit www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/selfcare for listening suggestions.

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It’s Lin-Manuel Miranda! Lin-Manuel freaking Miranda narrates The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, you guys!!

First published in 2007, Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won a Pulitzer in 2008 and is now finally here on audio, read by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Karen Olivo.

Díaz’s classic novel tells the story of Oscar, a sweet lovesick nerd with Dominican roots who lives in New Jersey. He dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and finding love someday, but his family is haunted by a curse that dooms them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and ill-starred love.

I just started listening to my copy, and there’s no better team than Lin-Manuel Miranda and Karen Olivo to bring out the book’s warmth, humor, shenanigans, and insight. Miranda narrated Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe before he was the most super duper famous person on the planet, and it’s objectively one of the best audiobooks of this century. This is the first novel he’s narrated since he created Hamilton, and I’m so excited about what this could mean for the future. Will Lin-Manuel Miranda continue to use his platform to amplify marginalized stories through audiobooks? A girl can dream! Do yourself a solid and listen to a clip here.

Problems Only Audiobook Listeners Understand

“#1: You realize the audiobook isn’t postmodern, you’ve just been listening to it on shuffle by accident.” (Ahem, please tell me I’m not the only one.) Book Riot contributor Sonja Palmer compiled this (hilarious) list of all the problems we’ve encountered while trying to enjoy our audiobook habit. What would you add?

Only 2 Days Left to Get Invisible Man for Free

We talked about this last month, but enough of you are new here (hi! welcome!) that I think we’re due for another PSA: go download Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for free, right now. It’s been free through Audible since November, and will continue to be free for just 2 more days thru Saturday, December 31.

Invisible Man is a 1952 classic about an unnamed narrator whose black skin makes him invisible in a segregated society, and it’s universally beloved as one of the greatest American novels of all time. The founder of Audible, who was Ralph Ellison’s student at NYU, says Ellison’s love of oral tradition and spoken word are what inspired him to create Audible in the first place. Now go download Invisible Man for real if you haven’t yet!

I Got Lost in London and I Blame Audiobooks

You know that feeling when an audiobook is SO great that you miss your exit, or worse, get completely and utterly lost in a city you know like the back of your hand? When Book Riot contributor Aisling Twomey picked up an audiobook subscription to help her break out of her running rut, she found herself in exactly this situation. Read on to find out which audiobook is to blame!

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.

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Gather ’round, audiobook fans! My plan today was to give you guys a round-up of all the amazing audiobooks that have gotten shout outs on Best of 2016 lists. But then I actually looked at those lists. And I was bored.

One audiobook site wanted me to surrender my email address to see their picks. Another site gave top honors to books by white men in categories where they were up against The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Uh, what? Soon, the major awards arm of the audiobook industry will announce their finalists, and I’ll again wonder who on earth these picks are supposed to be for. They’re not for me, and they’re not for new fans who are getting jazzed about up-and-coming authors like Malka Older, Kanae Minato, Manuel Gonzales, and so on.

Audiobook publishing has gotten super exciting, and the recent growth curve for audiobooks is BASICALLY indistinguishable from a black diamond ski run. My fingers are crossed that audiobook media will catch up!

2 More Audiobooks For Your TBR

I love finding new-to-me authors at Book Riot Live, and this fall it was Sara Farizan and Tara Clancy. I queued up If You Could Be Mine and The Clancys of Queens faster than you can say “Reginald the Pigeon,” and both made my heart sing and my stomach flip.

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan is about two young women who’ve been in love since childhood. But they live in Iran, where being a woman who loves another woman is punishable by death. Sex reassignment surgery is perfectly legal, though. Could this be the answer to their predicament? This story has all the ingredients of a great YA book: angst, secret smooching, forbidden love, heartache. But it’s also unexpectedly hilarious! Sara Farizan has the BEST deadpan humor in person, and Negin Farsad brings this out in spades in her narration of the book. Farsad is an Iranian-American comedian, and she just gets Farizan in a way that allows her to wring every last drop of humor from an otherwise heartbreaking story. One of my fave listens this year! <3

You might already know Tara Clancy from her storytelling performances on The Moth. This lady was born to tell stories, and she’s perfected her art in front of the toughest crowds: Irish Catholic bar-goers in Queens (!). Her memoir The Clancys of Queens was born of her desire to read stories about working class women in New York, of which she can still name only one: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. With a boatload of humor and charm, Clancy tells about her childhood growing up between worlds, her parents’ divorce, and coming out to her ex-cop dad as a young adult. Her distinctive Queens accent is its own larger-than-life character, and these stories are just meant to be listened to.

Book Riot’s 25 Best Audiobooks of 2016

2016 was such an exciting year for audiobooks! Halfway through the year, we just couldn’t wait and we rounded up our favorites thus far. Now we get to share the rest! Presenting 25 excellent audiobooks in all: from Imbolo Mbue to Hope Jahren, we think there’s a little something here for everyone.

• Part 1 / Part 2

Raise Your Hand If You Want a Free 12-Month Audible Membership!

Me, me, my hand is raised! Oh wait, Book Riot employees aren’t eligible? FINE. You guys, Book Riot is giving away a 12-month Audible membership! The membership includes one free audiobook per month for a year, discounted member prices on all titles, and access to Audible’s occasional member-only sales. To enter, just sign up for one of our newsletters. Full details here, and the giveaway closes this Sunday December 18 at midnight Eastern… so get to it.

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.

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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.

This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by TryAudiobooks.com/cooking.

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 TryAudiobooks.com/cooking for a free download and get started!

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Audiobook people! Last weekend I was at Book Riot Live in New York, and I got to see so many of your faces IRL. If you were there: hello, and I miss you! I loved swapping audiobook recommendations with you and just generally reveling in the awesomeness of audiobooks. I think we agreed that, while Moby-Dick is stellar on audio (not biased, I swear), The Sound and the Fury should be avoided at all costs.

I may or may not have a giant Moby-Dick tattoo.

Like many of you, I had a beyond crappy week last week. I woke up on Tuesday morning glowing with excitement about participating in a historic feminist milestone, and went to bed with a heart heavy knowing that racism, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia are still alive and well in my neighborhood. I want you all to know that I am more committed than ever to seeking out and amplifying awesome stories by people on the margins, and to sharing those stories with you.

Reading is scientifically shown to increase empathy, and I believe that hearing these stories out loud, spoken in a human voice, makes this effect even more powerful. Please, listen to The Book of Unknown Americans, Behold the Dreamers, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Another Brooklyn, Homegoing, The Wangs vs the World, In The Country We Love, You Can’t Touch My Hair, or any of the other audiobooks we’ve talked about here. Then — and this is the especially important part — recommend them to other people. So many folks are listening to audiobooks these days, even people who don’t read much in print. Let’s get out there, share human stories, and build some fucking empathy.

An All-American Road Trip Book, Now With More Wangs

You know it’s serious when you re-up your lapsed audiobook subscription for just one book. It was so worth it for The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang, the story of a wealthy immigrant family that loses their fortune in the financial crisis and regroups on a (hilarious) road trip across America.

What I love most about this book is its delicate balance between comedy and compassion. I LOVE the entire Wang family — there’s the embarrassing dad, the cold stepmother, the art world ingenue, the college bro, the millennial fashion blogger, and the crunchy hipster farmer. Jade Chang playfully teases each character about their personality quirks while ultimately digging into the humanity beneath, making you grow to love each one. My personal favorite is Grace, the high school student with a weird suicide obsession who steals blogging equipment from her boarding school.

Nancy Wu is another new narrator to me, and her performance is phenomenal. She interprets the story with a fabulous dry humor, and she differentiates between characters by effortlessly switching registers and accents — everything from a sixteen-year-old fashion blogger to a sixty-year-old cosmetics tycoon. Snippets of Chinese are sprinkled throughout, and it was cool to hear both the Chinese and the English spoken together. This is definitely one of those effortless listens that translates beautifully to audio <3

8 Addictive Audiobooks Worth Missing Your Exit 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 eight of the juiciest, funniest, scariest, and most suspenseful audiobooks she’s ever had the pleasure of listening to.

These Books? The Audio’s Better Than The Print

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.

Jamie Canaves, contributing editor at Book Riot, rounded up our top picks where we say “Go with the audiobook!” If you’re playing the which-version-to-get game, read on to see if its one of our go-to audio picks.

Audiobook or Podcast? How to Decide What to Listen To

My mind was kind of completely blown (I know, it happens a lot) when I realized that, for lots of readers, audiobooks and podcasts vie for the same space in their lives. Personally, it’s totally contextual for me — my brain can’t process audiobooks while I work, so that’s when I listen to podcasts. But if you’re a lucky duck who can listen to whatever, wherever, how do you solve the should-I-listen-to-a-book-or-a-podcast dilemma?

Book Riot contributor Rebecca Hussey loves audiobooks and podcasts equally and has to make that choice almost every day. These are the factors that help her decide — here’s hoping they help you, too!

This week’s Audiobooks! Newsletter is sponsored by Audiobooks.com.

Get your book fix on the go with Audiobooks.com! Whether you’re in the car, at the gym or on the couch, Audiobooks.com makes it easy to listen to over 100,000 titles on their user-friendly apps for iOS and Android. Stream books live or download for offline listening, and enjoy cool features like sped-up narration and custom bookmarking. You can browse by genre or curated lists, check out promotions and giveaways, and switch seamlessly between devices with cloud-syncing technology. And best of all, your first book is free! Try Audiobooks.com today.

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Hey-o, listeners! Our first order of business today is for you to go download Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for free. It’s OK, I’ll wait right here.

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 go download Invisible Man for real if you haven’t yet!

Tips for Audiobook Newbies

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 beginner listening tips and favorite audiobook finds.

Wait, You Mean I Get Free Audiobooks With Amazon Prime??

Book Riot Contributor Kristen McQuinn kind of blew my mind when she casually dropped that she was enjoying Celeste Ng’s audiobook Everything I Never Told You for free through Amazon Prime. Umm… is this the best kept secret of an Amazon Prime membership, or what?!

So, turns out this is a fairly new perk that Amazon announced about six weeks ago. If you’ve got an Amazon Prime membership, you now get access to a rotating selection of 50 audiobooks from Audible’s catalog, including a mix of best-sellers, family favorites, and celebrity-narrated classics. With rad books like Everything I Never Told You on that list, I am so in!

Audiobooks Are Turning More Readers into Listeners

2016 has been a shaky year for book publishers, friends. Publisher earnings fell 2.7% at the beginning of this year compared to last year. But audiobooks are the shining exception — digital audiobook earnings soared 35.3%, making them the star of the publishing industry!

The rise of audiobooks at the same time ebooks and hardcovers are declining might mean that more people are listening to books instead of reading them, as The New York Times recently speculated. I think that’s pretty spot on for me. What do you think — are you listening more and reading less in 2016?