This summer has been the summer of the audiobook for me. My experience with audiobooks until now has been largely confined to a set of cassettes from when they were called “books on tape.” I began with Disney readalong stories and eventually graduated to Harry Potter. When I moved out last summer, I found the box for my Harry Potter tapes, very battered but with all 12 tapes intact.
Today, obviously, audiobooks are much more sophisticated and are having a bit of a moment. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon with Scribd (more on that later/not sponsored). I listen when I walk to work, while I was moving, and when I’m just puttering around the house.
The first book I listened to this summer really spoiled me and left me with a crazy book hangover. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini was just captivating. There’s really no other word for how obsessed I was with this audiobook. Beautiful Ruins is a fantastic book in its own right. It switches between past and present, focusing on the doomed-movie Cleopatra, a washed-up movie producer and his assistant, an aspiring writer, and a starving musician. The characterization is fantastic, the settings are amazing, and it’s the kind of multi-narrative that totally works. The audio version just took it to the next level. Ballerini does all the voices without ever veering into camp, his Italian pronunciation was gorgeous. By the end I had laughed and cried and never wanted to finish.
After a bit of a book hangover, I tried to recapture the beauty with another “beachy” read, The Vacationers by Emma Straub narrated by Kristen Sieh. It is also a multi-narrative novel, following a family whose parents may or may not be divorcing as they go to Mallorca, with the mother’s best friend and his husband in tow. There is family drama, happy tears, and complicated relationships. It was unfair to this book that it followed Beautiful Ruins, because it was a perfectly enjoyable book that just couldn’t keep up with my love for Beautiful Ruins. Luckily, the narrator was fantastic, which elevated this potentially-disappointing-read to a good palate cleanser.
Finally, I listened to this summer’s big blockbuster, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. This was really great to listen to because each narrator actually had a different voice actor. It was so easy to keep track of the different threads with the different voices. I’m not sure this one totally measured up to the hype, since I guessed the “twist” about halfway through, but it was tense and fast-paced.
The only DNF I have had so far with audiobooks was Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. I’m really upset I didn’t like this one — I’ve heard fantastic things from reviewers I trust, I love her twitter feed, and she has her MFA from my alma mater. However, the narrator spoke really slowly which drove me crazy, and I just had a hard time getting into the book. I typically love character-driven stories, but something about this one never quite clicked for me.
Up next for me, are Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer and The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. More on Scribd soon, since I’ve been using it a ton!
What have you been listening to this summer?
ErinKwed 