Audiobook roundup: old Archives

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece

by Tom Hanks

From the publisher: "Part One of this story takes place in 1947. A troubled soldier, returning from the war, meets his talented five-year-old nephew, leaves an indelible impression, and then disappears for twenty-three years. Cut to 1970: The nephew, now drawing underground comic books in Oakland, California, reconnects with his uncle and, remembering the comic book he saw when he was five, draws a new version with his uncle as a World War II fighting hero. Cut to the present day: A commercially successful director discovers the 1970 comic book and decides to turn it into a contemporary superhero movie. Cue the cast: We meet the film’s extremely difficult male star, his wonderful leading lady, the eccentric writer/director, the producer, the gofer production assistant, and everyone else on both sides of the camera."

Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain

by Andrew McCarthy

Our team member Ginger raved about this book ... and then when I was looking for an audiobook Will and I could listen to together on our way to the beach, I realized the walk in question takes place on Spain's Camino de Santiago. Will and I were actively anticipating our upcoming trip to Spain, so the timing was perfect! This is the real-time account of the Brat Pack actor's 500-mile walk across Spain with his 19-year-old son Sam, detailing the pair's reasons for embarking on the trip, their long, hot days spent walking—sometimes upwards of 20 miles a day—in the hot summer sun, the fellow walkers they meet along the way, the food they eat, the coffee they drink, the inns they sleep in, what they talk about along the way. We rarely listen to audiobooks together and enjoyed this one so much. The narration was especially good: the elder McCarthy reads the majority but son Sam frequently adds his own voice, which made for a wonderful listening experience.

A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir

by Colin Jost

I've heard good things about this memoir since it came out, but Curtis Sittenfeld (who was a DELIGHT) nudged me to finally read it when she praised it during our MMD Book Club discussion for Summer Reading Guide selection Romantic Comedy. Of course I expected (and enjoyed) stories about SNL, but was pleasantly surprised by much of the story: I had no idea Jost grew up on Staten Island, or that his mom for many years served as chief medical officer for the NYC Fire Department, or that the most horrifying/laugh-provoking story would be about an infectious disease acquired on a surfing trip to Nicaragua. This celebrity memoir is narrated by the author, and I recommend going with the audiobook. I especially enjoyed the moments when Jost was clearly having a hard time not laughing!

True Biz

by Sara Nović

This story unfolds at Ohio's River Valley School for the Deaf, a boarding school where students come to learn and can count on the cultural richness of the deaf community being celebrated. When Charlie enrolls as a new student, she's never met another deaf student; her parents had kept her in traditional school for far too long, hoping her issues with hearing would simply disappear once they got her cochlear implants dialed in. Charlie knew that would never happen, and quickly makes herself at home in her new school setting, not knowing the school's very existence is actively being threatened. I knew little about deafness and the deaf community prior to reading this book, and ate up all the details about various facets of the deaf experience deaf author Nović wove into the story. I especially loved the audiobook narrated by Lisa Flanagan and Kaleo Griffith, with the sound of signing over the speech when ASL was being used. (Though I'm already planning my reread in print, because of the visual ASL component included in that format.)

This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After

by Elizabeth Crane

From the publisher: "Rachel Cusk meets Nora Ephron in this intimate and evolving portrait about the end of a marriage and how life can fall apart and be rebuilt in wonderful and surprising ways. One minute Elizabeth Crane and her husband of fifteen years are fixing up their old house in Upstate New York, finally setting down roots after stints in Chicago, Texas, and Brooklyn, when his unexpected admission—I'm not happy—changes everything. Suddenly she finds herself separated and in couples therapy, living in an apartment in the city with an old friend and his kid. It’s understood that the apartment and bonus family are temporary, but the situation brings unexpected comfort and much-needed healing for wounds even older than her marriage. Crafting the story as the very events chronicled are unfolding, Crane writes from a place of guarded possibility, capturing through vignettes and collected moments a semblance of the real-time practice of healing."

Joan Is Okay

by Weike Wang

In this first person, character-driven narrative, we meet thirtysomething ICU doctor Joan. Her relationships with her Chinese and Chinese American family members are fraught, and her inability to read cues makes friendship and neighborliness tricky, but her great love for her work is utterly uncomplicated—that is, until her father dies. Her workaholism has always been seen as an attribute in her NYC hospital, but when she takes just 48 hours off to fly to Shanghai and back for his funeral, HR steps in and makes her take some extended time off. Without the distraction of work, Joan is forced to reckon with the things she's been avoiding, in all their complexity and ambiguity. But then COVID-19 enters the story, with devastating effects in her personal and professional life. I so appreciated being let into Joan's interior world: her cool assessments of the people around her, her dry (and sometimes unintentional) humor, and her frank reckoning with individual and societal struggles. Catherine Ho's excellent audiobook narration was a wonderful way to experience this story.

How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

by Harrison Scott Key

From the publisher: "One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman 'who's spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church'—is having an affair with a family friend. What will he do? Kick her out? Set fire to all her panties in the yard? Beat this man to death with a gardening implement? Ask God for help in winning her back? Armed with little but a sense of humor and a hunger for the truth, Harrison embarks on a hellish journey into his past, seeking answers to the riddles of faith and forgiveness. Through an absurd series of escalating confessions and betrayals, Harrison reckons with his failure to love his wife in the ways she needed most, resolves to fight for his family, and in a climax almost too ridiculous to be believed, finally learns that love is no joke. How to Stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim's Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy."

Hula: A Novel

by Jasmin Iolani Hakes

Three generations of women tell their story through dance on the Big Island. One daughter dreams of proving herself by becoming Miss Aloha Hula, but the harder she tries, the more things fall apart. Secrets erupt and the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement is explored through the lens of one fractured family.

Skyward

by Brandon Sanderson

From the publisher: "Spensa's world has been under attack for decades. Now pilots are the heroes of what's left of the human race, and becoming one has always been Spensa's dream. Since she was a little girl, she has imagined soaring skyward and proving her bravery. But her fate is intertwined with her father's—a pilot himself who was killed years ago when he abruptly deserted his team, leaving Spensa's chances of attending flight school at slim to none. No one will let Spensa forget what her father did, yet fate works in mysterious ways. Flight school might be a long shot, but she is determined to fly. And an accidental discovery in a long-forgotten cavern might just provide her with a way to claim the stars."

Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

Mollie talked about loving this eco thriller in WSIRN episode 368: Learning to trust your reading instincts and so many of you told me you added it to your TBR list because of her description. The publisher describes this as "Propulsive and spell-binding, a pulse-pounding new novel set in the wild Scottish Highlands. Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska. Inti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she’s witnessed—inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love. But when a farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, Inti makes a reckless decision to protect them. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will Inti do when the man she is falling for seems to be the prime suspect?

Chirp

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma

by Claire Dederer

I was previously unfamiliar with Dederer's work but picked this up because I was interested in the topic: how can we reconcile our love for art with the biographies of its creators? Gone are the days when fans knew little about the real people who created the art they consumed; Dederer writes of how things are different in the internet era: "Biography used to be something you sought out, yearned for, actively pursued. Now it falls on your head all day long." She frames her case from the jarring (and somewhat graphic) opening: she has long loved the films of Roman Polanski—Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, The Pianist—yet Polanski committed objectively terrible crimes. What is the fan to make of this? How can the fan think about their relationship to art made by always imperfect and sometimes monstrous people? I found this a thoughtful and thought-provoking treatment, which covered questions I knew I wanted to hear more about and also topics I didn't expect to enter the conversation, like capitalism. (So fascinating!) I listened to the audio (narrated by the author), and found Dederer's conversational style worked well in that format.

Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

This is the novel I didn't know I was longing to read, with its tender familial relationships, Michigan cherry orchard setting, and insider look at summer stock theater. When Lara is nearing sixty and the pandemic is just beginning, her three adult daughters return home for the summer. The girls have long romanticized their mother’s once-upon-a-time romance with a megastar actor, and now, all together again, the girls direct Lara to tell them the whole story from the beginning. She unspools her story slowly, over three long weeks harvesting cherries on the family property. I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending, but this story? Absolutely gorgeous. I can’t wait to read it again. For fans of Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer and Anne Enright’s Actress.

Audiobook roundup: old