Audiobooks I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this winter

The Book of Delights: Essays

by Ross Gay

Thoughtful, poetic, and powerful. Much like keeping a daily gratitude journal, poet Ross Gay wrote slice of life essays every day for an entire year. Nothing is too small or insignificant to cause delight, from candy wrappers to nicknames, to basketball—and this unique format reveals just as much as a tell-all memoir. Please note that while this book is packed with delights there are also some tough moments and hard themes. He reminds us to find delight in the every day, even in spite of life’s injustices and difficulties that so often come our way.

Oh William!: A Novel

by Elizabeth Strout

From the publisher: "I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William. Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together—even after we’ve grown apart."

A Ghost in the Throat

by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

"This is a female text." These beginning words are repeated, over and over, throughout. But what to say about this story, how to define it? Words fail me here, because it's so unlike anything I've ever read: part memoir, part meditation on the female creative process, part biography of a long-dead Irish poet, plus a translation of the poet's best-known work. If you're stirred by the offer of gaining a glimpse inside the mind of a modern poet grappling with her brilliant predecessors, read this immediately. This went straight on my Best of the Year list. I listened to the exceptional audio version, narrated by Siobhán McSweeney.

Chirp

One Italian Summer

by Rebecca Serle

My favorite Rebecca Serle to date! When twenty-something Katy loses her mother to cancer, she loses her best friend in the world, and she has no idea what to do next. She makes the difficult decision to travel to the Amalfi Coast—painful, because she and her mother had planned to take this trip together. At a charming hotel in Positano, Katy imagines what her own mother's visit must have been like many years before, when she first visited the hotel in which Katy is finding solace. But then—Katy's mother appears, in the flesh, though she isn't yet Katy's mother, because she's just thirty years old. This was touching and tender and I inhaled it in a day. Audiophiles take note: Lauren Graham narrates this one.

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

by John Green

I went into this not knowing much about John Green’s personal history. I was surprised to learn that he’d nearly become an Episcopal priest, and that he held an early and formative job at Booklist magazine. Each topic he reviews here—Canada geese, sunsets, the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest—is a leaping off point to reflect upon something else, something deeper. Green’s lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression is thoroughly and tenderly documented. It was these moments of deep personal reflections that I enjoyed the most. I’m glad I read it in the audiobook format; Green is an excellent reader of his own work, and the audiobook contains several essays that don’t appear in the print edition. I’ve often said the sign of a great book, to me, is that, long after I turn the final page, I keep thinking about it. I’m still thinking about this one.

The Other Side of the Bridge

by Mary Lawson

I’ve been making my way through Mary Lawson’s backlist. She excels at slice of life novels and here the focus is on two generations of farmers in Ontario: brothers Arthur and Jake in the 1930s who are torn apart when a new woman comes to town and Ian, part of the next generation in the 1950s. Lawson doesn’t shy away from depicting sibling rivalry or just how far obsession can go. This was brutal and hard but it was wonderfully written and I want to talk about it.

Audiobooks I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this winter

The Book of Delights: Essays

Oh William!: A Novel

A Ghost in the Throat

One Italian Summer

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

The Other Side of the Bridge

a gateway

to reliable joy this summer

Buckle Up!

summer reading starts May 16th