The Miracle and Wonder of Paul Simon

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam, and Paul Simon

 

3 words: behind the scenes, intimate, revealing

 

The first time I listened to an entire audiobook in one day?

It was this one.

I just couldn’t stop. While the Dear Man was shoveling on a recent Sunday, I puttered around the house, listening to Paul Simon talk about his creative process. Then I took Paul Simon along on a run. And before you know it, five hours had swung on by, and I was sad — so sad — that the story was over. 

What’s so delightful about this audiobook is the glimpse into the creative process. I love that stuff.

Simon talks how they got that percussion sound in The Boxer, about how he write The Sound of Silence in his parents’ bathroom, and the way he and Art Garfunkel collaborated… until they didn’t. 

It’s the rich oral history of a decades-long creator. Malcolm Gladwell, who conducts the interviews, analyzes Simon’s creative style, and that’s fascinating, too. 

If you even slightly like Paul Simon’s music — or if you love learning about the creative process — this 5-hour experience is gold. 

 

(Tip: if your public library offers Hoopla, you can listen to Miracle & Wonder for free via Hoopla.)

Audiobooks for every mood

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June is Audiobook Month, and I’m all about celebrating the living daylights out of the bookish holidays.

Even though this past year my commute got gone, I’ve still managed to fit in some audiobook listening. Here are the best of the past year, arranged by mood…

Ironic

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Genteel

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

Offbeat

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Empowering

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Uproarious

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman

Romantic

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

For more audiobook ideas, here are Audiobook Month posts from previous years:

I’m always looking for more great books on audio. What are your favorite recent audiobooks?

Great audiobooks

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June is Audiobooks Month, and today we’re gonna celebrate by taking a look at some standouts. I’ve narrowed down the best audiobooks I’ve listened to in the past 12 months.

I’m a fussy listener (I bail on audiobooks that don’t work for me), so this list is Only The Best Stuff.

Let’s start with great audiobooks expertly narrated by their authors…

We’ve got 3 celebrity memoirs

And one celebrity-penned short story collection

 

And in the realm of audiobooks read by professional narrators…

Some amazing nonfiction

  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
  • Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

 

Some magnificent fiction

 

And here’s a look back at last year’s and the previous year’s celebrations of Audiobook Month.

 

My fellow listening readers… What’s the best audiobook you’ve listened to this year?

Uncommon Type: uncommonly good

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Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks

3 words: engaging, wide-ranging, creative

 

Tom Hanks — the dude can write! Word on the street was that his new collection of short stories — his first book — had it goin’ on. And I gotta say: True.

I’ve been raving about it for the past few weeks. I plan to continue this behavior for quite some time.

The first story was funny and wry, and the second (“Christmas Eve 1953”) was so idyllic at the outset that I knew it had to have a dark side. (It did. It nearly broke my heart.)

There’s some pretty impressive range here — in perspective and voice and place and timeframe and tone.

I was especially gratified that he can write convincing female characters. He got that really right.

So the whole collection pleased me.

And then there was the story “These Are the Meditations of My Heart.” This one blew me away. It made my heart sing; it made me verklempt. It made me do a little gasp of happiness at the end, even though the ending was not dramatic. He didn’t write it for effect. But it had a profound effect on me nonetheless. The story sounds simple: A young woman buys an old typewriter and takes it to a repair shop, where the owner informs her it’s a toy and he will not fix it. Conversation ensues. At one point, I laughed out loud, and at the end there was that gasping thing. It was quite perfect.

I listened to the audiobook, which Hanks narrates himself. It was also quite perfect. The only problem was the dilemma of listening to short stories. When each one ended, I needed to give it a little breathing room. It seemed the only decent thing to do. It’s just that it’s nicer to pause between stories when reading the words on a page, because you can get up and refill your cup of coffee and swap out the laundry and then you might be ready for the next. In the car, there’s just dead air time.

Each of the stories includes a typewriter, and by the end I was in full typewriter lust mode. Having seen someone recently actually using a typewriter, I have decided my laptop suits me fine. But the romance of an old typewriter… it’s a thing.

I’m not a big reader of short stories, but these…  These are winners. Often poignant, frequently quiet, sometimes funny, always deeply human.

 

Give this book a whirl if you like… celebrity authors, well-evoked characters, short stories from a variety of viewpoints, typewriters

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

3 words: smart, thoughtful, emotional

Anyone else ever save a book you know you’re gonna love? And then read it as a treat?

This is one of those.

I’d heard rave reviews, and I knew the incomparable Lin-Manuel Miranda reads the audiobook, and I’m happy reading realistic teen fiction (as long as it doesn’t involve death), so I was pretty sure I was gonna love this book.

And I did.

Even if there hadn’t been the subtle, heartfelt narration by Miranda, this book’s sweetness and intelligence would’ve been evident on the page.

Ari is a teenage boy who’s never had a close friend until he meets Dante. The story of their unfolding friendship is charming, and so are the close relationships they have with their parents.

They’re teenage boys who don’t fit in with others, but isn’t that the way all teenagers feel? So there’s some serious universal understanding right there. I recognize these characters.

Ari’s first-person narration puts us right there with him, and he’s a fascinating person to hang out with and his voice is true.

I’m tempted to say that this book is emotionally honest, but it’s interesting: Ari is in complete emotional denial about aspects of himself. But the book itself is honest and wise. And eventually Ari gets there, too.

Give this book a whirl if you like… LGBTQ stories, coming of age, endearing teens, stories about friendship, Mexican American family stories, teen angst, and family secrets

What’s the best teen novel you’ve read lately?

Audiobook so good it ruins you, doggone it

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(photo credit: By Bea A Carson [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons)

The Nix by Nathan Hill

3 words: wry, family, storytelling

So this happened…

After finishing this book, I drove around resolutely dissatisfied by three audiobooks I tried to begin. Nothing worked (I will never be satisfied) because The Nix had totally spoiled me with its splendor.

As the Dear Man’s dear nephew said, “Magnum opus. That is all.”

Except: here we’re not gonna let that be all. More words!

This book is one of those big stories you just fall into, and it carries you away. I kept feeling surprised by each new turn the narrative took, but it all worked.

The tone captured me right away. When describing the way the media responded to a middle-aged woman hurling pebbles at a politician, the wry sarcasm completely delighted me. When I’m smiling out loud during the first five minutes of an audiobook, that’s a good sign.

We start with Samuel Andresen-Andersen, then meet his pebble-throwing mother, his mother’s lawyer, his worst student, his literary agent, a gamer who lives in the video game where they both spend too much time, and people from his mother’s brief (accidental) foray into the 1968 protest movement.

And there are even characters from Iowa. What more can a person ask for?

With a nicely balanced blend of cynicism and hope, this story unfolds through flashbacks and interspersed storylines.

And just when I thought I had it figured out… it surprised me one last time.

Big, literary, entertaining, and immensely satisfying.

 

Give this book a whirl if you like… literary novels with a modern tone and sense of humor, complex family stories, narratives that interweave the past and the present, stories of 1960s counterculture, the past coming back to bite you

 

What book was so good it ruined other books for you?

 

 

Listening to Lincoln

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Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

3 words: melancholy, gentle, eccentric

 

I’m guessing you might’ve heard this by now, but… this is The Big Audiobook of The Year.

And it’s not because there are more than 160 narrators, though that’s certainly a source of much of the buzz.

And it’s not because the cast contains tons of famous actors, though that’s true, too.

And it’s not because all of this fuss is over the author’s debut novel.

All of those things contribute, but for me, there are three other factors that make this thing so amazing.

First, the story makes you feel all the feels. At one point, I had to turn off the audiobook, because otherwise serious sobbing would’ve ensued, and I was pulling into the parking lot at work. That wouldn’t do.

This book is a magical realism-tinged look at the days following Willie Lincoln’s death in 1862. The Civil War is raging away, and then Lincoln lost his beloved son. And the way Saunders writes, you feel it.

But because this book is narrated by lots of dead people in the cemetery, you also feel lots of other things, because they represent a cross-section of humanity. So there are kind souls and there are brutes, and there’s gentleness and there’s crassness.

Second, the author tells the story in an inventive way. Not only is much of the book narrated by the dead, but there are also sections of knit-together excerpts of writings of the time, describing things like Willie’s death, and the Lincolns’ parenting style, and Lincoln’s personality and appearance. And the opinions differed widely, so you see the difficulty of getting at “the truth” of a person or a situation. But throughout, the greatness of Lincoln shines through.

And third, Nick Offerman. The man’s a narrating genius. He and David Sedaris read the two main roles, and I gotta say: Offerman’s subtle, understated way completely slayed me. The nuance in his voice conveys ten times more than dramatic flailings could even hint at. His character is in denial about his own death, and each time any of the ghosts is about to say “casket,” he substitutes “sick box.” It nearly choked me up.

If you’re going to read this book, I sure hope you’ll listen to it. The beauty of the narration — by all those 166 narrators — adds texture and emotion to an already remarkable story.

Give this book a whirl if you like…Lincoln, cemeteries, ghosts, books that include snippets of real historical accounts, sad stories, a bit of earthiness, The Graveyard Book, The Spoon River Anthology

June is Audiobook Month

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It’s Audiobook Month, my friends!

Anyone out there a compulsive audiobook listener who gets twitchy when there are only 2 discs left, and you don’t have the next audiobook queued up yet?

Me, too.

So here’s some help.

This year, I’m focusing on great audiobooks narrated by their author.

Sometimes, when the author reads the audiobook, it ain’t good.

But sometimes, it’s perfection.

Here are some of the happier cases.

If you’re in the mood for…

 

And now I’m wondering… what author-narrated audiobooks would you add to this list?

 

Memoir of a super tough swimmer

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Find a Way by Diana Nyad

3 words: forthright, vigorous, candid

Wow. I mean: seriously.

When I heard about Diana Nyad’s historic swim from Cuba to Florida, I was impressed. But reading her account of the lifelong journey she took to accomplish this goal… Wow.

I’m not sure what knocked me over more:

  • It took five attempts (over the course of 30+ years) to complete the swim
  • She began training for the Cuba crossing after a 30-year hiatus from swimming
  • Nyad was 64 years old when she successfully finished the swim
  • The effort that went into engineering the swim so it wouldn’t kill her (a series of jellyfish stings nearly ended her life during a 2011 swim)
  • The sheer strength of will she personified

And then there’s her remarkable backstory. After doing several landmark open water swims in her 20s, Nyad left swimming and became a sports reporter.

It was only when she reached age 60 that she realized she needed to do something momentous to get her life out of autopilot. And then she set about doing that thing.

Nyad also addresses the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. And it’s both horrific that she had to experience such abuse, and inspiring to see how she overcame it. It’s an unexpected part of her story that surprised me and nearly broke my heart.

So when she goes on to live a big, bold life that she built with her own strength and with the love and support of her loved ones, it’s powerful stuff.

Nyad reads the audiobook, and I’m also glad she did. She’s a talented broadcaster, and she brings emotion to her reading.

Finally, this book is a remarkable thing because of the team Nyad assembled to help her achieve the Cuba swim. Reading about the way the team worked together–and especially the key role played by her head handler, Bonnie–I’m awed. It’s a beautiful thing, this story. There’s plenty of shadow, yes, but: the light, people! This story is filled with light breaking through the dark.
Give this book a whirl if you like… swimming, extreme sports, strong women, perseverance, stories of abuse survivors, senior power, living a bold life

 

So, folks… Whose stories have you found completely awe-inspiring?

Gilmore Girls withdrawal cure

Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (And Everything In Between) by Lauren Graham

3 words: quick, funny, entertaining

 

 

You know how sometimes, when you really love a TV show, you kinda dread it when one of the actors writes a memoir? Because what if you don’t like them? What if they’re arrogant or  unrelatable or otherwise incompatible with you? Or what if they simply don’t match up with the way you want them to resemble the character you most adore, and that’s just a big old disappointment?

Well, my friends… if you’re a fan of The Gilmore Girls, your mind can rest easy. You can safely enter into this reading experience, knowing that it will all turn out fine in the end.

Because it turns out that Lauren Graham–the actor and real-life human being–is delightfully similar to the fictional character Loralai Gilmore.

I know: weird.

But also: wonderful.

There’s lots of talk about the delight of creating The Gilmore Girls not only once, but twice. But also a candid (and often very funny) description of life as a struggling actor–the strange part-time jobs, the horrible tiny apartments, the hoping against hope.

And more funny stuff about the life of a reasonably successful actor–trying all the diets, being single for a long time (not necessarily totally by choice), and learning that your show’s reboot is happening by reading about it online.

If you’re going to read this book, don’t. Listen to it instead. Lauren Graham reads it herself, so it’s like you’re hearing Loralai telling you the story of Lauren’s life. It’s pretty terrific.

 

Give this book a whirl if you like… celebrity memoirs, a chatty tone, and the quick wit of The Gilmore Girls

 

So tell me… what celebrity memoirs have caught your eye lately?