Audiobook Reviews in Five Minutes

In this bonus podcast episode, I answer listener questions about why I don’t include ratings with my reviews, how I identify great listens for future reviews, and the challenges of reviewing fiction. Audio production by Graham Stephenson Episode music: Peacetime by Blue Dot Sessions ( www.sessions.blue ).

Sir Max Hastings is an author, journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in every British national newspaper. He has published twenty-six books, and rumour has it that he rises at 5 a.m. and writes 2,000 words before breakfast – every day.  Catastrophe 1914 amounts to about 25 hours of listening, and bear in mind that it only covers the lead-up to the war, and the war’s first few mon...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in the epicenter of the COVID pandemic? Fang Fang is the pen name of a 64-year-old Wuhan novelist and poet who wrote 60 posts in 60 days between Jan. 23 and April 7 on WeChat, described as China's "app for everything" and Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Her posts attracted more than 380 million views while she was quarantined in Wuhan,...

Dr. Brittney Cooper is an associate professor of women's and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University in the United States. She is a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective and co-editor of the collection of essays of the same title, which explore intersectionality, African-American culture, and hip-hop feminism. This audiobook highlights the bigotry of American feminist movem...

This title intrigued me because Dr. Willie Parker seems like an unlikely champion of reproductive justice, yet in many ways, his lived experience is what makes his perspective uniquely insightful – and his words all the more persuasive. What impressed me the most about this audiobook was how succinctly Parker captures distinct and seemingly unrelated experiences and aligns them for meaningful and...

Are you feeling flummoxed, bamboozled, and stupefied by communication and language online? And how exactly did LOLcats irreversibly change the course of the English language? Gretchen McCulloch is a Canadian linguist who studies the language of the internet, for the people of the internet. She is currently the Resident Linguist at WIRED. Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51828723-beca...

Eternity Martis is an award-winning Toronto-based journalist and editor whose work has been featured in The Huffington Post, VICE, Chatelaine, Maclean’s, Flare, Salon, CBC, Hazlitt, The Walrus, Refinery29, The Fader, Complex and many more. This is a fantastic listen if you’re interested in learning more about racialized experiences in a Canadian University and how racism complicates the existing c...

Laura Spinney is a British science journalist, novelist, and non-fiction writer, and she’s been reporting on the Coronavirus pandemic for the last few months in the Guardian, but this audiobook was published in 2017, which makes her writing seem all the more prescient. Pale Rider covers relevant and fascinating content that includes Alaska, Brazil, India, Persia, Spain, South Africa and the port c...

When was the last time you listened to an audiobook that shattered all of your expectations – from the format and narrative performance, to the genre-defying content? Split Tooth is part memoir, part manifesto, and it’s infused with myth, poetry, and song. Tanya Tagaq is a multi-talented Inuk artist, author, and an internationally acclaimed Juno and Polaris prize-winning throat singer, and she seg...

Do you believe that racism isn’t a problem in Canada, or that it’s a relatively benign issue compared to racism in the United States, or other countries? If so, Desmond Cole may change your mind. Cole’s stories about his personal experience of anti-Black racism made me uncomfortable at times, but that's a good thing. I felt compelled to reflect much more critically on my previous assumptions about...

“For Kendi, the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, there are no non-racists; there are only racists — people who allow racist ideas to proliferate without opposition — and antiracists, those who expose and eradicate such ideas wherever they encounter them… What emerges from these insights is the most courageous book to date on the problem of race...

Dr. Robin DiAngelo is an antiracist educator and University of Washington professor. She defines white fragility as the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially. White fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviours including argumentation and silence. These behaviours, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and preven...

This might be the most fascinating memoir ever published by someone under 40; you can’t beat the combination of storytelling, historic context, and current relevance. Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51801760-permanent-record Audio production by Graham Stephenson Episode music: Flashing Runner by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

If you’re a fan of audiobooks like I am, you’ve likely found yourself drawn to readers with a talent for capturing and keeping your attention! The very best readers have a talent for drawing you in and keeping you up well past your bedtime. The truly great ones are SO good, that you’ll listen to books you might never have read. This extended episode highlights a few of my favourites. Audiobook sam...

Every now and then, I come across an audiobook that’s so entertaining and so deliciously enjoyable, that I limit myself to listening to just an hour or less each day – allowing me to savour it longer. Mythos is that kind of audiobook. Fry’s drollery and British brand of humour endlessly amuse me. The narration and witty commentary sprinkled throughout this audiobook will not disappoint fans, so ev...

Even 10 years after publication, the systemic issues that Alexander expertly navigates throughout her book remain among the most problematic and unresolved challenges in unjust political and economic systems in the USA. This book has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; in the United States, it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Pr...

Have you ever wondered who YOU might become if you could just change or develop different habits? In Atomic Habits, James Clear defines success as a system or a process to improve and refine, and he advocates avoiding a daily focus on goals. Instead, he recommends focusing on deliberately initiating, refining, and optimizing habits. “Small habits don’t simply add up – they compound. It’s remarkabl...

This book is for anyone who wants to improve their communication, relationships, and professional lives. Whether you’re job hunting, parenting, selling products and services, working with difficult people, or you simply want to better understand what motivates human decision-making, you will find some useful insights here. Chances are if you listen to or read this one, you’ll find advice you can u...

In this extended episode, Codi and I discuss his book, Everyday Legacy: Lessons for Living With Purpose, Right Now. Everyday Legacy shares vital lessons for living, informed by Codi’s experiences as a funeral director who developed a deep understanding of the reality of death. From tales of unexpected friendship as a young volunteer in palliative care, to what he learned through his estranged fath...

Do you enjoy dark sarcasm, witty anecdotes, folk history, pop culture references, and historic epidemiological surveys of disease? If so, this audiobook is for you! Voted Audible.com’s ‘History Book Of The Year’ for 2017. Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30199426-get-well-soon?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=VTLGjxY2zV&rank=1 Audio production by Graham Stephenson Music...

Hari discusses some especially timely concerns: disconnection from meaningful work, from other people, from meaningful values, from childhood trauma, from status and respect, from the natural world, and finally, disconnection from a hopeful or secure future.. I enjoyed the personal stories throughout the book.  Goodreads details:   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38214632-lost-c...

This book was praised as “a wake-up call’ when it was published in 2017, yet cuts to pandemic preparedness budgets nevertheless continued, as is painfully clear today. The authors pose a hypothetical pandemic crisis description that is scarily prescient of our own situation. A compelling listen / read on understanding the impact and implications of infectious disease on a global scale. Osterholm w...

Originally trained as a visual artist, Jenny Odell has established herself over the last year as a writer and podcaster with her excellent podcast series, Hurry slowly. Published in April 2019, her book has been described by the New York Times reviewer Jonah Engel Bromwich as a A Manifesto for Opting Out of an Internet-Dominated World, which seems like an especially challenging proposal during a p...

The scale and numbers associated with the 1918 pandemic always stop me in my tracks. From January 1918 – December 1920, with the worst month in October of 1918, the virus infected abut 27% of the world’s population (500 million people) and killed approximately 50 to 100 million people. It killed more people in a year than the Black Death in the Middle Ages killed in 100 years; it killed more peopl...

In my latest podcast, I review The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, written and read by Douglas Murray. Murray’s main point is that, “Minimizing difference is not the same as pretending difference does not exist. To assume that sex, sexuality and skin colour mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume that they mean everything will be fatal.” This listen is a fascinating perspecti...