Audiobooks for which I think the narration vastly improves the book consumption experience:
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, narrated by John Green - this is John’s first non-fiction book and his narration of the book imbues the text with the right balance of emotion. I cry every time I listen to it, especially the chapter “Googling Strangers” (a version of which you can hear on the podcast that the book kind of spun off from for free if you want). I think John was the perfect narrator for this book and I can’t imagine anyone else reading it. In case you’re wondering, my favorite chapter is “Bonneville Salt Flats”.
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins, narrated by Tatiana Maslany — Tatiana is an actress (I mainly know her from an arc on Heartland and a couple of episodes of Parks and Rec, but she was apparently the main character in Orphan Black and has done a bunch of other stuff) and this really comes through in her narration — in a good way. She’s a fantastic voice for Katniss’ inner monologue and I don’t find her read of other character’s voices distracting or confusing in any way. Granted, I knew the stories before listening to the audiobooks, but I enjoyed these so much that, not only did I buy them so I would stop using up Hoopla borrows on them, I also have suggested them to like ten people this year and looked to see if Tatiana had narrated anything else that I might find interesting (she hasn’t done any other audiobooks from what I can tell, which is a real shame).
The Truly Devious Series by Maureen Johnson, narrated by Kate Rudd - I also went looking for anything else narrated by Kate Rudd and was not disappointed — she’s narrated over 500 books, including some of John Green’s novels. But the Truly Devious series is just really fun. It’s a YA murder mystery series. The first three center around the same mystery while the next two (and I assume any subsequent additions) are standalones with the same central cast of characters. Kate does an excellent job of reading the engaging source material and I think I have enjoyed every book I’ve heard her read; I just also happen to really like this series.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, narrated by Jennette McCurdy — I think for a memoir as heavy as this one, it only makes sense for Jennette to read her own words. The book is great, her narration is great, but it’s probably not for everyone. Jennette’s story of becoming a well-known child actress at the behest of her mother only to realize once her mom died of cancer that their relationship was abusive is somewhat harrowing, but there is hope woven in as well.
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott, narrated by January LaVoy — this book is really good but it also gutted me (I won’t spoil anything, but do maybe look up content warnings prior to consuming) and January LaVoy did a really good job. If her name sounds familiar to my Star Wars peeps, it probably is: she read the audiobook for Bloodline, some of the stories in the From A Certain Point of View series, and the new recording of The Courtship of Princess Leia (lol) among others, but she has also narrated loads of non-Star Wars material. Loved this book, loved her narration of it.
Special mention:
The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, narrated by Jennifer Ikeda — this is a special mention because I do not actually suggest these books at all. The first one starts out fairly promising with a seemingly interesting and strong main character who suddenly loses all of her personality and agency the moment she meets a hot vampire, and it’s not because she’s being compelled or anything interesting like that. By the end, the only “character” I really liked was the house that Diana’s aunts owned? (Well, I also spent a chunk of the first book hoping that the weird number of times Matthew warned Diana that his stallion bites would turn out to be foreshadowing that the horses were all vampires, but that unfortunately never panned out.) Anyway, these books are not good but I am convinced I kept listening to them even after swearing off the series after the first book because of Jennifer’s narration. And then they switched narrators for the weird little follow-up fourth book about Phoebe becoming a vampire (Time’s Convert) and I wasn’t able to finish it. (And that is not me saying that the narrator of Time’s Convert isn’t good. She narrated Leia, Princess of Alderaan and also did the Leia chapters in The Princess and the Scoundrel, which means I have told multiple people that I wish she would have read the whole book rather than switching off with whoever did Han’s chapters. She’s a fine narrator. What I’m saying is that Jennifer Ikeda was good enough to keep me listening even when I hated what was being read to me while another perfectly fine narrator couldn’t do that, and that’s saying something.)
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THE BOOKS I READ IN 2022, in the order in which I read them (*books I read before, that I was reading again):
Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction
Elizabeth Miki Brina, Speak, Okinawa
Cynthia Dewi Oka, Fire Is Not a Country
Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest
*Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings
Victoria Chang, Dear Memory
*Etel Adnan, Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz)
Sun Yung Shin, The Wet Hex
traci kato-kiriyama, Navigating With(out) Instruments
Raquel Gutiérrez, Brown Neon
Solmaz Sharif, Customs
*Etel Adnan, Journey to Mount Tamalpais
Lucille Clifton, Generations: A Memoir
Emerson Whitney, Heaven
Kim Thúy, em, tr. Sheila Fischman
Angel Dominguez, Desgraciado (the collected letters)
Janice Lee, Separation Anxiety
*Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee
*Cathy Park Hong, Translating Mo’um
Kyoko Hayashi, From Trinity to Trinity, tr. Eiko Otake
Lao Yang, Pee Poems, tr. Joshua Edwards & Lynn Xu
Yuri Herrera, A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, tr. Lisa Dillman (
Mai Der Vang, Yellow Rain
Chuang Hua, Crossings
José Watanabe, Natural History, tr. Michelle Har Kim
Walter Lew, Excerpts from: ∆IKTH 딕테/딕티 DIKTE, for DICTEE (1982)
*Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers
Vasily Grossman, An Armenian Sketchbook, tr. Robert & Elizabeth Chandler
Hiromi Kawakami, Parade, tr. Allison Markin Powell
Lynn Xu, And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight
*Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose, tr. Georgina Kleege
Jennifer Soong, Suede Mantis/Soft Rage
*James Baldwin, No Name in the Street
*Hilton Als, The Women
Dot Devota, >She
V.S. Naipaul, The Return of Eva Perón
Yasushi Inoue, The Hunting Gun, tr. Sadamichi Yokoo and Sanford Goldstein
Molly Murakami, Tide goes out
Adrian Tomine, Shortcomings
Hisham Matar, A Month in Siena
Leia Penina Wilson, Call the Necromancer
Gabriel García Márquez, News of a Kidnapping, tr. Edith Grossman
Amitava Kumar, Bombay-London-New York
Elizabeth Alexander, The Trayvon Generation
Ryan Nakano, I Am Minor
Constance Debré, Love Me Tender, tr. Holly James
Hilton Als, My Pin-up
Victoria Chang, The Trees Witness Everything
Leslie Kitashima-Gray, The Pink Dress: A Story from the Japanese American Internment
Emmanuel Carrère, Yoga, tr. John Lambert
Ronald Tanaka, The Shino Suite: Sansei Poetry
Patricia Y. Ikeda, House of Wood, House of Salt
Soichi Furuta, to breathe
Kiki Petrosino, Bright
Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Aerial Concave Without Cloud
Nanao Sakaki, Real Play
Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias
Francis Naohiko Oka, Poems
Geraldine Kudaka, Numerous Avalanches at the Point of Intersection
Steve Fujimura, Sad Asian Music
Augusto Higa Oshiro, The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu, tr. Jennifer Shyue
Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers
Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System
Hua Hsu, Stay True
Barbara Browning, The Miniaturists
Kate Zambreno, Drifts
*Julie Otsuka, When The Emperor Was Divine
Louise Akers, Elizabeth/The Story of Drone
Wong May, In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century from the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty
Gabrielle Octavia Rucker, Dereliction
Trung Le Nguyen, The Magic Fish
Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow
Tongo Eisen-Martin, Blood on the Fog
Lucas de Lima, Tropical Sacrifice
*Like a New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry, ed. Víctor Terán & David Shook
Billy-Ray Belcourt, A Minor Chorus
Kazim Ali, Silver Road
*Sadako Kurihara, When We Say Hiroshima, tr. Richard Minear
Simone White, or, on being the other woman
*James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work
Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes
*Raquel Gutiérrez, Brown Neon
Marguerite Duras, The Man Sitting in the Corridor
Gayl Jones, Corregidora
*Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers
*Etel Adnan, Seasons
Gwendolyn Brooks, to disembark
Cristina Rivera Garza, The Taiga Syndrome, tr. Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana
Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca
Nona Fernández, The Twilight Zone, tr. Natasha Wimmer
Selva Almada, Dead Girls, tr. Annie McDermott
*Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee
Valerie Hsiung, To Love an Artist
*Theresa Hak Cha, Exilée and Temps Morts
Dao Strom, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People
Randa Jarrar, Love Is An Ex-Country
*Dao Strom, Instrument
Osamu Dazai, Early Light, tr. Ralph McCarthy and Donald Keene
Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun, tr. Donald Keene
Rachel Aviv, Strangers To Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief, tr. Ibrahim Muhawi
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ACOTAR review (spoilers!)
Star rating / 5: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
I have so many books to start posting about but I recently finished this series and wanted to start off with the first installment of Sarah J. Mass's ACOTAR.
Honestly, I stayed away from this one for a while due to all the hype on social media, describing it as a smut novel, not peaking my interest a whole lot. As a kid I had always been into the fantasy genre, so I eventually decided to give it a try since my friends all loved it.
I'll preface this post with the fact that I did consume these books solely as audiobooks both through Libby or Audible - it works better for my lifestyle and I enjoy them a ton! The audio version of the ACOTAR books had a fantastic narrator that carried through the first 3 books named Jennifer Ikeda - her subtle intonation changes to denote different characters was some of my favorite audio work and I was disappointed when the series eventually ended up changing narrators, though all were good.
I'm going to try to not include too many spoilers, just enough plot to keep my thoughts together.
To start, I really didn't like the not-so-subtle Beauty and the Beast theme that began the story. It felt a bit predictable from the moment we met Tamlin in his beast form, through when he just so happened to conveniently be rich handsome and obsessed with her. I saw that from a mile away, but I won't dwell too much on the predictability of this book as the series does pick up with surprise twists later on.
I did not understand the draw Feyre had on Tamlin throughout her time at the Spring Court until I understood the bargain she was meant to break. She didn't stand out to me as a particularly compelling heroine until the trials Under the Mountain, probably because of the circumstances surrounding her stay in Spring, and my general dislike of Tamlin from the start. To me, he always felt whiny and entitled, and I held his blonde hair against him, albeit rightfully so. His lack of emotion UTM completely fired me up. As a certain someone later pointed out, he never did anything to try to save her, knowing she was literally dying for him. Prick.
Lucien always resonated with me, I felt he was more a more trustworthy and caring companion to Feyre, and given how their relationship progresses throughout the series I'm glad I favored him. I also loved how the manor staff remained constant with Feyre to help her through confusing moments and the general bad vibes all around.
Rhysand. Ugh. I remember texting my friends the minute he was introduced to us at Calanmai (a bullshit R wordy ceremony IMO) saying WHO is this sexy night man and why is she with Tamlin when he exists. How he was towards her UTM was purposely done to set up later plot, but in the moments when you felt how Feyre was suffering, in agony and desperation, having his help (and Lucien's!!) set the tone for the switch I believe the reader was meant to make given her chosen partner. Plus the sexy scenes with her in her little outfits did not hurt at all.
The trials were everything - they showcased her strength in every way and made me absolutely root for her as my heroine of the series. Her determination to get through the trials and what she suffered during them honestly only made me hate Tamlin more for his "feigned" indifference. No thanks. The last trial was predictable to me given the step wise progression having bitch ass Tam Tam being the final test. He like barely thanked her honestly. I loved that the high lords came together for her, although again predictable that she is now conveniently one of them. What else can we do though she needs to stick around for a bit obviously.
Overall, this was a great set-up novel that was a fun read (listen). The audiobook was roughly 16 hr long, which isn't terrible and not nearly as long as some of the others in the series. That being said I absolutely devoured this and every other novel in this collection without an issue.
I'm giving this one a 4/5 due to my general distaste for our love interest from the start, as well as some predictability issues I felt made me roll my eyes a little too much, but it was overall a great introduction to a fun and provoking series.
Stay tuned for more reviews!
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