Does listening to audiobooks count as reading? Here it does. Let’s discuss your favorite reads — or listens.
For readers that want to brush up on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the “March” series is an exemplary feat of storytelling that exposes the hypocrisy, violence and injustice that spurred the movement while celebrating the everyday people who protested – and died – for desegregation and the passing of the Voting Rights Act.
Expectation: A racially-charged exploration of college life in the Southern United States.
Reality: A dissection of capitalism from the perspectives of different students, professors and resident advisors delivered with biting commentary and razor-sharp dialogue.
Expectation: An action-packed post-apocalyptic First Nations-set thriller.
Reality: A slowburn story that uses the end-of-times as an allegory for settler colonialism, the Indigenous focus is what sets this apart from other, similar tales.
While not as well-known in the mainstream as the Pride flag, the pink triangle – the Nazi concentration camp symbol for prisoners convicted under Paragraph 175, the German law that criminalized homosexual activity among men – is an enduring and important marker of queer history that morphed from an emblem of shame into a symbol of activism.
After a choppy start, Edgar Gomez’s engrossing memoir, “High-Risk Homosexual” morphed into an interesting dissection of cultural expectations, acceptance and self-discovery.
Expectation: A sweeping story of hardship and survival set against major conflicts of the Vietnam War.
Reality: Informative and engrossing, if a tad long, Kristin Hannah once again delivers an historical fiction epic but continued trauma dumping on the main character lessens her credibility.
A mashup of true crime, memoir and history, the story is more glossy magazine feature than stodgy tome and stands as a love letter to libraries, and the crucial role these institutions play in building healthy communities and safeguarding democracy.
Expectation: An immersive story about one family’s experiences navigating the shifting social and political changes of a fictional Latin American village.
Reality: Some of the narrative choices — structure and naming of characters, mainly — made this difficult to follow, but the beauty of Gabriel García Márquez’s prose still shone through.
Expectation: A steamy political thriller about two up and coming politicos balancing a clandestine, queer love affair under the specter of the Lavender Scare.
Reality: Essentially a nonfiction novel with unlikable characters and flat development. Do yourself a favor and skip it in favor of the limited television series.
I had no trouble narrowing down my “best” list this year, but “worst” was another story. Truthfully, I read a lot of mediocre books – many I should’ve given up on – which means this was a year dominated by quantity and not quality.
In a year where 67 percent of my reading was listening, I experienced the good, the bad and the downright ugly of audiobook performances and production. With that said, here are the 10 best and 12 worst audiobook narrations I heard in 2023.
Expectation: A straightforward historical fiction journey through a remote area of New England.
Reality: A dark, but accessible fairytale filled with ghosts – both literal and figurative – that excels at making the reader care about the dozen or so characters we meet. It was one of the more creative novels I read this year.
Expectation: A richly-layered tearjerker that tracks the ups and downs of four sisters and the people in their orbit.
Reality: Too many characters without development and repetitive sections showed the author couldn’t scale her storytelling ambition.
Expectation: A dark and twisted domestic horror story about how far a young wife will go to save her husband from the ghost of her mother-in-law.
Reality: A bit of a recursive mess, the premise is too thin to sustain nearly 300-pages, but the last few chapters do deliver.
Paced like a thriller – there’s short chapters and each has a clear focus – Egan stays rooted in basics and not minutiae. There’s detail on the inner workings of the KKK, state and national politics, “Roaring 20s” culture and immigration panic to provide a contextual foundation, but the author keeps everything aligned to his thesis: how Indiana served as a microcosm for a growing wave of racism in northern states, and the resisters who fought it.
For a generation of Millennial readers, the release of Britney Spears’ memoir was a landmark moment: the opportunity for our beloved superstar to say her piece after more than a decade of forced silence. As a lifelong fan, it is difficult for me to be unbiased in my assessment of the narrative crafted with ghostwriter Sam Lansky, so I once again invited my friend Heather to discuss it.
Expectation: Gay love overcoming the odds in 1950s America!
Reality: Incredibly repetitive and too saccharine, the historical fiction element is almost an afterthought to typical romance genre tropes.
Expectation: The author’s best character in recent years tackles another supernatural mystery.
Reality: Somewhat sidelined by an infusion of current events, it still represents a satisfying entry into King’s recent forays into crime procedurals.
Expectation: A “John Wick” revenge fantasy about a national park ranger seeking out an illegal wolf poaching ring.
Reality: The plot drowns in unrelated minutiae. Had I not been trapped in a car for six hours, I probably would’ve given up on it.
