One of the greatest inventions of our time is the audiobook. Being able to listen to a book while you’re doing another task has opened up a world of reading to us in our busy lives. Pop it on during your morning commute, or when on a roadie. Fire up an audiobook while you’re gardening or doing chores around the house. They’re great for keeping kids entertained on a rainy day or in the car. I particularly love autobiographies in audiobook form when they are read by the author. It gives the reader so much more insight into who the subject is than having the book read by someone else.
Here are some eAudiobooks available through Libby that have been read by the author that I’ve particularly enjoyed:
Unprotected: a Memoir – Billy Porter,
From the incomparable Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner, a powerful and revealing autobiography about race, sexuality, art, and healing. It’s easy to be yourself when who and what you are is in vogue. But growing up Black and gay in America has never been easy. Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic Emmy-winning performance in the celebrated TV show Pose; before he was the groundbreaking Tony and Grammy Award–winning star of Broadway’s Kinky Boots; and before he was an acclaimed…young boy in Pittsburgh who was seen as different, who didn’t fit in. Porter is a multitalented, multifaceted treasure at the top of his game, and Unprotected is a resonant, inspirational story of trauma and healing, shot through with his singular voice. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride – Cary Elwes,
From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes the New York Times bestselling account of the making of the cult classic film filled with never-before-told stories, exclusive photographs, and interviews with costars Robin Wright, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Mandy Patinkin, as well as author and screenwriter William Goldman, producer Norman Lear, and director Rob Reiner. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
And Away… – Bob Mortimer,
Although his childhood in Middlesbrough was normal on the surface, it was tinged by the loss of his dad, and his own various misadventures (now infamous from his appearances on Would I Lie to You?), from burning down the family home to starting a short-lived punk band called Dog Dirt. As an adult, he trained as a solicitor and moved to London. Though he was doing pretty well (the South London Press once crowned him ‘The Cockroach King’ after a successful verdict), a chance encounter in a pub in the 1980s with a young comedian going by the name Vic Reeves set his life on a different track.
Warm, profound, and irrepressibly funny, And Away… is Bob’s full life story (with a few lies thrown in for good measure.) (Adapted from Overdrive description)
The Storyteller – Dave Grohl
From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
The Gran Tour: Travels with my Elders – Ben Aitken
When Ben Aitken learnt that his gran had enjoyed a four-night holiday including four three-course dinners, four cooked breakfasts, four games of bingo, a pair of excursions, sixteen pints of lager and luxury return coach travel, all for a hundred pounds, he thought, that’s the life, and signed himself up. Six times over. Good value aside, what Ben was really after was the company of his elders – those with more chapters under their belt, with the wisdom granted by experience, the candour gifted by time, and the hard-earned ability to live each day like it’s nearly their last. A series of coach holidays ensued – from Scarborough to St Ives, Killarney to Lake Como – during which Ben attempts to shake off his thirty-something blues by getting old as soon as possible. (Overdrive description)
Beyond the Gender Binary – Alok Vaid-Menon
In Beyond the Gender Binary, poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary.
Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today’s leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
Landwhale – Jes Baker
Jes Baker burst onto the body positivity scene when she created her own ads mocking Abercrombie & Fitch for discriminating against all body types — a move that landed her on the Today Show and garnered a loyal following for her raw, honest, and attitude-filled blog missives. Building on the manifesta power of Things, this memoir goes deeply into Jes’s inner life, from growing up a fat girl to dating while fat. With material that will have readers laughing and crying along with Jes’s experience, this new book is a natural fit with her irreverent, open-book style. A deeply personal take, Landwhale is a glimpse at life as a fat woman today, but it’s also a reflection of the unforgiving ways our culture still treats fatness, all with Jes’s biting voice as the guide. (Overdrive description)
Whipping Boy – Allen Kurzweil
Equal parts childhood memoir and literary thriller, Whipping Boy chronicles prize-winning author Allen Kurzweil’s search for his twelve-year-old nemesis, a bully named Cesar Augustus. The obsessive inquiry, which spans some forty years, takes Kurzweil all over the world, from a Swiss boarding school (where he endures horrifying cruelty) to the slums of Manila, from the Park Avenue boardroom of the world’s largest law firm to a federal prison camp in Southern California. A scrupulously researched work of nonfiction that renders a childhood menace into an unlikely muse, Whipping Boy is much more than a tale of karmic retribution; it is a poignant meditation on loss, memory, and mourning, a surreal odyssey born out of suffering, nourished by rancor, tempered by wit, and resolved, unexpectedly, in a breathtaking act of personal courage. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
Bonkers – Jennifer Saunders
BONKERS is full of riotous adventures: accidentally enrolling on a teacher training course with a young Dawn French, bluffing her way to each BBC series, shooting Lulu, trading wild faxes with Joanna Lumley, touring India with Ruby Wax and Goldie Hawn. There’s cancer, too, when she becomes ‘Brave Jen’. But her biggest battle is with the bane of her life: the Laws of Procrastination. As she admits, ‘There has never been a Plan. Everything has been fairly random, happened by accident or just fallen into place. I’m off now, to do some sweeping…’ Prepare to chuckle, whoop, and go BONKERS. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
Taste – Stanley Tucci
Before Stanley Tucci became a household name with The Devil Wears Prada, The Hunger Games, and the perfect Negroni, he grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them. Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
Turns Out, I’m Fine: How Not to Fall Apart – Judith Lucy
…In the space of twenty-four hours, her relationship came apart and so did she. A broken heart became the catalyst for a complete existential melt down. She was nearly fifty, suddenly alone and unsure about every aspect of her life.
How had this happened? Should she blame one of her four parents? What part had the comedy world played and was her disastrous history with men about more than just bad taste? In her most candid and insightful book yet, Judith figures out what went wrong and then turns her attention to finding out what her life might look like if it went right. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
What It Feels Like for a Girl – Paris Lees
Thirteen-year-old Byron needs to get away, and doesn’t care how. Sick of being beaten up by lads for ‘talkin’ like a poof’ after school. Sick of dad – the weightlifting, womanising Gaz – and Mam, who selfishly p*ssed off to Turkey like Shirley Valentine. Sick of the people who shuffle about Hucknall like the living dead, going on about kitchens they’re too skint to do up and marriages they’re too scared to leave. It’s a new millennium, Madonna’s ‘Music’ is top of the charts and there’s a whole world to explore – and Byron’s happy to beg, steal and skank onto a rollercoaster ride of hedonism. Unflinching, hilarious and heart-breaking, What It Feels Like For a Girl is the unique, hotly-anticipated and addictively-readable debut from one of Britain’s most exciting young writers. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
Beastie Boys Book – Adam Horovitz
Formed as a New York City hardcore band in 1981, Beastie Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip hop superstardom. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. They offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the almost impossible-to-fathom overnight success of their debut studio album Licensed to Ill; that album’s messy fallout; their break with Def Jam, move to Los Angeles, and rebirth as musicians and social activists, with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul’s Boutique. For more than twenty years, this band has had a wide-ranging and lasting influence on popular culture. (Overdrive description)
Jack Charles, Born Again Blakfella – Jack Charles
Stolen from his mother and placed into institutional care when he was only a few months old, Uncle Jack was raised under the government’s White Australia Policy. The loneliness and isolation he experienced during those years had a devastating impact on him that endured long after he reconnected with his Aboriginal roots and discovered his stolen identity. Even today he feels like an outsider; a loner; a fringe dweller. In this honest and no-holds-barred memoir, Uncle Jack reveals the ‘ups and downs of this crazy, drugged up, locked up, f*cked up, and at times unbelievable, life’. From his sideline as a cat burglar, battles with drug addiction and stints in prison, to gracing the nation’s stages and screens as he dazzled audiences with his big personality and acting prowess, he takes us through the most formative moments of his life. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
Happy Fat – Sofie Hagen
In Happy Fat, comedian Sofie Hagen shares how she removed fatphobic influences from her daily life and found self-acceptance in a world where judgement and discrimination are rife. From shame and sex to airplane seats, love and getting stuck in public toilets, Sofie provides practical tips for readers – drawing wisdom from other Fat Liberation champions along the way. Part memoir, part social commentary, Happy Fat is a funny, angry and impassioned look at how taking up space in a culture that is desperate to reduce you can be radical, emboldening and life-changing. (Adapted from Overdrive description)
Ten Steps to Nanette, Hannah Gadsby (Audiobook)
“The memoir from Australia’s much-loved comedian, Hannah Gadsby, whose stand-up show and self-described swan-song, Nanette, played to sold-out houses in Australia, the UK and the US. […] Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby’s tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.” (Overdrive description)
If you’d like more audio book suggestions, go to Libby – Wellington City Libraries (libbyapp.com)
