All Booked | All About Audiobooks
This edition of All Booked was originally emailed to subscribers on July 18, 2023. To receive our literary newsletter in your inbox, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
Greetings!
I’m Jackson Friedman, the Independent’s Associate Editor. I’m filling in this week for Book Worm in Chief Emily Lee, who’s out on maternity leave.
I think I can trace my love of audiobooks back to the backseat of my mom’s car as we zipped around Santa Barbara, listening to a book on tape of Tomie dePaola’s children’s story Strega Nona. While the plot of this spaghetti-centric spin on the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” certainly captured my young imagination, what lingers in my memory to this day is the late, great comedic actor Dom DeLuise’s mellifluous narration. Some 30-odd years later, I can still hear him in my mind’s ear speak-singing the fairy tale’s central incantation: “Bubble, bubble pasta pot / Boil me some pasta nice and hot / I’m hungry and it’s time to sup / Boil me enough pasta to fill me up.” Now a parent myself, I try to channel some of his gusto whenever I read the board book to my young daughter (bedtime stories, of course, being one of the OG forms of audiobook).
Over the years, I’ve graduated from cassette tapes to cumbersome CD box sets to digital files downloaded to my smartphone (shoutout to library-friendly apps Libby and Hoopla!). And while the formats may have changed, a great story read by a gifted narrator (or cast of them) remains just as enchanting to me now as it was in my backseat days. I mean, what else can magically make doing the dishes less dreary, a bumper-to-bumper commute on the 101 more bearable, or a tired parent motivated enough to go on an extended walk at the end of a long day?
While I disagree with print puritans who maintain that audiobooks don’t “count” as reading, I will concede one drawback to consuming books aurally: I’ve found that when trying to share my enthusiasm for an audiobook I just couldn’t tear my ears away from, there exists no shorthand as perfectly evocative as the print-specific phrase “page-turner.” While I continue to hunt for an apt equivalent (“time-flier”? “earbud-gluer”? “commute-killer”?), here are a few audiobooks released in the last couple of years that I hope elevate your everyday as much as they did mine.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann; read by Dion Graham
Drawing largely from surviving crewmembers’ sometimes-conflicting first-hand accounts, The Lost City of Z author David Grann’s latest narrative nonfiction thriller chronicles a secret mission to intercept a treasure-filled Spanish galleon off the Chilean coast during the so-called War of Jenkins’ Ear. Setting out from England in 1740 on the ill-fated voyage is a Royal Navy squadron that includes The Wager — a “tubby and unwieldy” merchant-ship-turned-man-of-war whose crew becomes shipwrecked on a desolate island off Patagonia. The well-researched, expertly told tale is read with dramatic flair by the golden-voiced Dion Graham, who delivers the book’s many cinematic moments with actorly aplomb. (Speaking of cinema, Martin Scorsese — whose sure-to-be-epic adaptation of Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon hits theaters this fall — is currently attached to direct an adaptation of The Wager.)
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell; narrated by Malcolm Gladwell
Boasting a top-notch production that seamlessly blends original interviews and archival audio with Malcolm Gladwell’s conversational narration, this documentary-esque audiobook reads (listens?) like an extended episode of the best-selling author’s podcast Revisionist History. That makes sense since The Bomber Mafia — about a small band of idealistic WWII aviators who believed precision bombing was the key to winning wars and making them less lethal — actually originated as an audiobook before being adapted to print. Delivered in Gladwell’s signature dulcet tones, this easy-listening history lesson is equal parts entertaining and informative but still packs a powerful punch.
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles; read by Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, and Dion Graham
Set on the highways and railways of 1950s America, this perspective-jumping joyride of a novel is also a joy to listen to — thanks largely to reader Edoardo Ballerini, who narrates all but two of the book’s idiosyncratic characters. The narration is rounded out by the aforementioned Dion Graham as the boxcar-riding Black veteran Ulysses and Marin Ireland as Sally, the no-nonsense Nebraskan girl next door to one of the story’s other viewpoint characters, Emmett, who hits the titular highway with his kid brother and two friends (escapees from a juvenile work farm) on a transcontinental road trip full of unexpected detours. This smartly “cast” production elevates an already great contemporary American novel into an exquisite audiobook experience.
The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman; read by Christopher Buehlman
Fans of snarky dark fantasies should enjoy this grim but wry fantasy adventure written by Christopher Buehlman (whose far bleaker historical horror/fantasy novel Between Two Fires is another in my audiobook hall of fame). The story begins in medias res with Kinch Na Shannack, a low-ranking thief deep in debt to his masters in the shadowy Takers Guild, as he and a foolhardy band of thieves attempt — and spectacularly fail — to rob the traveling knight Galva, a seasoned veteran of the world-reshaping Goblin Wars. Told from the witty, expletive-prone point of view of the roguish narrator Kinch (voiced by the Florida-based author in a pretty convincing brogue), the brutal yet comically recounted episode serves as the perfect introduction to the story’s two main characters and Buehlman’s fully realized, unforgiving magical world of Manreach. Those who end up falling under the book’s spell will be pleased to learn that it’s only the first installment in a planned Blacktongue series, with a prequel reportedly already in the works.
UPCOMING BOOK EVENTS
Below, you will find a few bookish events coming up in Santa Barbara. If you are hosting a bookish event in Santa Barbara, be sure to submit the event to our online events calendar.
Author Reading: Ramen for Everyone Reading by Patricia Tanumihardja
Wednesday, July 19, 11:30 a.m., Faulkner Gallery, S.B. Central Library
Montecito Book Club
Tuesday, July 25, noon, Montecito Library
Book Talk and Signing: Local Artist Rick Sharp
Thursday, July 27, 6 p.m., Chaucer’s Books
Essay Book Club: The White Album by Joan Didion
Thursday, July 27, 6 p.m., Faulkner Gallery West, S.B. Central Library
Book Signing: Wendy Whitman
Saturday, July 29, 2 p.m., Tecolote Book Shop
LOCAL BOOK SPOTLIGHT
We at the Independent get many books sent to us by local authors, sometimes too many! It’s practically impossible for us to read and review them all, but just because we are busy bees does not mean that they aren’t worth the attention. In an attempt to not completely drop the ball, we have compiled a list of books here that have a local spin. They are all either written by a local author, feature someone in our community, or have another tie to Santa Barbara. I urge you to look through this list. Perhaps you will find your new favorite read!
The following are the most recent titles that have been sent to us. Click here for a more comprehensive list.
Slowly by Madison Brie Snider (Chaucer’s and Tecolote Books)
Colors of Santa Barbara, a Bilingual Coloring Book by Carlos Lomeli
Jemma and the Mermaid’s Call by Laura VonDracek
Montecito Style by Firooz Zahedi and Lorie Dewhirst Porter
Escaping Nazi Germany: A Jewish Family’s Story by RB Dickinson
If you are a local author and would like us to feature your book in this section, please email allbooked@independent.com with the subject line “Local Author Spotlight.”
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