Essays & Poetry
How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart
By: Jarvis Jay Masters / Narrated By: Dion Graham
Length: 4 hrs
In a Bad Place? There’s ALWAYS Jarvis Jay Masters
By: Alicia Elliott / Narrated By: Kyla Garcia
Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
Kyla Garcia turns mostly-crotchety essays into chipper and jaunty musings… Whatthe?!?
Reflections on life, death and writing
By: Bryce Courtenay / Narrated By: Humphrey Bower
Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
Lovely snippets of Courtenay’s life journey… but juuuust snippets
Nature and Spirit
By: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson / Narrated By: Russ Barnett
Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
All seems so timely; I’m kinda distressed but am also a weeee bit hopeful…?
By: Sarah Vowell / Narrated By: Sarah Vowell, Conan O'Brien, Seth Green, Stephen Colbert
Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
No finer essayist on All Things American—The Good, The Bad, The Ugly… The Hilarious…!
Written and Narrated By: Melissa Faliveno
Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
How to Make BDSM Dry: Write essays about it from such a detached perspective… But, hey: That’s my only complaint about this thoughtful series of essays.
By: Ernie Pyle / Narrated By: Paul Boehmer
Length: 21 hrs and 24 mins
As a reviewer of audiobooks? Do NOT listen to this—READ it instead, oh doooo read it!
My Year of Domestic Mayhem
Written and Narrated By: Sandra Tsing Loh
Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
Started off haaaating it, full-expected to continue haaaating it, but danged if I didn’t wind up laughing so hard I cried, like, SEVERAL times!
Memory, My Mother, and Me
By: Cathie Borrie / Narrated By: Jill Tucker, Cathie Borrie
Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
Sometimes lovely, sometimes heartbreaking—Bits and pieces strung together; it’s Life in all its desperate and gorgeous glory…
Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True
Written and Narrated By: Gabrielle Union
Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
Would I love to have a glass of wine with Union? Yesss! Would I listen to more of her essays? Nooooo!
Series: The Radical King
By: Martin Luther King Jr. / Editor: Cornel West / Narrated By: LeVar Burton, Gabourey Sidibe, Cornel West, Mike Colter, Danny Glover, Wanda Sykes, Leslie Odom Jr., Michael K. Williams
Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
More notable for Cornel West’s Commentary—soooo, I think, while this is good, I’m looking for MLK Jr’s Autobiography narrated by LeVar Burton to be better
By: Richard Wagamese / Narrated By: Christian Baskous
Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
Such a warm and healing book!
Series: Seasons Quartet, Book 1
By: Karl Ove Knausgård / Narrated By: Edoardo Ballerini
Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
Expert narration (Naturally!) and some lyrical writing but… no really: Is he being serious?!?
Written and Narrated By: Jacqueline Woodson
Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
Beautiful sense of time, of place, of being scared, of being proud