Celebrity Memoirs & New Novels

Read by: Kenneth Branagh
Length: 9 hrs, 5 mins
Speed I listened: 2.2x

A bonus of this audiobook is that, at the end of it, the 87-year-old double-Oscar winner takes over narrating duties from Kenneth Branagh and reads a few Shakespeare soliloquies and poems, like T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Even if you don’t like that sort of thing, it’s amazing. Some of my other favorite takeaways from this memoir are: the title, which I just love; Hopkins’s unexpected use of the word “razzmatazz” and his stories about James Woods and Oliver Stone badmouthing Paul Sorvino as “that fatso” (and even worse) on the set of Nixon; and Hopkins’s admission that he’s probably on the autism spectrum but prefers the term “cold fish.” In the rest of the book, Branagh is an amazing narrator, mostly because there are a lot of times you think Hopkins himself is reading. It’s surreal.

Read by: the author
Length: 13 hrs, 1 min
Speed I listened: 2.7x

I don’t know how the former MTV honcho ends up on so many nude beaches, but there are more mentions of clothing-optional sand dunes in this memoir than in any book I’ve read or listened to in recent memory. That makes this memoir sound spicier than it is. Mostly, Freston just references the conversations he has on said nude beaches — not much else. Though I loved the inspiring words at the end of Unplugged, I’ll admit it. I’m here for the entertainment gossip about Vice founder Shane Smith, not Freston’s recollections of his trips on psychedelics or to Afghanistan. When it comes to Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, who acquired MTV in the ’80s, Freston really goes for the jugular. That’s my kind of audiobook nude beach, anyway.

Read by: the author
Length: 8 hrs, 42 mins
Speed I listened: 2x

Patti Smith makes so many highfalutin references to poets and artists and other intellectual pursuits in her books that, half the time, I have no idea what she’s talking about. This memoir, which covers her childhood in South Jersey as well as some later adventures with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the playwright Sam Shepard, is no exception. That’s why I listen to her books instead of reading them. There’s also something so deliberate and weird about Smith’s speaking voice that relaxes me. Nothing beats her breaking into song in the audio of Just Kids, which is still the pinnacle of her oeuvre, but in Bread of Angels, I love how she makes the first E silent in “atelier” and turns the O sounds into “eh” at the end of the words “mosquito” and “pillow.”

Read by: Daphne Rubin-Vega
Length: 5 hrs, 16 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

This novel, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, comes in the form of a letter from a mother to her daughter — an attempt to explain why she abandoned her many years prior. What makes this audiobook so listenable is the narration by Rubin-Vega, the original Mimi in Rent on Broadway. Her voice is sultry, and I listened to this in one white-hot shot because of her.

Read by: the author
Length: 3 hrs, 43 mins
Speed I listened: 2.2x

Cynthia Erivo is monumentally talented and impressive. I also think that, like Elphaba in Wicked, she can exude a holier-than-thou confidence that perhaps her monumental talent allows. I alternated between those feelings listening to this self-help book slash memoir. I appreciate its simplicity. Tiny pieces of fairly obvious advice — don’t listen to the haters, for instance; don’t take no for an answer — are mixed with anecdotes about Erivo’s rise to near-EGOT territory. Erivo is superhuman, so a lot of the advice she gives is easier said than done. But her speaking voice is as mellifluous as her singing voice, and there are moments of genuine realness, i.e., when she alludes to her complicated relationships with her sister, her mother, and her father.
But maybe it’s just me. The subtitle to Simply More is “A book for anyone who’s been told they’re too much.” Guess what I’ve been told? Also, I appreciate that Erivo thanks her therapist in her acknowledgements.

Read by: Kevin R. Free
Length: 8 hrs, 7 mins
Speed I listened: 2.5x

Are you really alone if you’re listening to an audiobook? I’ve been wondering that since I finished listening to this treatise on how we could all spend a little extra time by ourselves. Clearly if I’ve listened to this many audiobooks this month I spend a lot of time alone, so it’s nice to have a reminder — if, at over eight hours, an overlong one — that not only is it okay but it can actually be good for you.

Read by: the author
Length: 5 hrs, 53 mins
Speed I listened: 2.7x

The tabloid headlines may get exhausting, but I feel a lot of empathy for Britney Spears and her predicament. I hadn’t given much thought to her ex K-Fed, the father of her two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James. I certainly never considered him impressive. Whether the information in his book is true or not — there are three sides to every story — listening to this tell-all certainly made me see the onetime backup dancer in a totally new way. Maybe this will be a controversial opinion, but, reader, I feel for him, and I think he comes off well here. He admits to plenty of mistakes — partying, for instance, in a lurid way that he shouldn’t have been. But in his telling, at least, he seems like a decent, hardworking dad (of, okay, six kids with three different moms) who found himself in an insane situation (i.e., falling for one of the world’s biggest pop stars). Then, after that life exploded, he tried to find a daily existence where his children could live as normal a life as possible.

Read by: the author
Length: 3 hrs, 30 mins
Speed I listened: 2.3x

This memoir has a very simple purview: Fox recalls making Back to the Future, which, if you can believe it, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. God, I feel so old. The movie was Fox’s first real big-screen break. He took over the role of Marty McFly after Eric Stoltz, who had already shot a month or so as the character, was fired. Not only that, but Fox was simultaneously filming the sitcom Growing Pains, too. The recollections of that crazy time make for an adorable book, full of sharp observations from Fox and some of the movie’s big players, who often appear in recorded interviews. Future Boy is more than just a trip down memory lane; it’s a book about perseverance and hard work. The memories, though, are very much worth it. Lea Thompson, for instance, gave the sitcom actor a hard time when they first started working together because she felt he stole the role from Stoltz. Meanwhile, Fox had trouble driving the DeLorean. “Let’s face it,” Fox says. “It was a shit car.”

Read by: Michael Beck
Length: 14 hrs, 23 mins
Speed I listened: 2x

Since I started writing this column, I’ve come to really appreciate it when Grisham publishes a new novel, and I liked his latest a lot. It’s about a small-town, rural Virginian lawyer named Simon Latch who helps an eccentric older woman, Eleanor Barnett, rewrite her will. She insists she’s worth millions from her late husband’s Coca-Cola and Walmart stock. When she turns up dead, he’s accused of murdering her. Simon and Eleanor are just great characters in what is being billed as Grisham’s “first-ever whodunit,” and having regular Grisham narrator Michael Beck read the mystery makes this production somehow suspenseful and cozy at the same time.

Read by: the author
Length: 10 hrs, 40 mins
Speed I listened: 3.2x

Curry, perhaps best known as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror and Wadsworth the butler from Clue, suffered a stroke in 2012. He’s done quite a bit of voice-over work since, but the narration of his memoir is still slow, muted, and shaky. If you can get beyond that, there’s so much fascinating stuff, like his almost Dickensian relationship with his mother. Or how his experience playing Long John Silver in 1996’s Muppet Treasure Island was so positive he was “sad to go back to work with humans again.” Curry is extremely observant — about his circuitous career, his alcoholism, Bianca Jagger’s proclivity for carrying many different types of suntan lotion — that it’s hard not to enjoy this peripatetic ride.

Read by: the author
Length: 6 hrs, 14 mins
Speed I listened: 2.1x

Mike Albo’s The Underminer (which he wrote with Virginia Heffernan) is one of my favorite books of the past two decades. It’s about those frenemies who always remind us, intentionally or not, of what losers we think we are. The Underminer is not meant as self-help, but it’s helped me through too many situations to count, with people in my life who just make me feel bad about myself. Hologram Boyfriends is an audio original that’s mostly about being a hopeless romantic in a gay dating world focused entirely on hookups. (Hello, me.) Some of this audiobook is performed live; some isn’t. The transitions between the two are a bit shaky, and so are the sound effects. But I felt super-seen listening to his essays here. I also laughed a lot. As an interesting companion piece, I’d suggest Jesse James Rose’s grittier memoir. Sorry I Keep Crying During Sex, though I found it more powerful as a read than as a listen.

Read by: Emily Woo Zeller
Length: 6 hrs, 27 mins
Speed I listened: 1.9x

If there was any self-help book title that went straight to my emotional core, it’s this one. I can’t say I’m so much less miserable since I listened to it, but I think I’m a little bit less miserable. And that’s no small victory. I don’t think Zeller is the most genial self-help narrator in the world, but I thank her profusely for reminding me to try to treat myself as a friend. To talk nicer to myself and to speak to myself with more compassion.

Read by: Ferdelle Capistrano 
Length: 6 hrs, 10 mins
Speed I listened: 2.6x

Am I an extroverted introvert or an introverted extrovert? The jury’s out. But I do find it super-hard to promote myself and my work, including this column. (When Rami Malek told me he enjoyed reading it, I told him to stop fucking with me.) I hoped Personal Branding for Introverts by a writer who, I guess, became famous by posting videos on LinkedIn, would be a panacea toward fixing my problems. It wasn’t, though it helped remind me that I still need to work on defining the way I want to be seen by the world. It’s a bit hard to relate when Chan’s examples of introverts who’ve done well with just that include Taylor Swift, Keanu Reeves, and Rihanna, but maybe that’s my problem: I just need to be more like Taylor Swift, Keanu Reeves, and Rihanna.

Read by: the author
Length: 8 hrs, 17 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x.

These essays from the Girls star and daughter of playwright David Mamet are disarmingly revealing. Like Zosia, I, too, sometimes feel like one of the most anxious people in the world, so I related to her struggles with her monkey mind. But it’s also impressive that she goes there — to her troubles as an outcast in school; to the deep insecurity of her parents (mom is actress Lindsay Crouse); to pretty bleak stories about her encounters with male Hollywood agents and, one assumes, Matt Weiner. I don’t know if this book makes Zosia Mamet funny, but it’s a terrific listen.

Read by: the author
Length: 10 hrs, 10 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

This is an audiobook you can really sink your teeth into. I sped through it. I couldn’t turn it off. There’s Gilbert’s lucid writing and wrenching self-analysis, and then there’s her acute vocal narration. It’s the story of her longtime relationship with Rayya, a former-drug-addict hairstylist, and their almost vampiric symbiosis. (An excerpt appeared in New York Magazine.) At first I was super into the interstitial music between chapters. Then it became a bit repetitive and cloying — but at the end of the book, Gilbert announces that the music is one of Rayya’s original compositions which made it all worthwhile.

Read by: the author
Length: 9 hrs, 38 mins
Speed I listened: 2.3x

It can be a bit annoying how much the pop singer Debbie Gibson laughs while reading the audiobook version of her new memoir. Her jokes and anecdotes aren’t that funny. But her giggle regularly serves as a reminder of all the kid stars who didn’t mature into people bemused by their adult lives. That, to me, is a huge score for Debbie Gibson and made me want to keep listening to her journey — from very early stardom to The Apprentice, to touring with Tiffany, to driving around in her Kia with friends to find an outfit for some pre-Grammy parties. She also does an excellent Eartha Kitt, who starred opposite Gibson in a national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella.

Read by: a full cast
Length: 4 hrs, 34 mins
Speed I listened: 1.4x

I still haven’t found an Audible Original in which I feel completely immersed. Like all the other Originals I’ve tried, this version of Pride and Prejudice has awkward sound effects, slightly uncomfortable breathing and forced laughter, all in the background. What kept me listening here, though, was the promise of a pretty impressive cast that includes total babe Marisa Abela (Industry) as Elizabeth Bennett, and total babe Harris Dickinson (Babygirl) as Mr. Darcy. Even then, it’s still a mixed bag, just as all these productions seem to be; Abela is amazing, Dickinson barely blips on the radar. Otherwise, the stand-outs here are a screeching Marianne Jean Baptiste as Mrs. Bennett; Glenn Close in a wish-it-was-longer cameo; and Jessie Buckley, who, these days, seems to be great in everything.

Read by: the author
Length: 6 hrs, 57 mins
Speed I listened: 2x

I have a major crush on Mark Ronson and his slightly weird transatlantic accent now that I’ve finished the audiobook version of his memoir, subtitled “How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City.” He had me at his lovely pronunciation of chuppah in a passage about his mother’s wedding to Foreigner’s Mick Jones in 1985. When Ronson reads an excerpt from Andy Warhol’s diaries, his vocal take on the infamous artist is to die for — as in, so good I swooned. While the book is generally a bit light on gossip, it’s dynamic on atmosphere. His description of the innumerable jackets friends would leave under his booth instead of at the coat check in his early days of working had me hollering.

Read by: the author
Length: 8 hrs, 58 mins
Speed I listened: 1.6x

I expected this memoir to be much funnier and raunchier than Debbie Gibson’s, but it’s quite academic and sobering (excuse the pun). I respect that. Sheen seems to take the act of writing seriously. I think he’s shooting for something more like Open by Andre Agassi than a purely titillating tell-all, despite the stories of prostitutes and rehab. Though told in a literary tone, I’m not entirely sure Sheen really transcends the celebrity-autobiography genre. I still prefer Rob Lowe’s Stories I Only Tell My Friends. Still, Sheen’s Hollywood stories about working on Wall Street, for instance, kept me going. I also loved some words he uses, like “dabloonery,” for instance, and when he describes a time in his life as one of his “top three moments of awkward mcfuckness.” (Also worth noting? Sheen does an awesome impression of Nicolas Cage.)

Read by: the author
Length: 2 hrs, 11 mins
Speed I listened: 1.6

I barely have a clue what Matthew McConaughey is talking about in most of this book, which consists of his writings over the past 40 years. But that’s what made it such a joy. (After listening, I realized it might be better to listen along with a copy of the text.) It’s unhinged in both a “Who in the hell does Matthew McConaughey think he is?” way as well as in a “Maybe this hot Texan actor really has the secret to life” way. I alternated between the two but mostly relished these bizarre poems, such as one called “Deuces.” McConaughey describes being stuck in the car while having to do a number 2. He finds a “roadside loo” and, it so happens, the janitor has just cleaned it. That “gave me faith/and relieved my doubt./See, I consider a porta-potty/an absolute win/long as the first butt in the mornin’s mine/on the porce-lin.” I mean, is this guy for real?

Read by: the author
Length: 1 hour, 17 mins
Speed I listened: 1.5x

This is mostly worth a listen as a companion piece to McConaughey’s new book. I appreciated that Duchovny seemed to put some actual thought into what a poem is, not that I could always follow what the Californication actor was trying to say. It turns out, it’s kind of just nice to have a mellow celebrity reading poems in your ear.

Read by: Charly Clive
Length: 7 hrs, 53 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

It’s August: You deserve a treat, like a big cone of soft-serve ice cream kind of book. This is a confident and brazen memoir about the sexual escapades of an up-and-coming female chef in the UK. Her pen name is annoying, but her book is a balls-out romp. (It’s read by a comedian too.)

Read by: Chanté McCormick
Length: 13 hrs, 48 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.4x

There were some things I needed to remember about Gwyneth Paltrow, so I’m grateful for this new biography. For instance: that she was just 26 when she won her Oscar for Shakespeare in Love in that pink Ralph Lauren dress. That “Goop” is her initials with two “o”s in the middle. That she enjoyed being “teabagged” by Ben Affleck. I could have easily listened to 27 more hours of this biography, even if the narrator pronounces the l in Ralph Fiennes.

Read by: Roger L. Jackson
Length: 9 hrs, 43 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

I honestly can’t believe I listened to this whole book, which documents the making of the Scream movie franchise over the last three decades. When it comes to chronicles of Hollywood, the book is pretty thin and sycophantic. But remember: I could listen to over an entire day’s worth of content about Gwyneth Paltrow, so you’re not dealing with a full deck when it comes to me. A major selling point of the audio version of this book is that it’s read by Roger L. Jackson, the actor who plays the voice of Ghostface in all the Scream films. Every time he read a chapter title in that psychotic intonation, I melted.

Read by: the author
Length: 7 hrs, 2 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

One reason I connect with (and need) this new (and excellent) self-help book is that I’m already worried Gwyneth Paltrow is mad at me for listening to her unauthorized biography and then writing about it. Gwyneth and I don’t know each other, though we once spoke on the phone. Clearly, I should listen to Meg Josephson’s book — about “how to stop focusing on what others think and start living for you” — at least once or twice more. As a guide to the new me (or you), Josephson is very genial and wise. It blew my mind when she said that I’m not responsible for the version of me that exists in other people’s heads.

Read by: Isabelle Farah
Length: 8 hrs, 10 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

The milieu of this novel is niche; the gender politics are universal. It’s the tale of two critics (Alex and Haley) covering the Edinburgh Fringe. Alex does something a bit nasty. He beds an actress without telling her that he’s given her a one-star review in the next day’s paper. When the actress essentially gets Alex canceled, Haley needs to pick up the pieces. Farah narrates with great authority and humor, but that may be a given. She’s a British Lebanese comedian who’s brought three shows to the Fringe herself. Worth a try even if you’re not a theater nerd like I am.

Read by: January LaVoy
Length: 9 hrs, 48 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

On an ordinary day, Bryden, a wife and mother working at home, just disappears from her “luxury” condominium in Albany. Her cell phone’s still there. Her car is still in the garage. Did the creepy guy with the shady past living on another floor kidnap her? Is the hot Tesla driver with whom Bryden got into a fender bender involved? This is a spoiler, but Bryden is found dead, stuffed in a suitcase, in her condo’s storage room. What does it say about me that this plot twist didn’t faze me? I don’t want to know. Still, this is a totally enjoyable, propulsive summer book. As a listen, it has enough misdirects and, yes, discussions of stuffing people in suitcases, to be a kind of a kick. Though one of the greater mysteries remains: What kind of amenities do luxury condos have in Albany?

Read by: Marisa Calin
Length: 5 hrs, 50 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

In the early 1970s, Maurice and Marilyn decide to sail away. Like escape their lives for real. A year into their journey, a whale knocks a hole in their boat. They’re at sea, on a rubber raft, for months, trying to survive. This nonfiction account is compelling, romantic, and, at just under six hours, a particularly good length for an audiobook. A caveat: I may have enjoyed it more because I listened to it while I was on a cruise in Iceland. I told everyone I knew on the ship to read or listen to it, too.

Read by: Imogen Church
Length: 15 hrs, 11 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.4x

You may remember the British travel writer Lo Blacklock from her first adventure on a luxury cruise ship in 2016’s The Woman in Cabin 10. In that installment, she witnessed a passenger being thrown overboard. In this follow-up, Lo has written a best-selling book about that crazy nightmare. Now she lives in New York. She’s married to a Times reporter, has a kid, and feels very much out of the travel journalism loop. Her hubby convinces her to attend the press opening of a hotel owned by a reclusive Swiss billionaire. If you can believe it, bad things start to happen when she gets there. I couldn’t necessarily follow all the callbacks to Cabin 10, but I still enjoyed the ride. Church is a great narrator when she’s tracking Lo’s misadventures or delving into a Swiss French accent, but she reads Lo’s husband as if he’s one of the Sopranos, and that’s a weird choice.

Read by: Jacques Roy
Length: 11 hrs, 46 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

There’s not much new I learned from this history of Condé Nast. But I may be an outlier, having worked there (at W and The New Yorker) for years. I’ll also have you know I scored 32 out of 32 on that recent “Could You Have Landed a Job at Vogue in the ’90s” quiz in the New York Times. Roy’s narration feels a bit pedestrian for what is meant to be a glamorous insider account, but I don’t know if I’ll ever turn down a book that includes a bowlful of anecdotes about Graydon Carter, Tina Brown, and Si Newhouse. This is my version of a comfort listen.

Read by: Fiona Button
Length: 11 hrs, 24 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

I don’t love a plot that hinges on a person keeping a secret for an extremely long time. That if he would just tell it, he wouldn’t cause so much emotional distress for himself and everyone else. (Think Monster’s Ball, Dear Evan Hansen.) So it’s a tribute to Rothschild and Button, her narrator, that I found this novel compelling and tender even if that secret-keeping struck me as far-fetched. The book starts with Tom losing his wife, Honor, and their daughter in a terrible, grisly incident. As narrated by Honor, we learn how Tom goes on. Add this to your stable of sweet-and-tart British novels like One Day by David Nicholls or Good Material by Dolly Alderton.

Read by: Edoardo Ballerini
Length: 8 hrs, 20 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.9x

Edoardo Ballerini is certainly one of the best-known audiobook readers, but his narration of this novel was the first time I really understood the hype. Walter is a frequent Ballerini collaborator; they created an audiobook original together. Here, Ballerini is a stand-in for Rhys Kinnick, an off-the-grid journalist who has to reclaim his grandchildren. Kinnick is one of those great curmudgeonly creations you just want to spend time with, and Ballerini brings him to humorous, relatable life.

Read by: the author
Length: 5 hrs, 54 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

Somehow — probably better not to ask why — Luella van Horn, the nom de plume of kooky Staten Island divorcée Marie Jones, gets hired to investigate a missing cast member of a reality show. In general, this is a pretty off-center “cozy mystery,” but it made me laugh a lot—as did Firestone’s dry observations about life, love, and reality television and her heightened, blousy narration. It surely helps that, as a comedian, Firestone knows how to deliver funny.

Read by: the author
Length: 7 hrs, 57 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.5x

I barely knew who Tommy Dorfman was before I listened to this memoir. Dorfman is perhaps best known for the Netflix teen drama Thirteen Reasons Why, though she recently starred with Rachel Zegler in a revival of Romeo and Juliet on Broadway. I recognized Dorfman most from a 2021 paparazzi shot holding hands with the actor Lucas Hedges. Dorfman really takes Hedges to task here about his behavior during their time together, so I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about the book. It’s all pretty self-indulgent but extremely hard to stop listening to. And the indie-actor-gossip value is A-plus.

Read by: Gina Gershon
Length: 10 hrs, 29 mins
Speed I listened: 2.2x

Frey modeled this soapy novel, set among the wealthy and bored residents of a Connecticut suburb, after the work of Jackie Collins. Just like most things that Frey writes, this ensemble drama consistently teeters between wry and perceptive and ridiculously bloated. Funnily enough, what kept me listening was Gershon who, as narrator, brings a groovy, louche voice to the proceedings, even if her pronunciation of French words feels a bit forced.

Read by: Kristen DiMercurio and Julia Whelan
Length: 9 hrs, 52 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

This astronaut drama doesn’t quite have the fun factor of previous Jenkins Reid novels, but I still found it more enjoyable to listen to than when I started actually reading it a few months ago. The author of the far superior The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Carrie Soto Is Back takes outer space exploration and the stars a little too seriously, at least for my summer-reading speed. But lesser Jenkins Reid is still a treat, and the drama between the main character, Joan, a successful scientist, and her selfish sister Barbara is juicier than anything that takes place in a NASA shuttle over the course of the book.

Read by: the author
Length: 12 hrs, 40 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.4x

Barry Diller has always terrified me, but this memoir makes him seem a little less intimidating. He’s just a guy — he describes himself at 42 years old as “something of an innocent” and later he’s worried about being a “mogul manqué” and “discarded like yesterday’s fish” — who’s never been able to express his inner life thanks to the fear of his homosexuality coming to public light and the emotional inertia of his upbringing. (His parents, he says, “never asked me a personal question” in all his life.) Me being me, I find the little things in this audiobook weirdly mesmerizing. For instance: his awkward pronunciation of “diaspora” and French expressions like “coup de foudre.” Wife Diane von Furstenberg awkwardly pipes in to re-create a few romantic letters she sent Diller over the years of their unusual courtship. The muted vitriol he vocalizes when describing Arnold Schwarzenegger as a “dumbfuck oaf” or addressing Rupert Murdoch (who ruined one of Diller’s big surprise birthday parties) as “you fucking asshole.” Call me crazy, but of everything here, in a section where Diller describes his lack of interest in Pixar, I perhaps found this detail most bemusing: “I didn’t get any of the charm of Toy Story.” Who doesn’t like Toy Story?

Read by: Will Damron and Christine Lakin
Length: 8 hrs, 50 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

Somehow this thriller is both preposterous and genius. When Blake loses his big marketing job, he worries about making the payments on the Upper West Side townhouse (!) where he lives with his fiancé Krista. Krista suggests they bring in a tenant, and they find Whitney, who seems normal until … Blake starts having allergic reactions to his clothing, he finds hair in his leftover Chinese food, and his life is generally ruined. The hair in the food thing is so gross (dumb) I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before ( brilliant). There’s an equally nightmarish moment involving maggots in a bed that just made me think, Touché Freida McFadden, whomever you are. I hope I haven’t ruined The Tenant for you, because I found listening to it a total hoot.

Read by: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
Length: 11 hrs, 15 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

On rare occasions, I enjoy a book so much that, while listening to it, I develop an intellectual crush on the author. Then I gently stalk him on Instagram to try and deduce if he’s single. I’ll admit I did this with Adam Roberts. That’s because I fell in love with this very funny novel about Isabella, a boring food writer who tries to ghostwrite a cookbook slash memoir for a washed-up Mischa Barton–like star who barely ever eats but pretends to love to cook. It’s completely charming with on point references about celebrities and the food world. And it’s delightfully read by Hutchinson-Shaw. The author, however, lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend. Sigh.

Read by: Julianne Moore
Length: 6 hrs, 33 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.5x

I used to idolize the relationship between Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. I loved both of their work — in particular the novels — and I imagined their partnership as the height of intellectual romance. That’s at least partly why I found this book (which came out in late April) fascinating. It comprises letters Joan wrote to John outlining in exacting detail sessions Didion had with a therapist to discuss their daughter Quintana’s alcoholism. It’s an intimate, telling window into all their lives. There’s an added layer of celebrity with Julianne Moore’s narration.

Read by: Daniel Henning
Length: 12 hrs, 42 mins
Speed I listened: 1.9x

In this clever ’80s-set supernatural romantic comedy, the disarmingly handsome underdog Joe moves to the Pines in Fire Island for the summer to let loose after losing his boyfriend to AIDS. Joe shacks up (platonically) with Howie and Lenny, local house cleaners who also happen to be part of a paranormal coven. Henning is a great guide to this loopy scene, even if his acting of the ancillary characters (in particular Howie and Lenny) can get a bit strident.This is such an enjoyable romp that his more annoying voices are easy to forgive.

Read by: Peter Ganim and Helen Laser
Length: 11 hrs, 42 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

Jane lives in a remote cabin with her dad in Montana with few genuine connections to either technological or social advancements in the outside world. As she grows up, she starts to question this arrangement and, in the process, helps her father commit a strange crime. In the second part of the book, she unravels many of the lies he told her and needs to reconcile if he was justified in doing so. This is more of an introspective thriller than a twisty one, but its puzzles have really stayed with me. It’s a particularly good listen because the bulk of the story is told from Jane’s naive perspective.

Read by: Dakota Fanning
Length: 15 hrs., 32 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

Yes, this novel owes a lot to Daisy Jones & the Six, but I still loved it. It’s set in two time periods. In the early aughts, Zoe (beautiful, ambitious) and her sister, Cassie (think a closed-off Mama Cass), find mainstream popularity as a kind of Tegan and Sara rock band. Twenty years after they split, Zoe’s daughter, Cherry, runs away to enter an American Idol competition. She tries to reconnect with her estranged Aunt Cassie, who now lives off the grid in Alaska. Dakota Fanning’s narration never distracts from the big, warm hug this novel gave me every time I returned to it and pressed play.

Read by: Daniel Weyman
Length: 9 hrs., 25 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

This is another novel I just loved this month, and it couldn’t be any more different from Jennifer Weiner’s. Like Szalay’s other very good fiction, this one is about men dealing with the strange disappointments of life. Flesh tracks the ups and downs of István, from the accident he causes as a teenager in Hungary to his life on the sidelines as a limo driver for rich businessmen in London. István doesn’t say much, but he’s such a compelling figure. When he does speak, often just responding “Okay,” the actor Daniel Weyman (Gandalf on Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power) captures him perfectly.

Read by: the author
Length: 4 hrs., 16 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.7x

I didn’t know I cared about birds or that I cared about Lili Taylor (Mystic Pizza, Say Anything) until I listened to this memoir about the actress discovering community in the world of bird watching. Taylor’s voice and personality is so quirky and recognizably off-center that I just so enjoyed spending a few hours in her presence. Even if I must admit I still don’t really care about birds. Sorry, Lili. I know you tried.

Read by: Kristen Sieh
Length: 9 hrs., 23 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

Like me, you probably initially hear the conceit of this novel and think, Pass. It’s about Linda, a middling worker in San Francisco, who gets her ya-yas from flying on planes. As in she’s sexually attracted to jumbo jets, notably one she has been trying to reconnect with since she was a kid. She’d like to marry it. The plane. Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, it’s a metaphor for the confusions of sexuality. And yes, partially thanks to Sieh’s straightforward and honest reading, I also thought this book was touching and a total and complete hoot.

Read by: the author
Length: 6 hrs., 35 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

Jeremy Renner, the action star, house-flipper, and self-proclaimed “pain in the ass to many,” says he did not want to write this memoir, which details his near-fatal accident in January 2023 with a 14,000-pound snowplow. I’m not sure I wanted to listen to it either, but I’m very glad I did. His description of his recovery is life affirming and just pretty incredible. His narration is particularly harrowing. There are occasional cuts to 911 calls on the day of the incident, and you can even hear Renner fighting to stay alive in the background. I’m of the mind that not every celebrity needs a memoir, but this one’s worth it.

Read by: the author
Length: 5 hrs., 11 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.6x

Every blue moon or so, a self-help-ish book comes along that truly seems like it can help our complicated, messy lives. This is one of them. I can’t urge you enough to listen to Time Anxiety. Guillebeau, a seemingly very affable fellow with quite a bit of common sense, explains that we’re all very focused on “managing time,” but when it comes to brass tacks, time really can’t be managed. His advice is practical and doable. Things like: Stop evaluating your productivity based on a single day. Instead, look at a whole month. Learn to leave things unfinished (lame books, boring audiobooks, uninteresting Netflix series). Don’t waste hours and hours looking for the best flight options, “just book the fucking ticket.” Write a “to dread” list instead of a “to do” list, and get the things done on it quickly and with as little pain as possible. One thing I’d like to do with my time this year is make Guillebeau my friend, and I feel like I’m already on the path forward. At the end of the audiobook he says, “Thank you. You’re awesome. I’m so glad we spent this time together.” Me too!

Read by: the author
Length: 13 hrs, 16 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

This is a completely fascinating memoir by a former Facebook employee (in international relations and public policy) about her journey at the company. Wynn-Williams leaves no asshole behind, not Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg, which makes the book, titled after a description of Tom and Daisy in The Great Gatsby, compelling and, well, perfectly relatable. The author’s charming New Zealand accent heightens the listenability, even when she takes a few too many diversions or gets on her soapbox.

Read by: Louise Brealey
Length: 6 hrs, 26 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

Anyone who knows me can attest that I’m not an animal guy. At all. But from the moment it started, I was both rapt and moved by this memoir of an overworked Londoner who saves and raises a leveret at her country home during the pandemic. More than most self-help books I’ve listened to recently, this carefully observed book made me very conscious of taking time to breathe and appreciate the world around me. Even if it definitely did not convince me to get a bunny as a pet.

Read by: a multicast
Length: 9 hrs, 35 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

Not that I’m one to forget its existence, but listening to books often reminds me of my misanthropic side. A novel like this hits that sweet spot. Dominic Salt, a widower, and his three kids are the last inhabitants on Shearwater, an island near Antarctica that was once teeming with researchers. And then, suddenly, a woman washes ashore, and she’s looking for her husband. It’s all very romantic, which clashes with my bitter distrust of people, but, I guess, one can’t exist without the other. Each character has his or her own narrator, which keeps this briskly moving along.

Read by: Georgina Sadler
Length: 11 hrs, 15 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

In this comic thriller, Florence Grimes, a former girl-bander who lives in Notting Hill, thinks her 10-year-old son, Dylan, might have something to do with the disappearance of his classmate, Alfie. I listened to this book while I was in London recently, which may have amplified my enjoyment. Even if the last act is a bit muddy, I enjoyed Grimes’s hyperactive narration, as performed by Sadler.

Read by: the author
Length: 8 hrs, 37 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

I’m dating myself, but I saw Say Anything (1989) in the movie theater with my mom. Obviously the actress Ione Skye was a big deal then as John Cusack’s love interest, but I can’t say I’ve given her a ton of thought since. That said, I found this memoir surprisingly sexy and up-front. Especially fascinating are Skye’s descriptions of her romantic dalliances, including with the actor Keanu Reeves (attempted, at least); Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz (married him); singer Anthony Kiedis (dated), and interior designer David Netto (had a kid).

Read by: Jenna Coleman
Length: 12 hrs, 38 mins
Speed I listened: 2x

I usually savor a new Jojo Moyes novel in print. This time, I gave her latest a listen, and I loved the experience just as much. In this one, a divorced mom finds herself with a complicated full house when her estranged (and broke) father comes back to live with her, her stepfather, and her daughters. Charming, funny, warm, unexpected — like all of the Jojo Moyes canon, it’s a delight.

Read by: the author
Length: 4 hrs, 56 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

Everything seemed fine, and then suddenly, on Memorial Day 2019, the writer Geraldine Brooks got a call that her 60-year-old husband, the journalist Tony Horwitz, had dropped dead. This memoir alternates between the history of their marriage and the grief she attempts to work through while on a remote Australian island. Part of what’s thrilling about the audio production is how Brooks’s lyrical accent elevates her lovely and spare prose.

Read by: J. Smith-Cameron
Length: 4 hrs, 23 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.8x

I’ve never been an Anne Tyler reader, but the brisk length of her latest novel made a listen particularly appealing. An added bonus: The book is narrated by actress J. Smith-Cameron from Succession. She’s the awkward mother of a bride who doesn’t really think her daughter should get married to the groom. The weight of this one really sneaks up on you. Or, at least, it snuck up on me.

Read by: Marin Ireland
Length: 8 hrs
Speed I listened: 2x

I’m not a huge fan of the actress Marin Ireland as a narrator. But I found that her voice slipped away whenever the narrative of this family — a Philip Roth-like writer, his artist wife, and their gallerist son — perked up, and that’s quite often. It takes a minute to get used to the form the book takes, as it’s told from several different perspectives. But otherwise, this is a moving and compelling Manhattan story.

Read by: Wil Wheaton
Length: 11 hrs, 41 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

I’m usually not that keen on a memoir that’s not read by the author, but I’m glad I gave Bill Gates’s new book a pass. (It’s read by the actor Wil Wheaton, who, thanks to narrating Ready Player One and The Martian, has become almost synonymous with heady and slightly dorky audiobooks.) I found Gates’s self-analysis here quite relatable and his journey from precocious kid to major player in the tech world very compelling. My favorite detail is that his favorite drink to order while in college was a Shirley Temple.

Read by: Grover Gardner
Length: 20 hrs, 11 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

I normally bristle at a 20-hour audiobook, but I found this second sequel to Turow’s 1987 thriller Presumed Innocent (first a Harrison Ford movie, which I have seen; more recently, a Jake Gyllenhaal Apple series I haven’t) completely gripping. Early on, I thought Grover Gardner’s voice was a bit fuddy-duddy, but I got used to it. In this installment, our protagonist Rusty chooses to defend his stepson, who is accused of murder. He’s now in his late 70s, and his company is addictive as ever.

Read by: the author
Length: 22 hrs, 9 mins.
Speed I listened: 2x

It’s so unlike me, but here’s another 20-plus-hour audiobook that I couldn’t turn off. Well, that’s not completely true. A few hours into the saga of Griffin — a child actor growing up in New York City in 1980 — I was frustrated that he was caught between the sexual advances of two adults, one an older female family friend, the other his wrestling coach. But the book takes off when Griffin is cast in a movie by a Woody Allen–esque director. Ross, a former child actor himself, is an engaging reader of what must be a semi-autobiographical roman à clef.

Read by: Marin Ireland and others
Length: 9 hrs, 52 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.2x

For a while, the actress Marin Ireland was reading every big audiobook, and I just got tired of listening to her voice. So it’s a testament to the author and this novel that I found it so compelling. The book, a Reese Witherspoon pick about a best-selling writer and her hidden, tumultuous past, shares some similar DNA with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (which I loved), and that’s definitely not a bad thing.

Read by: the author
Length: 5 hrs, 35 mins.
Speed I listened: 1.9x

I thought the actress/singer Lola Kirke was great in Mozart in the Jungle and Mistress America. I had a fun afternoon writing about her when I worked at The Wall Street Journal. But in the last few years, she’s dropped off the Hollywood scene. She focused more on country music and, one assumes, writing this very honest, sometimes even shocking, book of essays about growing up in New York City in a dysfunctional family of eccentrics. In fact, the most pedestrian thing about the book is the title. Otherwise, Kirke comes off wise and introspective. She even got under my skin.

Read by: the author
Length: 8 hrs, 4 mins.
Speed I listened: 2.1x

I didn’t want to like this memoir by the actor behind the voice of Olaf in Frozen and from The Book of Mormon, but almost immediately, Gad won me over. Or, Sacha Baron Cohen did, reading a short foreword in which the artist sometimes known as Borat says he’s wearing “very noisy clogs.” Gad is pretty name-droppy. Friends include Anne Hathaway, Bryce Dallas Howard, Johnny Depp, the late Chadwick Boseman, and pretty much anyone with whom he’s ever co-starred. Besides Cohen, Mel Brooks and Ron Howard pop in for seemingly unnecessary vocal cameos. But Gad is awfully charming, whether he’s detailing his tempestuous relationship with stage director James Lapine, his rise on the high-school forensics circuit, or his endearing emotions toward his growing daughters. We’d probably be friends, too. Josh — call me.