One of my favorite fall activities is listening to an audiobook while walking my dog Dale in one of our engoldening Inland Northwest parks or forests. Audiobooks are a recent obsession of mine, spurred by dog-ownership and by the pandemic, the latter of which utterly changed my reading habits. I’m particular about my audiobook apps, though. I don’t use Audible. As a longtime indie bookseller, I can’t support buying books from Amazon, but I love Libro.fm, which supports our wonderful local independent bookstores like Auntie’s and Wishing Tree. And more often than not, I’m checking books out (for free!) on the Libby app using my Spokane Public Library card. Head to the app store on your phone to download Libby at no cost to you, or check with your local library system to see what audiobook steaming service they use.
Happy QUOTES
THE MAGIC OF FALL
“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love—that makes life and nature harmonize. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.”
~ George Eliot
Tips aside, I’d love to share six excellent audiobooks with you, just in time for your own autumnal adventures. Here they are, for your enjoyment.
‘Chain-Gang All-Stars‘ by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, narrated by Shayna Small, Aaron Goodson, Michael Crouch & Lee Osorio
I just started listening to this novel on Libro.fm. I initially put it in my queue because it kept appearing on my “best of” audiobook lists. This novel reimagines the industrial prison complex as a gladiator-style murder machine, pitting one prisoner against another in physical altercations that draw a big and unethical profit. Adjei-Brenyah turns her keen, critical eye on our country’s penal system and entertainment sports franchises. This is a gripping, propulsive, futuristic read.
‘Hum‘ by Helen Phillips, narrated by Ariel Blake
I devoured this book in two days while on a recent San Juan Islands camping trip with my family. “Hum” shares the humor and incisive metaphorical qualities of Phillips’ earlier novels “The Beautiful Bureaucrat” and “The Need,” but it feels even sharper in its sympathies and warnings. The plot points here feel born of our society’s imminent future: A mother sells her countenance to a company researching facial identification; both adults and children isolate themselves at home in screen-addled pods called “wooms;” children wear devices known as “bunnies” on their wrists that perform the parental roles of protector, playmate, and confidant; and AI has become so advanced that it takes on a humanoid form in sleek robots known as Hums. Some of the best literary fiction blends with another genre, and this science fiction masterpiece is one such example.
‘Fight Night‘ by Miriam Toews, narrated by Miriam & Georgia Toews
If you were to ask me to choose my favorite audiobook of all time, “Fight Night” would be a serious contender. It’s narrated by the author with one small section narrated by the author’s sister. In “Fight Night,” a young girl, Swiv, tells the story of her terrific and strong-minded grandma, Elvira, and her fraught and pregnant mother. The voices of all three of these characters are a delight from start to finish. Toews is a fearless writer—you’ll know this if you read her opus about patriarchal violence, “Women Talking” (one of the deftest novels I’ve ever read), or her devastating book about suicide, “All My Puny Sorrows.” Within the uplifting bouquet of funny lines in “Fight Night” is vibrant pathos and a rooted understanding about all that women fight and survive. As Elvira tells Shiv, “To be alive means full body contact with the absurd. Still, we can be happy.” I laughed and cried at the dog park while listening to this book.
‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ by Gabrielle Zevin, narrated by Jennifer Kim & Julian Cihi
This is one of my favorite recent audiobook experiences, a love letter to video games and to creative collaboration. What’s most beautiful about this book is the epic friendship and on-again/off-again platonic partnership between Sam Masur and Sadie Green, two game designers, the former a Korean American with a visible disability, the latter a Jewish woman determined to thrive in a highly sexist industry. As these two mature from hospital companions to college students to successful creatives, we root for them through triumphs and tragedies alike. What an immersive, expansive novel this is. I found myself just as rapt by the video game descriptions as I was by the character’s vivid emotional landscapes.
‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison, narrated by the author
Autumn is the season for ghosts, so there’s no better time to listen to the late, great Toni Morrison read “Beloved” to you, a novel that is inarguably one of the finest ghost stories ever penned. In it, a haunted mother, Sethe, and her daughter, Denver, are living in Cincinnati during Reconstruction and believe their home’s malevolent ghost has slipped into the flesh of a young woman named Beloved. The novel tackles the devastating intimate horrors of the Atlantic slave trade, the troubled aftermath of the Civil War, and how the lives and minds of an entire populace were shattered so a nation could profit. “Beloved” is unflinching in the mirror it holds up to our faces. Morrison is the GOAT (greatest of all time). Listening to her singular voice narrate “Beloved” will raise goosepimples on your forearms.
‘My Heart is a Chainsaw’ (First in the Indian Lake Trilogy) by Stephen Graham Jones, narrated by Cara Gee
“My Heart is a Chainsaw” is another great ghost story! If you’re a fan of slasher films, you’ll sink your fangs into this work of horror by Blackfeet Nation writer Stephen Graham Jones. The first in a series, the novel is set in a rural lake town in Idaho. It’s won both the Shirley Jackson Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Most awesomely, it centers on a horror-loving Blackfeet high schooler, Jade Daniels, who is surviving terror at home while also examining the terror in her community. As with Jones’ other books, this is smart, character-driven horror, psychologically thrilling, yes, but not without incisive social commentary.
Author Sharma Shields
Sharma Shields is the author of one story collection, “Favorite Monster,” and two novels, “The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac,” which won the Washington State Book Award, and “The Cassandra,” which won the Pacific Northwest Book Award. She is the Writing Education Specialist for Spokane Public Library.