#TOP SELLING AUDIO BOOK SERIES#

So color me a bit astonished at how much I enjoyed and gleaned from this self-help/dating guide, to the point where I’m actually suggesting each and every one of you listen to it, too. I’ve probably been listening to too many audiobooks and watching too much Selling Sunset to notice. Sometimes the book’s emotion (I was on the verge of tears once) veers toward, well, the overly emotional, but the two narrators here keep things grounded. Masterson, who hasn’t published in years, announces he’s written a new book and will hold a contest - a kind of scavenger hunt - to find it, and Lucy becomes a contestant.

#TOP SELLING AUDIO BOOK SERIES#

Lucy has always been obsessed with a series of books that takes place on Clock Island by the reclusive author Jack Masterson. In this book, the powers that be won’t let Lucy, a teacher’s aide, adopt one of her young students, an orphan named Christopher. It has a bit of The Westing Game meets Willy Wonka, with a twist of TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea. Ten hours is much more manageable, and The Wishing Game grabbed me from the beginning. Though we’re in the middle of a writers’ strike, 31 hours is a lot. And The Covenant of Water, the new Abraham Verghese novel, is over 31 hours. I’ve not had much luck in the past with Emily Henry. I got bored and annoyed in the first 30 minutes of The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece, even though it’s read by its author, the actor Tom Hanks. I started a handful of things I just didn’t want to finish. I had a really hard time finding novels on audio this month to get excited about. It’s totally gripping: I couldn’t take my earbuds out. Mostly I remember singing “Defying Gravity” on a hike up Runyon Canyon, but I didn’t know about anything she talks about here, except maybe her love for Wicked. When I first moved to L.A., I hung out a few times with Kelly via a mutual friend. One scene, in which Kelly listens to a therapist’s advice and confronts her mother, is especially harrowing and moving.

There’s a lot of tough stuff that Kelly handles with enormous grace both on the page and vocally - in particular a very complicated relationship with her late mother, a onetime stripper. Kelly, a former nurse who got her start on the television series Friday Night Lights, is so piercingly honest, you just want to reach out through Audible and give her a hug. But then a book like Kelly’s comes along.

Though celebrity memoirs are a major silo in my life, I still bemoan there are too many of them. But I also can’t think of anyone who could do this book better justice. My experience reading Tom Lake was so under-the-covers special that I don’t know if listening to Streep reread it for me enhanced the experience. It’s about a mother reminiscing to her daughters about a summer performing Our Town in repertory and an affair with a castmate who ended up becoming, well, someone like Brad Pitt. It just made me feel all tingly from start to finish, and of course, I wept when it was over and immediately told my three best reader friends and my therapist that they needed to read it ASAP. If a book can be called swoon-worthy, this is it. I read Tom Lake as soon as I got my hands on it. It’s even a one-up from Patchett’s previous novel, The Dutch House, which was narrated on audio by Tom Hanks, himself. In the audiobook coup of the year, this new Ann Patchett is read by Meryl Streep, herself. The goal of this column is to try to send you on your way each month with a few of them.

I find that the best audiobooks are experiences in themselves. Sometimes an audiobook doesn’t work because of the narrator other times the book is overcomplicated and confusing. Over the years, I’ve learned that some books make satisfying listens and some just don’t. If I play Candy Crush while I’m listening to Pamela Anderson’s memoir, I’m accomplishing something, even if that accomplishment is absorbing Pamela Anderson’s memoir. You can go for a walk, drive to Florida, do laundry, put together a jigsaw puzzle, lie on your bed in complete and total despair. You can do lots of other things, all while enjoying one of the best books of the year. One of the great things about listening to audiobooks is you can. People will occasionally tell me they think listening to an audiobook is “cheating.” Cheating on what? Physical books? One of the great things about reading is you can’t do anything else while you’re reading.

Top selling audio book