Lately, I’ve rediscovered audiobooks. The advantage of listening is that you can do other activities simultaneously. The disadvantage, at least for me, is that it’s easy to get distracted by those other activities. For that reason, I tend to choose audiobooks in which there is not a huge risk of missing crucial plot details, or in which the book and the activity go hand-in-hand. One that I’ve been enjoying recently is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. The book is a meditation on our relationship to plants read by the author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is a scientist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. I enjoy taking in one chapter at a time as I meander on forest trails, chop vegetables for a summer salad, or work in the garden.
–Anna
I purchased Marlon James’ Booker Prize-winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings with grand hopes of reading the 680-page magnum opus on a road trip upon finishing my dissertation. However, as I spent most of that trip staring at the ocean rather than reading, I was only able to finish this magisterial work of historical fiction recently and it truly did not disappoint. The novel attempts to render the zeitgeist of major political and social events surrounding an attempted assassination of Bob Marley in late 1970s Jamaica. Marley himself remains a more spectral rather than active character in the novel. James prefers his invocation of the Jamaican cultural legend to act as a portal into a labyrinthine world of gangs, policing, drug trafficking, and sexual violence as vital and enduring aspects of US and British colonialism in the Caribbean. It took me a few short chapters to get used to James’ polyphonic approach (there are about 75 characters, all of whom appear and reappear as the narrators of their own chapters!) but once I did, this novel quickly became one of my personal favorites.
–Armín
Murder. Intrigue. Protesting pensioners. The best fiction book I’ve read this year has been Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, a mystery set at a swanky retirement village in southeast England. Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Joyce, and Ron team up to solve the murder of a local developer using methods only septuagenarians can. Needless to say, hilarity ensues. Osman, a comedian and television presenter, alternates between third-person narration and having some of the characters tell the story; the latter sections are particularly delightful. Moments that made me laugh out loud balanced reflections on how love and dreams can change and what it means to grow older. The best news? A sequel is coming out at the end of September.
–Katie
I'm late to the party on George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, but I just read it and found it as good as advertised. Part ghost story, part historical fiction, it's a multivocal novel taking place the night Abraham Lincoln's son died, in the middle of the Civil War. Its heavy themes–loss and grief, the nature of the afterlife, the history and future of America–may disqualify it from being beach reading. But it's also tremendously fun, and it will draw you into its world of witty, surprising, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic characters.
–Sam
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