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Top 10 Audiobooks for Audiobook Appreciation Month |
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Poverty, by America by Matthew DesmondDrawing on history, research and original reporting, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, revealing there is so much poverty in America not in spite of our wealth but because of it, and builds a startingly original case for eliminating poverty in our country.
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Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles DuhiggA Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, studying supercommunicators—people capable of connecting with anyone, reveals how, everyone time we speak to some, we're actually engaging in one of three conversations, showing us how to recognize which kind of conversation we're having—and teaching us the essential skills for navigating it successfully.
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Annie Bot: A Novel by Sierra GreerAnnie is a synthetic woman created specifically to love her owner, Doug. She was made to resemble his ex-wife and caters to his every whim. There are other types of bots, such as those who exist solely to clean or assist in a household, but Annie is a Cuddle Bunny—she provides affection, affirmation, and sex. Bots have both organic and inorganic parts, and they can be controlled or uncontrolled in different facets. Doug has turned on autodidactic mode, which allows Annie to think for herself, and now she is growing mentally like no human ever could. Annie's sentience causes a rift between them; Doug pushes back when Annie wants to learn about coding and technology, and he punishes her when she does him wrong. Annie cares for Doug and wants to make him happy, but he is smothering her—and what can a bot do when she is owned by a man? In illustrating the push and pull within their relationship, Greer’s debut takes a sharp aim at domestic abuse. Annie’s entrapment feels controlling and claustrophobic, yet she and the reader are both sympathetic towards Doug. This nuanced novel provides a fascinating look into a future we may never wish for. |
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The True Love Experiment by Christina LaurenA reality show brings together a romance author and a documentary producer. As a bestselling, prolific romance author, Felicity “Fizzy” Chen knows love. Or at least she thought she did…until, in the middle of a commencement speech, she realizes she doesn’t even “remember the last time [she] was genuinely happy.” As she puts it, “the meat of my story—the romance plot, including love and happiness—is one gaping hole.” She stops writing and dating, worried that her lust for life is gone for good. But then she’s contacted by Connor Prince III, a producer for a reality show. He normally works on socially conscious documentaries, but he needs this job so he can stay in San Diego close to his beloved daughter. He wants Fizzy to be the lead in a dating show, one in which the world can watch a woman who usually writes happily-ever-afters fall in love herself. Fizzy has her own list of demands for the show—namely, that each contestant fit a romance-novel archetype (Hot Nerd, Cinnamon Roll, Vampire, etc.). The result is a refreshingly real show that audiences love—but Fizzy’s most intense connection isn’t with any of the contestants. It’s with Connor, and their powerful chemistry threatens to disrupt the show—and both of their lives. The two women who write as Lauren return with yet another pitch-perfect rom-com that manages to be funny, angst-y, and extremely sexy. Fizzy is an exciting and hilarious main character, and Connor is her perfect complement as a love interest. Most importantly, though, the story is a love letter to the romance genre and its many devoted fans. As Fizzy puts it in her commencement speech, romance is “about elevating stories of joy above stories of pain. It is about seeing yourself as the main character in a very interesting—or maybe even quiet—life that is entirely yours to control.” Fizzy’s journey to see herself as the main character of her own life is moving and satisfying. Another winning romance from Lauren, full of big laughs, a few tears, and some seriously steamy scenes. |
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Wandering Stars by Tommy OrangeOrange's second novel is both prequel and sequel to the striking There, There (2018) and a centuries-spanning novel that stands firmly on its own. Once again featuring several narrator-characters, it opens during "America's longest war"—the 313 years of settlers' brutal attempts to annihilate the Native people who preceded them. The boy who will become Jude Star wakes to the sound of his camp's massacre, and escapes. In 1875, he's taken from Oklahoma to a "prison-castle" on the Florida coast; his jailer will one day teach his son at the Carlisle Indian School. We continue to meet Jude's inheritors (the provided family tree is key) and then it is 2018, and Jude's teenage great-great-great grandson Orvil is recovering from the climactic events of There There. Orvil's wicked pain, and increasing need for medication to numb it, lead to Sean, recuperating from injury himself, who has access to homemade painkillers. Orvil's grandmothers and brothers have struggles of their own. All this barely scratches the surface of Orange's tender yet eviscerating history of a family's survival—day to day, generation to generation—and their uneasy yet persistent belief in that survival. Their story, one character realizes, "has to be lived in order to be told, it is the song being sung, the dancer in midair," and, indeed, there is so much life in this mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic novel. |
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Tom Lake: A Novel by Ann PatchettLara’s three twentysomething daughters are back home in northern Michigan, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown, just in time to harvest the cherries. Emily has already committed herself to the family orchard and farm and her other great love, neighbor Benny. Maisie discovers that she can continue her veterinarian studies by caring for their neighbors’ animals. Only Nell, an aspiring actor, is distraught because of their isolation, but all are ravenous for distraction as they work long hours handpicking cherries, so they insist that their mother tell them, in lavish detail, the story of her romance with a future megawatt movie star. Lara strategically fashions an edited version for her daughters, while sharing the full, heartbreaking tale with the reader. Patchett (The Dutch House, 2019) attains new dimensions of beauty and resonance as she elegantly needlepoints Lara’s life onto the template of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the first play New Hampshire high-schooler Lara acts in, the play that catapults her to Hollywood, then to summer stock at Tom Lake in Michigan, where she comes under the spell of voraciously sexy and ambitious Peter Duke. As this spellbinding and incisive novel unspools, Patchett brings every turn of mind and every setting to glorious, vibrant life, gracefully contrasting the dazzle of the ephemeral with the gravitas of the timeless, perceiving in cherries sweet and tart reflections of love and loss. |
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Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman RushdieThe internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner speaks out for the first time about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, when an attempt was made on his life, in this deeply personal meditation on violence, art, loss, love and finding the strength to stand up again.
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Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon SandersonStowing away on a ship to seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea to save her friend, Tress must decide if she's willing to leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death.
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Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. SutantoVera Wong is a lonely little old lady--ah, lady of a certain age--who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco's Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to. Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing--a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn't know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer. What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?
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Iron Flame by Rebecca YarrosA young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school. Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school. |
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Centerville Library
111 W. Spring Valley Rd
Centerville, OH 45458
(937) 433-8091
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Woodbourne Library
6060 Far Hills Ave Centerville, OH 45459
(937) 435-3700
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Creativity Commons
895 Miamisburg Centerville Rd
Centerville, OH 45459
(937) 610-4425
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