Each month throughout 2020, for your literary listening pleasure, our friends at AudioFile Magazine are bringing us the cream of the audiobook crop.
This month’s haul of outstanding audiobooks includes J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (read by Andy Serkis), Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (read by Carey Mulligan), Alice Hoffman’s Magic Lessons (read by Sutton Foster), and David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet (read by the author).
Fiction
The Searcher by Tana French | Read by Roger Clark
[Penguin Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Roger Clark’s American-Irish-British background makes him uniquely qualified to narrate Tana French’s tense story of a Chicago cop who is trying to solve a mystery far outside his jurisdiction. Divorced and weary with police work, Cal wants nothing more than a quiet retirement in the Irish countryside, fishing and renovating an old cottage. But against his will, he’s drawn into the disappearance of a local youth and soon discovers that his quiet retreat holds many secrets and hidden dangers.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien | Read by Andy Serkis
[Recorded Books]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Narrator Andy Serkis, whom many will recognize as the voice of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movies, delivers a magnificent listening experience of the familiar classic. Serkis perfectly captures the nuances of each character, offering an engrossing performance of the story of a hobbit who is averse to adventure journeying with 13 dwarves to reclaim their treasure from a deadly dragon. Both new listeners and old ought not miss this audiobook.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig | Read by Carey Mulligan
[Penguin Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
English actress Carey Mulligan narrates this wondrous audiobook about a woman’s existential journey between life and death. At age 35, Nora Seed attempts suicide. Instead of dying, Nora arrives at a metaphysical library that represents all her possible existences had she made different choices. While the story structure is episodic, Mulligan maintains strong narrative cohesion with her vibrant and humane portrayals of Nora and of the recurring characters who appear in her various lives.
The Neil Gaiman Reader by Neil Gaiman, Marlon James [Fore.] | Read by Neil Gaiman, George Guidall, Lenny Henry, Leon Nixon [Fore.]
[Harper Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
With a natural ease and a British accent, award-winning author Neil Gaiman reads 52 handpicked selections from this darkly comic career-spanning collection. Whether the topic is discovering the Holy Grail in an antique shop; retelling a much creepier, bloodier version of Snow White; or choosing a half-man/half-god to battle a demon on the Scottish Highlands, Gaiman is at his best reimagining and interweaving the broad styles of classic myth, ghost stories, fairy tales, and graphic novels. All these stories sound like they were meant to be read aloud in an old-time parlor with the lights down low.
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman | Read by Sutton Foster
[Simon & Schuster Audio]
Tony Award winner Sutton Foster narrates the prequel to Practical Magic. In 1664, Hannah Owens takes in baby Maria and teaches her the craft. Maria grows up and falls in love but is abandoned. She follows the object of her affection to Salem, Massachusetts, where she invokes the curse that will affect generations, and, in the process, she learns the real rules of magic. Foster sings beautifully and keeps to a steady pace for the descriptive story.
Nonfiction
A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough, Jonnie Hughes | Read by David Attenborough
[Hachette Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
David Attenborough is best known for his BBC nature documentaries, with their stunning scenes of wild animals and their habitats around the globe. What this program shows, though, is that he is equally adept at painting vivid scenes with words, a skill that makes this work eminently suitable to audio. The audiobook is part autobiography and part ecology lesson. Most of all, it is Attenborough’s last-ditch plea for humankind to save itself by saving the environment.
The Quiet Americans by Scott Anderson | Read by Robertson Dean, Scott Anderson [Preface, Note]
[Random House Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Two matchless storytellers combine talents in this compelling audiobook history of the Cold War, as told through the adventures and misadventures of four key CIA agents. Scott Anderson is the author of 2013’s Lawrence in Arabia, a favorite among fans of serious nonfiction. Narrator Dean brings the steadiness, focus, and dramatic immediacy required for a long narrative, especially one that maintains four interwoven storylines. This is one of the most provocative, most satisfying nonfiction audiobooks of the year.
The Fragile Earth by David Remnick, Henry Finder [Eds.] | Read by Kaleo Griffith, Gabra Zackman, Cat Gould
[Harper Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Kaleo Griffith, Gabra Zackman, and Cat Gould narrate this timely collection of climate-change nonfiction from THE NEW YORKER magazine with engagement, clarity, and an admirable mix of insistence and calm. Written by many of the magazine’s most well-known authors, the pieces focus on “how we got here, where we are, and what we can do now.” The information they relate is serially eye-opening, terrifying, and riveting. The narrators’ articulate, unruffled readings are essential; they keep us listening to news that must no longer be avoided.
His Truth is Marching On by Jon Meacham, John Lewis [Afterword] | Read by JD Jackson, Jon Meacham
[Random House Audio]
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
This stirring audiobook offers a memorable merging of author, subject, and narrator. JD Jackson voices John Lewis with an authentic and nuanced nod to his rural Alabama roots. He adroitly does the New England intonations of JFK and RFK and the drawls of LBJ and George Wallace. But it is the powerful retelling of John Lewis’s life’s work fighting to bring civil and voting rights to Black Americans that stays with the listener. The late congressman added a fitting afterword to this audiobook.
Once I Was You by Maria Hinojosa | Read by Maria Hinojosa
[Simon & Schuster Audio]
Veteran journalist Maria Hinojosa, anchor and executive producer of NPR’s “Latino USA” and founder of Futuro Media Group, narrates her story of growing up in a Mexican immigrant family and finding her way in life and in her career in the big city as a young adult. Narrating her own work allows Hinojosa to put the most fitting vocal emphases on her text. She reads at a leisurely pace in a lower tone, and one hears her professional bearing.
