![](\"https:\/\/cdn.libro.fm\/assets\/covers\/9780062886781_400.jpg\")
Image courtesy of Libro.fm<\/p><\/div> Image courtesy of Libro.fm<\/p><\/div> Image courtesy of Libro.fm<\/p><\/div> Image courtesy of Libro.fm<\/p><\/div> The best narrators for the last few audiobooks I’ve heard leave me wanting more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI’m just coming off a\u00a0trifecta of excellent narrators. The first was Elizabeth Acevedo, reading her YA title, With the Fire on High. <\/em>Sometimes\u00a0authors aren’t the best narrators of their own works, but Acevedo is one of those rare stellar performers (Philip Pullman is another) who create magic, providing what feels like a satisfying fullness of storytelling. Her voice is rich and\u00a0brings the story and characters alive\u00a0in exactly the right ways at the right times. I absolutely loved her\u00a0reading style\u00a0and the way she portrays\u00a0Emoni Santiago, the teen main character who’s trying to plan her future after high school,\u00a0a future that will include her toddler daughter. Emoni is\u00a0strong, conflicted, smart, funny, fierce, loving, and courageous, and Acevedo writes her\u2014and her abuela\u2014as truly\u00a0three-dimensional people. I was sad to say goodbye to them.
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\nThe next delightful narrator was Jayne Entwhistle, who read Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s The War I Finally Won<\/em>. I had been avoiding this book, because I so loved its predecessor,\u00a0The War That Saved My Life<\/em>, that I didn’t want to be disappointed by a subpar sequel. It took the reassurance of several reviews, colleagues, and customers to allay my worries, and I’m so grateful I finally buckled to the temptation. Bradley has created such a vivid world and such a lovable cast of characters that the book deserved the perfect narrator, and happily, Entwhistle did a bang-up job. She embodied Ada as wonderfully as Cherry Jones did India Opal Buloni in Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie<\/em>. It can’t be easy to be a grown woman and somehow manage to\u00a0convincingly channel an 11-year-old girl, a six-year-old boy, not to mention several older men and women, in your reading of a book, but Entwhistle does it beautifully. Yay!\u00a0And whew!
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\nNext, I dipped into the adult realm, finally taking on Tara Westover’s Educated,\u00a0<\/em>a book that’s been on the bestseller lists forever\u00a0and that has inspired much admiration and even some debate among customers and staff. Narrator Julia Whelan is terrific reading this memoir, the story of Westover’s\u00a0journey from\u00a0a conservative, survivalist, rural childhood without formal education\u2014but one that also gave her enormous competence\u00a0and self-reliance\u00a0in many practical arenas\u2014to an adulthood that has included\u00a0advanced degrees and studies\u00a0at Harvard and Cambridge Universities, and complicated relations with her family. A few customers along the way had commented slightly negatively on Westover’s writing style; “it’s not great<\/em> writing,” they’d say, “but\u00a0the story itself is so interesting.” I think Westover is a natural storyteller, which always translates best aurally.\u00a0I wonder if those few readers would have taken issue with the writing if they’d listened to the audiobook instead of reading it.
\nThe\u00a0reason it took me so long to read this book is because<\/em> it was a bestseller.\u00a0Often, when a book is so famous it sells itself and doesn’t really need us to get it into customers’ hands, I’ll skip over those bestsellers in favor of less well-known worthy titles that might need a helping hand from a bookseller to find its readers.\u00a0So audiobooks are a great way to catch up on titles everyone wants to talk about.
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\nI mentioned a trifecta of narrators, so you may think I’m at the end of my last spate of great audiobooks. BUT! My friends, I had the most\u00a0fabulous surprise when I settled in to listen to Ibi Zoboi’s Pride<\/em>, which I’ve been trying to get to for months. It was narrated by the fabulous Elizabeth Acevedo\u00a0of\u00a0With the Fire on High <\/em>fame! For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that\u00a0an author might narrate other authors’ books,\u00a0not just her own.\u00a0But of course\u00a0audio publishers are alert to great voices, and anyone would leap to have\u00a0Acevedo read more books. I admit that when I heard her voice, I did a surprised, joyful\u00a0hop up and down in my apartment\u00a0during those introductory\u00a0moments of the narration.\u00a0Pride\u2014<\/em>a contemporary, New York-based spin on Jane Austen’s\u00a0Pride and Prejudice<\/em> set in Bushwick\u2014was a total delight.\u00a0Zoboi and Acevedo together made me love the neighborhood, the people, the whole world of this book. Having spent some years in Brooklyn back in the late 80s-early 90s and seen the process of “gentrification” creep along avenues that were once lively, diverse family neighborhoods, I could also feel\u00a0Zuri’s anger, mourning, and frustration for what is lost\u00a0with those changes. Acevedo is my new favorite audiobook narrator. Since I discovered that she also narrated her book,\u00a0The Poet X,<\/em>\u00a0I’ll need to listen to it, too, even though I’ve read the book. Especially because I’ve read the book, actually;\u00a0I want to hear those poems read aloud.
\nSo now I need to stock up on a new batch of audiobooks.* What have you listened to and LOVED lately? Which narrators would you go to the ends of the earth to hear? Bonus points for 2019 titles! I’m always trying to catch up. Both fiction and nonfiction are welcome!
\n* I now get my audiobooks through Libro.fm, a great indie-bookstore-supporting company that has many advantages over Audible; many of my customers have switched over and love it, too. Give it a try if you’re an audio fan!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"