Liza Zitelli Grabowski
Writer, editor, singer, mom
Listen With Liza
Reviews, thoughts, and news about audiobooks
There's something special about settling down with a wonderful book and a hot cup of coffee, curling up next to a window or on a picnic blanket outside on a warm sunny day. But ever since my graduate school days, those magic moments of relaxation and escape come very few and far between. And now with a daughter, a deadline-driven job, and a house in the suburbs, the time for sitting down to read has all but slipped entirely through my book-starved hands.
That's why I eventually turned to audiobooks to help get my fix of fiction—even when I can't find time to sit down and read a print book. Now, they've become an obsession for me—a vehicle for delivering the fiction and story-telling that I crave, but also an art form of their own that entertains, soothes, and provides escape, while allowing me to get other things done. I may do the dishes while listening to John Grisham's latest legal heartbreaker, or squeeze in exercise while absorbing the quiet power of Louise Erdrich's The Roundhouse, or commute to work while giggling along to Mindy Kaling's latest memoir. In all of these scenarios, it's the story-telling that drives me along. As if there is some innate humanity in wanting or needing to know what will happen next, I immerse myself in other worlds and inhabit alternate interior spaces, hearts, and minds.
This is my record of my journey to these worlds and spaces. Listen along with me. And let me know what you think!
Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind....
In my all-time favorite audiobook, Life of Pi, adult narrator Pi recounts his marvelous coming-of-age adventure as a teenage castaway. Pi’s contemplative tale of survival is certainly gripping, but perhaps even more thought-provoking is the novel’s exploration of the human mind. How do we translate our brain’s memories into our life’s narrative? To what degree do we think and remember in stories?
The relationship between memory and storytelling has fascinated fiction writers for centuries. Exploring the interplay between cognitive and narrative worlds, contemporary fiction writers continue to ask new questions. How do our memories influence the stories we tell about ourselves? And, in turn, how do our stories influence our personal and collective memories? Here are 5 fascinating reads that will get you thinking more about memories and narrative.
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"Every man's memory is his private literature."
-Aldous Huxley
It's the end of the world as we know it...
You might guess that dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction would be the least-likely genre a reader would turn to in today’s day and age. Who would want to enter a bleak fictitious world when we can find enough tension, uncertainty, and drama in real life? But it seems that even in these uncharted territories of global politics, readers are increasingly drawn to fictions that imagine the apocalyptic what-if. Novelists have long practiced the art of speculating on which turns may humanity take in the wake of cataclysmic events. And readers continue to devour their post-apocalyptic world-building of a future gone wrong.
If you're in the mood to ponder the what-if, here are 5 audiobooks that imagine the end of the world as we know it.