Hear me out: Summer is the perfect season for long audiobooks. I mean, the sound of birds is nice and all. Just not for three hours.
Conventional wisdom suggests you should settle for a beach read — or beach listen, in this case. And believe me, I love a fun, sexy mystery like Emma Rosenblum’s “Bad Summer People.” But I save those for winter, when the shores of Fire Island (where Rosenblum’s novel is set) seem impossibly distant.
Use summer for more ambitious projects. I’ve found long audiobooks to be perfect companions for those 10 weeks or so when the kids go off to camp and the pace of life generally slows.
Below, a few of my favorite supersized listens.
50+ Hours
THE DYING GRASS, by William T. Vollmann
Vollmann is not known for accessibility (his first novel was about insects and electricity), but “The Dying Grass” is a remarkably readable account of the 1877 Nez Perce War, made even more so by Henry Strozier’s sensitive narration. As Brig. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard hounds his Native adversaries across Montana and Idaho, the story soars above the awesome landscape, then peers into the hearts of people below. Believe me, time will fly.
Also try: “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” by Robert Burton; “War and Peace,” by Leo Tolstoy
40+ Hours
ON HIS OWN TERMS: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller, by Richard Norton Smith
Here is a storied American family in its third generation, with the Rockefeller brothers taking on newfound civic responsibilities. Nelson was the most ambitious of them and maybe the most tragic, his bid for the presidency undone by a divorce. Paul Michael (“The Da Vinci Code”) narrates with stately confidence.
“Ducks, Newburyport,” by Lucy Ellmann
A woman in Ohio thinks about life. About illness, marriage and Laura Ingalls Wilder. She frets about the pies she bakes for a living. Also, there’s a mountain lion. Written as a single sentence stretching more than 1,000 pages, this remarkable 2019 novel thrums with life, a quality highlighted by Stephanie Ellyne’s energetic narration.
Also try: “1Q84,” by Haruki Murakami; “Hitler,” by Ian Kershaw
30+ Hours
THE PASSAGE OF POWER, by Robert Caro
The fourth volume of Caro’s encyclopedic biography of L.B.J. begins with the gruff Texan becoming vice president to John F. Kennedy, an odd man out in an administration of Ivy Leaguers. But then comes a shattering Dallas afternoon. Our most esteemed historian, Caro thrillingly tells the story of how Johnson prods Congress and transforms a grieving nation with his civil rights and Great Society legislation.
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, by Thomas Pynchon
George Guidall is one of the great audiobook narrators, and his rendition of Pynchon’s masterpiece quickly makes clear why as he captures Tyrone Slothrop’s madcap journey across Europe, which involves orgies and Nazis, a Malcolm X set piece and a good deal about ballistics. I can’t imagine a harder book to narrate — or anyone who could do the job as well as Guidall.
THE DAVID FOSTER WALLACE READER
The immensity of Wallace’s achievement can be daunting, but the “Reader” is a perfect distillation of his fiction and nonfiction alike. While most selections are performed by professionals, there are cameos from the Emmy and Tony winner Bobby Cannavale; Wallace’s mother, Sally; and Wallace himself, who died in 2008.
Also try: “The Covenant of Water,” by Abraham Verghese; “Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot; “And the Band Played On,” by Randy Shilts
20+ Hours
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS, by Marlon James
It is only appropriate that a panoply of narrators (seven in all) take on this kaleidoscopic novel, which is nominally about the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley but is in reality the story of Jamaica. “Brief History” was James’s breakout novel, winning the Man Booker Prize in 2015. The narration matches the intensity of the prose; it’s as close as you can get to cinema without a screen.
THE SECRET HISTORY, by Donna Tartt
One of the smartest mysteries in the modern American canon, set at a bucolic New Hampshire college. Tartt herself narrates; though she may be a Mississippi native, her voice is neither Deep South nor New England. Like the novel itself, it is entirely her own.
WOLF HALL, by Hilary Mantel
Yes, you may need to consult the printed novel to keep track of the characters, but the effort is well worth it as Mantel pulls you ever deeper into 16th-century England and the life of her indefatigable protagonist, Thomas Cromwell. The narrator, Simon Slater, a noted British actor and composer, only enhances that journey.
RANDOM FAMILY, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
LeBlanc spent more than a decade as a virtual member of a South Bronx family as it struggled with drugs and crime, early pregnancy and poverty. Though the tone of Roxana Ortega’s narration is not always entirely in sync with the text, LeBlanc’s reportage is sensitive but not preachy, an unvarnished portrait of New York’s most neglected borough.
