Confession: until a few weeks ago, I didn’t understand the appeal of video chat. But oh my friends, what a difference a month makes. Now, I find the glow of fellow humans and their assorted backdrops comforting, intriguing, and dare I say it?—fun.
Book clubs can also work surprisingly well virtually, provided you 1) consider what platform will best suit your group’s needs 2) implement privacy settings to keep your gathering private (time to Google “Zoombombing,” and how to avoid it, everyone!), and 3) have listened to an audiobook that you can’t wait to talk about. And if you’re about to host your very first virtual book club ever, check out these helpful guidelines from our friends at Read it Forward. Now, to those audiobook suggestions!:
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant comes a twisting story of love and deceit (yes please!). An American man vanishes on a rural road in Vietnam, and his girlfriend, an emergency room doctor trained to ask questions, follows a path that leads her home to the very hospital where they met.
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel is an exhilarating audiobook set at the intersection of two seemingly disparate events: a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.
From James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, one of the most anticipated audiobooks of the year: a wise and witty tale about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting.
In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. Beyond being a memoir, Solnit’s audiobook is also a passionate argument: that women are not just impacted by personal experience, but by membership in a society where violence against women pervades.
The instant New York Times bestseller. A powerful, emotional debut told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to fight for her dreams and choose her own future.
Read by a full cast, this is a brilliant and bitingly funny collection of short stories united around a single crumbling apartment building in Ukraine.
“Bright, funny, satirical, and relevant…A new talent to watch!”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale
In this haunting audiobook, a young nurse forms an unlikely connection with the elderly man she cares for, and finds herself confronting the guilt she carries from her past.
A mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing—and for the conjuring of curses—are at the heart of this dazzling debut. Brilliantly researched and richly imagined, Conjure Women moves back and forth in time to tell the haunting story of Rue, Varina, and May Belle, their passions and friendships, and the lengths they will go to save themselves and those they love.
Looking for next month’s audio book club pick? It’s right here: an extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings.