5 Great Audiobooks (About Obsession)
Yes, they count
I love audiobooks! I find them accessible, entertaining, and no less engaging than reading with my eyes. While there’s been a lot of *discourse* about if they should count towards your reading goal or not, that’s not something I want to spend my time debating. A book is a book, and aren’t we all trying to read less anyway? This post was inspired by
, who did a post rounding up her year on audible (it took me a while to get around to actually writing this one, clearly). Emma’s post made me think about the difference between reading and listening to books, and as someone who often just randomly borrows an audiobook, I have learnt that not all books work on audio. Audiobooks are also great for me because I can easily borrow them from my library via the Libby app, which lets you connect with your library card to borrow audiobooks and ebooks. I very much recommend this for people who would like to use their libraries but are too lazy to actually go get a book.So, here are 5 audiobooks I listened to recently. They all worked great as audiobooks, part of which is good narration, part of it is easy to follow stories and straightforward prose (in the best way). This list is not complete at all, I just picked a few that I enjoyed, and they all ended up being about obsession in one way or another. If you like strange and angry women obsessed with (mostly) other women—erotically, academically, jealously, traumatically—then this list might be for you. Maybe I should write a post about obsessive women in literature at some point? Obsessive queer women even?
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier, narrated by Jenna Yi
Pizza Girl is about a pregnant teenage pizza delivery worker (she’s 18 I think) who becomes obsessed with one of her customers, an older woman who honestly seems great. Our protagonist is greatly overwhelmed by her situation—the pregnancy, her father’s recent death—and begins to hide from her life by fully giving into the obsession, basically stalking the object of her desire at some point. It’s a dark but deeply humorous novel and gives us a complicated and not always likeable queer protagonist to love.
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou, narrated by Jennifer Kim
I lovedddd Disorientation! I don’t want to spoil it too much because it has a great twist, but Disorientation basically follows Ingrid, a PhD student researching a fictional Chinese poet, who feels like something is off about the poet’s legacy. Interspersed with rivalries and relationship drama, the story unfolds around themes of racial justice and academic pressure. It’s a pretty amazing satire that I listened to almost in one go.
I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel, narrated by Sheena Patel
As a social media driven novel, I’m A Fan really tapped into instagram aesthetics with its prose, it was fast-paced, kind of memefied, and didn’t always go that deep. The protagonist is obsessed with her illicit (ex/on-again-off-again) lover’s girlfriend and stalks her both on instagram and in real life. There’s not that much more to the plot, it’s a short, vibey book, but political no less. A critique of social media and heteronormative structures alike, I’m A Fan was a fun portrait of 21st century (romantic and parasocial) relationships.
Bad Fruit by Ella King, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller
Ok, Bad Fruit was kind of unhinged. The summer before staring Uni, Lily lives with her parents. Her mother is kind of abusive, though in the most elusive ways, including making Lily drink spoilt orange juice (which the mother loves drinking herself). While Lily longs to finally leave, she also becomes obsessed with her mother’s past, trying to understand how this cruelty towards herself and her daughter came to be. I was absolutely fascinated by this one, though it was really hard to listen to. The narrator did a marvellous job at conveying Lily’s frustration, obsession, and fear.
Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly, narrated by Dani Martineck
I was super looking forward to Endpapers from the blurb of it, and I did like it, but I must admit it wasn’t my favourite. Dawn is a genderqueer bookbinder (doesn’t that sound great??) and stumbles upon a hidden note that leads them to become obsessed with an illicit queer love affair from the 1950s. With tricky friendships and artistic aspirations, Endpapers did touch on themes I really appreciated, but it didn’t totally grab my attention and was a little slow. Still worth a read, though.
If you end up listening to any of these, let me know! Would love to hear your opinions!
Thanks for reading, see you next time!