Nick is the Creative Director at Libro.fm. He has wildly varying tastes. For example, you can see him zooming around the Pacific Northwest on either his pristine Italian scooter or his mud-splattered, classic American truck. His tastes in books are just as diverse. He reads (and listens to!) everything to 1950s-era sci-fi to modern YA.
Audiobooks for dogs? They’ll listen to anything—they’re easy to please and always happy to oblige, with tail wags galore. The real challenge? Audiobooks for cats. These fine felines will make you work for it. Those who view them as challenging or hifalutin are right: the feline is selective, loyal, and highly discerning when it comes to literature.
The cat voices you’ll hear were hand-selected by experts who captured natural ambiance from catnip fields at local farms. Played through the latest scratch-pad speakers, these tracks are the latest in kitten culture.
Don’t let the blue and green slow-blinks fool you. With cat eyeglass technology lagging, your felines can now get their story fix through audiobooks. What could be better than closing one’s eyes to the story of Puss In Boots?
Audiobooks and a fresh satchel of nip make the perfect pairing. Let your cat’s paws curl in relaxation, or even better, let them knead a human neck while taking in the aroma of nepetalactone and listening to one of our classic audiobooks.
“Every time I came home Snickers would have torn the curtains to shreds. Now that she has audiobooks, not only are the curtains in one piece but she’s vacuumed the house and washed the dishes. She’s a good girl now, aren’t you snickerbickers… yes you are.” Christie K. / Seattle, WA
Give your feline friend 15 minutes of fame! When you post a photo on Instagram of your cat enjoying audiobooks with the hashtags #audiobooksforcats, #felineindependence, and #meowforbookstores, they will also make a guest appearance on the Libro.fm Catstagram!
Ann Seaton, a bookseller at Libro.fm partner store Hicklebee’s in San Jose, California, loves listening to audiobooks while traveling, whether by car or plane! Her advice to someone who hasn’t listened to audiobooks? “Give it a try…it’s just another way to experience a great story.”
Finn Murphy—known by his trucker handle U-Turn—has enjoyed a fascinating view of the American experience from the driver’s seat of his 53-foot eighteen wheeler, Cassidy. More than thirty years ago, he dropped out of college to become a long-haul trucker, and since then has covered more than a million miles of asphalt.
His memoir, The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road, details the ups and downs of his travels back and forth across the country, moving people’s belongings in and out of every nook and cranny of the States. In describing the stories filling the book, the New York Times notes, “how astonishing they are, and how moving, and how funny, and how just plain weird.” Filled with compelling characters from every cross-section of American life, The Long Haul is a riveting portrayal of a life spent traveling the wide expanses of our open roads and the tight, heavily-trafficked streets of our cities.
Libro.fm: What was the genesis of writing The Long Haul?
Finn Murphy: Well the genesis—particularly in the framework of this conversation—is my book started out on audio. I had one of those old cassette micro recorders, and at the end of my work day, I would talk into it just to unwind. Then I started talking into it while I was driving, describing things I was seeing. Then I started carrying it with me on my moving jobs and recording conversations with the people I was moving, and my moving crews—and that’s when it started getting really good, these illegal, surreptitious recordings. Over the decades I accumulated scores and scores of audiotapes. I had them transcribed and ended up with over 800 pages of stuff. That formed the genesis of the book.
Finn at a recent event, with his rig in the background.
L: What first captured you about long haul trucking as a job?
F: That there wasn’t anybody tapping me on the shoulder telling me what to do. I came from a very regimented and structured Irish Catholic family. And when I wasn’t with my family, I went to a very regimented and structured parochial school. And then my first job was with a local moving company owned by a Mr. Callahan who was also part of the church, so I lived in this phalanx of control. Then I took a road trip with a driver to Virginia Beach from Connecticut when I was eighteen, and it was probably the first time in my life that there wasn’t somebody telling me what to do. The driver told me about the life of a long haul trucker and I was like, “Oh, wow…yeah, let’s cut all the strings here and get free.”
L: So how do you fill those long hours driving the truck?
F: I use radio, I use NPR, I use local radio for traffic—I don’t trust the GPS systems—and then I use audiobooks. Audiobooks have been my savior.
L: Do you have any audiobook recommendations?
F: Here’s a general recommendation: try listening to a book that you found inaccessible in print for some reason—like Ulysses by James Joyce or The Harry Potter books. I couldn’t access either one of those by reading them. But the audio versions of those are just amazing. So if there’s a book in your personal pantheon of cultural stuff you need to check off but weren’t able to do so by reading, try the audio, because a lot of times you can break through that way. I have to say that though I did like the Harry Potter books, I still have found Ulysses inaccessible.
L: As have many!
F:Infinite Jest I have on Libro.fm, too, and I haven’t quite completed that one.
L: That’s another one of those that often lays uncompleted on the shelf.
F: Yes, always mentioned but never read.
Finn at the wheel of Cassidy.
L: You’ve just completed a 10,000 mile book tour through 60 cities. What surprised you most about the reception to your book?
F: The biggest surprise was how much people liked it. I was girding myself for an onslaught of other opinions, largely from my trucker brothers. My book is funny and breezy but it also has some serious parts. I take a few shots here and there, and I thought that those shots would come back to me. But no, everybody love it, I was just amazed. I was in the New York Times Book Review twice, the New Yorker…I mean, I’m just this trucker guy. I’m just thrilled. It’s like a Cinderella story.
The #1 Bestselling audiobook across all our partner stores comes as no surprise. With a 166-person cast, including celebrity voices such as Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Lena Dunham, and many others, Lincoln in the Bardo via audiobook brings this unforgettable story to life.
“Saunders’ first novel has a steep entry curve. It’s not a novel that reveals itself quickly and easily, but if you give it your attention, if you burrow deep into the book, you’ll be eminently rewarded. There is a richness and depth of humanity here. There is the strange and wonderful. There is love and grief and mystery all brought together in the story of Abraham Lincoln’s dead son, the Civil War, and what may happen to us all after we leave the mortal coil. It’s a beautiful and moving book that will stay with you for a long, long while.”
—Jason Vanhee, University Book Store, Seattle, WA
The top 10 audiobook bestseller list is based on sales through independent bookstore locations in 2017.
The #2 Bestselling Audiobook of 2017, A Gentleman in Moscowis the story of Count Alexander Rostov, who in 1922 is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. This transporting novel relates the counts endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
“Through Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov’s ordinary encounters and activities within the bounds of the four walls of post-revolutionary Moscow’s Metropol Hotel, where he is under house arrest, Towles deftly guides readers across a century of Russian history, from the Bolshevik uprising to the dawn of the nuclear age under Krushchev. Grandiloquent language and drama reminiscent of Tolstoy gradually give way to action and tradecraft suggestive of le Carré in this lovely and entertaining tale of one man’s determination to maintain his dignity and passion for life, even after being stripped of his title, belongings, and freedom. Reading A Gentleman in Moscow is pure pleasure!”
—Becky Dayton, The Vermont Book Shop, Middlebury, VT
The top 10 audiobook bestseller list is based on sales through independent bookstore locations in 2017.
The #3 Bestselling Audiobook of 2017 is Hillbilly Elegy: the deeply moving story of how upward mobility actually feels. Written by former marine and Yale Law School graduate J. D. Vance, this audiobook is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
“Hillbilly Elegy is a sad and beautiful kind of reckoning. Author J.D. Vance comes to terms with his own upbringing, highlighting both working-class and poverty-stricken whites in Appalachia, the Rust Belt, and much of the nation. Vance uses his own family as a microcosm to highlight the culture, politics, and economic status of a specific group living on the margins. He covers topics ranging from education and familial bonds to addiction and health, but where Vance really shines is in telling the story of his family—a harrowing tale, to be sure, but one that is told with grace, honesty, and insight. While I don’t necessarily agree with his politics, I found the book deeply moving and important in understanding America today.”
—Hilary Gustafson, Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, MI
The top 10 audiobook bestseller list is based on sales through independent bookstore locations in 2017.
