Read Lovely Books

The Books I’ve Reread on Audio (And Why

When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission

There is something particularly delicious about rereading a book in a different format from how you first

You get the pleasure of falling back into a beloved or interesting world and you get the

In the last five years, I’ve reread about 40 books on audio

Sometimes I reread a book for the comfort of it — recently I’ve taken to listening to

There are dozens and dozens of reasons to reread books on audio, but when I look back

So let’s meander through the books I’ve loved the most on the audio reread

If you’ve read any of these, you might be surprised at just how much you’ll

Maybe it was the class, maybe it was my age, maybe I was just impatient and only

I can’t remember why I decided to give the audio a try, but I did, and

But when Ruby Dee reads it aloud, it turns into a poem, a song of rage and

So many books come into our lives at the wrong time, at moments when we’re not

Are there books you have an inkling your younger self was wrong about? Give them a listen,

If you’re not listening to graphic novels and memoirs on audio, you’re missing out

When I decided to reread Good Talk on audio, it was partly because I just wanted to

But I was also curious about what it would feel like to listen to a book with

It’s right there in the subtitle: a memoir in conversations

Rereading this beloved graphic novel taught me new things about the book itself, and also about reading

Stories are translatable across many forms, and that’s remarkable

If you love comics and graphic novels, you’re in luck, because lots of them have fantastic

I read and loved a lot of plays when I was younger, and I’m excited to

Rereading can be as simple as the act of giving yourself a gift

It is the first book I can consciously remember reading about queer family — not coded queer family (

Happily, in the almost two decades since then, I’ve read dozens of books about queer family,

For some reason, rereading it on audio seemed less scary than reading it again the way I’

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover I loved it even more the second time around

I’ve grown and changed, and though the book has stayed the same, my understanding of it

I know I won’t have this experience every time I decide to listen to book that

I listened to both Between the World and Me and The Fire Next Time soon after reading

Certain ideas strike me differently when I hear them out loud

I often relate to the material more viscerally when I’m listening to it

For books like these, audio rereads become a kind of extended study

I read Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf in high school and I’ve always loved it

) I can’t imagine anything will ever top it, but people are going to go on translating