Earl Grey Books

Hello, everyone! You may have noticed that I took a very short break from posting anything. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen that I decided to start anti-anxiety meds late last week and I’ve been struggling with the side effects. I’m feeling a little more myself today, so I’m here to share with you my Libro.fm audiobook picks for March and April. If you want to hear more about this, you can check out my post for January and February.

Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins

I’ve been meaning to read Morgan Jerkins’ essay/memoir This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America for years but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. But when I saw this one was available in March, I jumped at the chance to get it. From what I can tell, this follows three different women, all from different generations of the same family living in Harlem. I’m not really sure, but I think there’s a bit of a magical realism element to it as well. There are a few sort of mixed reviews over on Goodreads, but overall people seem to be enjoying it which makes me excited to give this a go. It’s an almost 11-hour audiobook and I’m not the greatest at finishing audiobooks, as you’re about to see, so this will probably be at least a few months away but I’ll get to it eventually, I hope. Who knows, I might even end up picking up This Will Be My Undoing first after all.

Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas

Again, I haven’t gotten around to reading Aiden Thomas’ debut, Cemetery Boys, but I couldn’t resist picking this one up in March. For one, the cover is gorgeous and I’m a sucker for a pretty cover even on audiobooks. I’ve also been kind of hesitant about picking up Cemetery Boys so getting an audiobook to see if I like the way Thomas writes and crafts a story seems like a good idea to me. This is a Peter Pan retelling, but in a dark contemporary, mystery setting. The synopsis says: ‘it’s been five years since Wendy and her two brothers went missing in the woods, but when the town’s children start to disappear, the questions surrounding her brothers’ mysterious circumstances are brought back into light.’ It’s not the usual sort of thing I’d pick up but it does sound very intriguing and every now and again I do enjoy a retelling. I’m pretty sure I’ve never read any Peter Pan retellings though I know there are a few out there, but this seems like a fun place to start.

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman

This goes on record as only the second audiobook I’ve actually finished from Libro. What can I say? I warned you that I was bad at finishing audiobooks. This one was only 9 minutes long, including the copyright info and such so it was easy to do. This is, of course, the official recording of Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb which she read at Joe Biden’s inauguration. I wanted to have this audiobook version of it because it also includes an introduction from Oprah Winfrey which was short, but interesting to listen to. While this is an incredible poem, I do have to say that I feel like some of it doesn’t move me as much for the sole reason that I’m not American. Some of this is definitely applicable to anyone, but I feel like others parts are a little more specific to the U.S. Either way, it really is an incredible poem and I hope that we’ll see a lot more from Amanda Gorman in the future.

Troy by Stephen Fry

I was kind of surprised to see this one on there, but I guess it’s only now being released in the U.S. Either way, I was excited because I’d been tossing up about getting it for a little while now. I own the first book Stephen Fry wrote about mythology, Mythos, as an audiobook already so it’s kind of nice to have them both like this now. I probably won’t get around to this one for a while since I haven’t even started Mythos yet. But this kind of came at a perfect time because I’ve been kind of desperate for some mythology right now—I have a few more retelling type books I’m hoping to get to in April, but no non-fiction in this kind of style. With that said, I think I’ll probably end up picking up Mythos once/if I manage to finish Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse which I’ve been listening to for months at this point, or maybe I’ll just start it anyway.

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

This was another one I was excited to see in the April picks. I read a sample of Libertie from NetGalley and I was really intrigued by where it was going. I was a little hesitant about ordering a copy because I don’t really read a lot of historical fiction outside the romance genre. But this story is inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the U.S and that sounds like a really interesting read to me. I’m loving this sort of emergence of books discussing women’s places in history beyond just feminist movements, as much as I enjoy those types of books, it’s so great to see other historical representations especially of women of colour. I’m really not sure what to expect beyond that—I know it’s following the daughter of that female doctor but that’s about it. However, the synopsis does also mention that this is perfect for fans of Brit Bennett and Min Jin Lee, who were both two of my favourite new-to-me authors of last year so I have high hopes for this one.

So those are my picks from March and April. This post made me realise that I really need to actively make time to listen to the audiobooks I’ve picked out previously so that I can actually share my thoughts on them rather than just continuously downloading more, but more on that later. Let me know what audiobooks you’ve been listening to lately.