MAY 17, 2019

Hi audiophiles! It’s time again for the Weekly Sound Off. This week we have some rare book drama, a taste of ’90s nostalgia, and good news for caffeine addicts (most of us, anyway). Let’s dive in.

A classic stays put (for now).

A few months back we (OK fine, Editor Emily, who briefly worked in the world of rare books), were salivating over a rare copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that had come up on the auction block in London. It had been used as reference by the judge in the book’s landmark obscenity trial and was snatched up by an international buyer, but this week the UK Arts Minister issued a temporary block on its export, claiming it as a national treasure, and in hopes of finding a UK-based buyer. While we love a good art-curator-turned-hero story, we can’t help but feel bad for the poor book lover (pun intended) abroad. It’s also surfaced some awkward conversations around other cultural items in British museums, and suggestions that the UK shouldn’t throw Elgin marbles, ahem, we mean stones.

A winner climbs to the top.

We can finally share that the winner of Audible and Cosmopolitan magazine’s #SoundsHot Steamy Romance contest from last summer is Lily Dodd! Her debut romance, Search and Rescue, edged out the rest thanks to her badass search-and-rescue technician heroine who falls for a daring mountain climber. Why is she badass? As Dodd says in our interview with her, She listens to herself and her instincts, and she knows that she deserves to be where she is. She takes up space. Yep, pretty badass.

The X factor.

If you’re of a certain age—say, between 40 and 54—you probably found Gen X is a Mess (a multimedia feature from The New York Times) pop into your feed more than a few times this week. As it transported us back to a time when slacking was superior to achieving, and CK One was superior to CBD, we found ourselves loading up our libraries with listens that were so formative to our burgeoning cultural perspective and tastes: think High Fidelity, My Misspent Youth, and Trainspotting. It’s all put us in a very 1990s frame of mind, making this the perfect time to revisit these nostalgic faves, we think.

Food for thought.

Top Chef star and exec producer Padma Lakshmi is launching a funding program that will give $200,000 to five female founders in the food and beverage industry. It’s a way to help women receive a greater share of venture capital funding to start restaurants or companies in the industry, says Lakshmi, who’s had great success as an entrepreneur herself. And when so many of our favorite foodie memoirs are by women—including Bembi Locke’s heart-rending story of love, loss, and Sicilian cuisine From Scratch, which is currently making us weep at our desks—we say bring it on.

And in beverage news...

In a world of fad diets and food pyramids, it’s nice when science delivers a simple verdict on what we put in our bodies. Researchers say they have determined a safe upper limit on coffee consumption, and the answer is not terrible! Six or more cups a day can counteract benefits like antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. We are not the only ones who view coffee as a keystone of civilization—some of us are half-feral before our morning brew—so we’re greeting this news with gratitude for the daily cup (or, you know, five).

A touch of evil.

Listeners are raving about the new audio play Evil Eye, and we have to say: accurate. It’s. That. Good. 👏👏👏 There is so much to say about it—it’s a compelling family dramedy, an edge-of-your-seat supernatural thriller, a second-generation immigrant story, and a meditation on female intuition. But what we might love most is how it’s told. Playwright Madhuri Shekar conceived the story as a series of phone calls to make it perfect for audio, and it’s performed by a full cast in a breathless 90 minutes.
Till Next Week!
—the audible editors