JULY 19, 2019

Holy cats, guys—it’s Friday! Between the fur-boggling piece of footage that is the new Cats trailer and the anniversary of the lunar landing, we’re feeling otherworldly. Let’s blast off.

One giant leap for … authors?

With the 50th anniversary of the moon landing tomorrow, we’re revisiting the dramatic story of the daring quest and learning about its unsung heroes. One thing that perked our bibliophilic ears right up: did you know there were a lot of authorial cooks in the kitchen of the first lunar landing language? In anticipation of NASA’s moon mission, Esquire magazine asked famous wordsmiths such as Vladimir Nabokov, Muhammad Ali, and Ayn Rand to weigh in on what the astronaut should say as he stepped off of the Apollo 11. Our favorite response? “I’d say to Earth, from here you are a peaceful, beautiful ball, and I only wish everyone could see it with that perspective and unity,” courtesy of Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy.

Two Davids are better than one.

So here’s the thing: we thought we’d won the “best casting of all time” for David Copperfield when we got Richard Armitage to voice Dickens’s classic bildungsroman. And it’s a truly magical performance. But then this last week we learned that Dev Patel would be playing the titular character in an upcoming film opening at the London film festival in October, and we’re all “Hmmmm, maybe this rivals Armitage?” But no, there’s room in our hearts for both. Just be sure to check out the audio before the film makes its way stateside!

Chain gang blues.

We’re on a roll finding the lost works of some of the most iconic Black authors. Last year Zora Neale Hurston’s true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade, Barracoon, was published. Now there’s a found essay by her one-time collaborator and friend, Langston Hughes, about a chance encounter he and Hurston had with a young Black man who’d run away from a chain gang. Originally written as the foreword for the Russian edition of a book that indicted the forced labor of chain gangs, it’s all the more fascinating in the context of the deep and complicated relationship these two literary superstars shared, as seen in the new book Zora and Langston by Yuval Taylor. True Harlem Renaissance-era squad goals.

A drug lord goes down.

El Chapo, the notorious cartel leader who was convicted of drug trafficking, murder, and money laundering charges after a 3-month trial this winter, has just been sentenced to life in prison. But how did Joaquín Guzmán, whose nickname arose from his 5’6” stature, make the journey from a poor farming family to head up the world’s largest drug empire and perpetrate what his sentencing judge called “overwhelming evil”? Hunting El Chapo and The Last Narco are two comprehensive audiobooks that fill in the backstory of a life in crime.

Thriller writers 1, blackout 0.

Some of us are cursing our luck that the Manhattan blackout caused us to miss last weekend’s ThrillerFest—the banquet itself never lost power, though wouldn’t a fancy dinner full of thriller writers plunged into darkness be a great setup for a novel? Fortunately, editor Nicole was in attendance and reports: “From James Rollins’s hilarious introductory speech for Harlan Coben to an original live song honoring John Sandford, there were so many moments that will forever bless my brain! Who knew some of the most twisted minds in the genre also had such a wicked since of humor?” Congrats to the 2019 award winners, including Jar of Hearts, The Chalk Man, and The Lost Man.

A uniquely American story.

Even news junkies like the Weekly Sound Off editors need to step away from Twitter sometimes. Case in point, as the battle over US immigration policies rages, editor Kat is stepping away from the 280-character shouting match and into the nuanced perspective of audio storytelling. Comedian Maeve Higgins’ Aliens of Extraordinary Ability is a thoughtful and very funny multicast series following five friends navigating the increasingly loaded immigrant experience in America. Just half an hour in and Kat has already clocked a Jon Ronson cameo and learned to pronounce “Syria” like a native, and she’s rooting for all five to get a coveted “Einstein” visa—call it her own version of the American dream.
Till Next Week!
—the audible editors

Audiobooks in This Edition

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats Audiobook By T. S. Eliot cover art
The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon Audiobook By Todd Zwillich cover art
The Greatest Audiobook By Muhammad Ali, Richard Durham cover art
I Am Spock Audiobook By Leonard Nimoy cover art
David Copperfield Audiobook By Charles Dickens cover art
The Space Race Audiobook By Colin Brake, Patrick Chapman, Richard Hollingham, Richard Kurti, Sue Nelson, Helen Quigley, Andre