Treasa Levasseur's audiobook picks offer engaging stories for summertime listening
Summertime road trips and staycations are a great opportunity to listen to a good audiobook — maybe a new novel brought to life by an actor, or a meaty nonfiction book with lots of information to digest.
As a busy touring musician, The Next Chapter columnist Treasa Levasseur turns to audiobooks while on the road or at home in the kitchen. The Hamilton, Ont.-based singer-songwriter and community arts leader joined Shelagh Rogers to recommend three audiobooks that recently caught her ear — and kept her engrossed in their stories.
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
"This young adult novel came out in 2018 to extreme acclaim. It is a young adult novel. The title character's name is Xiomara, but her friends call her X, and she finds this name X as she becomes curious about the slam-poetry club at her high school.
"This is a coming-of-age tale, but it's very contemporary. She is grappling with religion and with her sexuality. She is grappling with issues of race, family and gender. It's a very dense book, but the author reads the audiobook and really pulls you in. You really feel the cadence of the poetry. So in a way, I was grateful to not be reading this on the page, because there's something about those line breaks that prescribe — they tell me how to process the information. Listening to it, I really had to go deep.
It's a very dense book, but the author reads the audiobook and really pulls you in. You really feel the cadence of the poetry.
"So I listened to this beautiful jewel of a four-hour audiobook. It's a perfect length — I did a whole plane ride, from getting through security to waiting on the tarmac at Pearson Airport. I was taken by every moment of it. I wouldn't recommend it necessarily for a 10-year-old, but I would definitely recommend it for any teens that are listening."
Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis
"I could listen to André Alexis literally read a philosophy textbook from first-year university, and I would love it because I love his voice. It's so crisp and yet so warm, and it kind of lulled me into this state of receptivity.
"The book, for those of you who don't know, is set in Toronto. It begins at this opening scene with two Greek gods talking about fate and it turns into a pack of 15 dogs being given human consciousness — or a human style of consciousness and language that sets them apart from all other dogs. And yet they're also apart from humans.
This book is best listened to in a state of relaxation because it appears to be one thing — a complex tale of 15 different characters — but is actually another thing, which is a moral fable.
"I listened to this book directly after my return from a trip — I came home and my good pal asked me if I would dog-sit for the weekend, which seemed like the perfect way to relax. So I listened to this book while on the couch with a tiny dog lying on top of me.
"And I think this book is best listened to in a state of relaxation because of the author's voice, but also because it appears to be one thing — a complex tale of 15 different characters — but is actually another thing, which is a moral fable. It's a sad book, but it's also a beautiful book."
Afterlife Crisis by Randal Graham
"Full disclosure, this particular book led me down a long interchange with the actor who reads this book, a fellow by the name of Raoul Bhaneja. Raoul is an old theater friend — I went to theatre school before I became a singer-songwriter. This book is the second in a trilogy set in a fictional universe. It is for fans of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
"It runs more than 14 hours. It's such a commitment — and it's labyrinthine. The narrator of this book is a guy named Rhinnick Feynman — and I found that to be quite clever, because I'm a huge fan of Richard Feynman, [whose work was the basis for] a lot of books about quantum physics for people who are not physicists in the late '90s and early 2000s.
It's a sprawling, intellectual yet humorous book — like if 'Life of Brian' by Monty Python was 14-plus hours long and was written by a law professor at Western University.
"The story is set in an afterlife in which nobody believes there was a before life. Our protagonist is incarcerated in a mental-health institution because he believes there was a before life. Then he sets out on a quest to find Sir Isaac Newton. He runs into multiple Napoleons. It's a sprawling, intellectual yet humorous book — like if Life of Brian by Monty Python was 14-and-a-half hours long and was written by a law professor at Western University. [laughs]
"Raoul is so hilarious in this book. I am in awe of his performance — so many characters; so many voices. You're in this swirling world of tons of characters, and if you love wordplay, this is indeed the book for you. This book has so much to give for people who have a deep vocabulary — so many unbelievably long sentences that roll off the actor's tongue with nary a bit of sweat sullying his brow.
"I don't know where anybody would drive that would take [that long]. It really is worth it, but it is quite a commitment. You want to put aside some time for this audiobook."
Treasa Levasseur's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
