About Michelle

Michelle loves books, travelling and her adopted cats, Grizzly and Oats. When she's not reading, she can be found hiking.

STAFF PICK: American Prison by Shane Bauer

Posted on September 19, 2018 by Michelle

Title: American Prison
Author: Shane Bauer
Narrator: Shane Bauer and James Fouhey

Curious about what the inside of a prison is really like? So was award-winning investigative journalist Shane Bauer, who was hired for just $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. He used his real name. There was no significant background check. He lasted four months.

American Prison combines Shane’s firsthand experience as a prison guard with the history of for-profit prisons in America, from their origins in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Shane describes how private prisons became entrenched in the southern United States as part of a systemic effort to continue African-American labor force in the aftermath of slavery, and how the smoke of these origins still lingers today.

What I found most fascinating about American Prison was Shane’s recognition that he was becoming crueler and more aggressive towards the inmates the longer he worked in the prison. In a town where the average family income is $25,000 a year, the prison sees a high turnover rate for staff who often leave to pursue less stressful jobs that pay similar wages. In Winnfield, it isn’t unusual to see a former prison guard working at a fast food restaurant or greeting you as you walk into Walmart.

Guards are trained not to intervene when inmates fight each other, sometimes with handmade weapons, sometimes ending in violent death.

I volunteered at a not-for-profit women’s prison for a couple of years, and this audiobook still shocked me. My relationship with the officers and the inmates was neutral, and despite the occasional complaint from inmates regarding what they considered petty rules and officers not feeling respected by particular inmates, the environment inside the prison did not reflect the animosity, anxiety, and danger that runs rampant in for-profit prisons across the United States.

Shane’s investigation of a broken system is disturbing, gripping, and most importantly, long overdue. The stories of the inmates will stay with you long after finishing the audiobook, and Shane’s own experience of being imprisoned for two years in Iran makes him the perfect person to expose the reality of corporate-run prisons.

STAFF PICK: Heartland by Sarah Smarsh

Posted on September 18, 2018 by Michelle

Title: Heartland
Author: Sarah Smarsh
Narrator: Sarah Smarsh

Born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side and the product of generations of teen moms on her maternal side, Sarah Smarsh has joined the ranks of the brilliant authors behind Educated, Hillbilly Elegy, The Glass Castle, Evicted, and Nickle and Dimed, who have successfully portrayed America’s working-class poverty.

During her childhood in the 1980s and 1990s, Sarah was on a free-lunch program in school and moved between trailer homes and farms in rural Kansas. Sarah was determined to break her family’s cycle of poverty and teen parenthood. Weaving in the larger dynamics of American capitalism that began with the Reagan government and continuing into modern day, Heartland reveals what it’s like to grow up poor in one of the richest countries in the world.

Heartland challenges readers to look more closely at the class divide in the United States and examines the myths about people who are considered less because they earn less, and Sarah’s narration makes the audiobook even richer. I listened to much of the audiobook with my eyes closed and envisioned the Kansas soil beneath my feet and stalks of wheat grazing my hands that reminded me of what it was like to grow up in a rural town.

America is known for its excess. Big box stores, excess waistlines, and long list of “world’s largest _____” prevail, and yet so much of its population lacks access to more of what citizens truly need — health care, education, and opportunity.

Blending experience, research, and stunning storytelling, Sarah’s powerful analysis of what it means to be poor is as raw as it is remarkable. Her ability to contextualize the reality of working six or seven days a week with no vacation and stretching a dollar as far as possible to barely cover the bills will pull readers into an issue no one can afford to ignore.

10 Audiobooks that Explore the Natural World

Posted on September 12, 2018 by Michelle

Take a walk through the natural landscapes of our world with these moving and insightful travelogues.

1. Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey of the Silk Road by Kate Harris, narrated by Amy Landon

From what Kate Harris could tell of the world, there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond earth, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars. In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend. Pedaling mile upon mile in some of the remotest places on earth, the farther she traveled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within.
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2. Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living by Karen Auvinen, narrated by Jayme Mattler

During a difficult time, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions-except for her beloved dog Elvis, her truck, and a few singed artifacts, Karen embarks on a heroic journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community.
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3. Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island by Earl Swift, narrated by Tom Parks

A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a 200-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction from rising sea levels — part natural history of an extraordinary ecosystem, starring the beloved blue crab; part paean to a vanishing way of life; and part meditation on man’s relationship with the environment.
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4. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, narrated by Bernadette Dunne

In the wake of tragedy, Cheryl Strayed‘s family and marriage were destroyed. With nothing to lose, she made a decision: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington — alone. Cheryl faces rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Wild captures the terrors and pleasures of her journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
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5. The Final Frontiersman by James Campbell, narrated by Dan Woren

Originally from Wisconsin, Heimo Korth traveled to the Arctic in his 20s. Now, more than four decades later, he lives with his wife 200 miles from civilization – a sustainable, nomadic life bounded by the migrating caribou, swollen rivers, and the demands of daily life. Heimo’s cousin, James Campbell, chronicles the family’s experience, adventures, and the tragedy that shapes their lives.
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6. Deep South by Paul Theroux, narrated by John McDonough

For the past 50 years, Paul Theroux has traveled to the far corners of the earth. In Deep South, he turns his gaze to a region much closer to home. Traveling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, he writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers — the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi — and the lives of the people he meets.
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7. Wide-Open World by John Marshall, narrated by John Marshall

John Marshall‘s 20-year marriage was floundering. His two teenage kids were lost in cyberspace most of the time. He felt disconnected from his work, his family, his life. Which is when he had an idea: Let’s volunteer our way around the world. He’d heard that some peoples’ lives were changed by a week of overseas service — what might half a year accomplish for his family?
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8. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, narrated by Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Elizabeth explores the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali.
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9. Walking the Americas by Levison Wood, narrated by Barnaby Edwards

Beginning in the Yucatán, Levison‘s journey takes him from sleepy barrios to glamorous cities to ancient Mayan ruins in the wild. The relationships he forges along the way are at the heart of his travels, and the personal histories, cultures, and legends he discovers paint a riveting history of Mexico and Central America. While contending with natural obstacles, he also witnesses surreal beauty.
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10. Four Fish by Paul Greenberg, narrated by Christopher Lane

Paul Greenberg takes us on a culinary journey that explores how fish get to our tables and how to fight for sustainable seafood. He visits Norwegian megafarms that use genetic techniques to grow millions of pounds of salmon a year, the river of the Yupik Eskimos to see the only Fair Trade-certified fishing company in the world, and almost sinks in the South Pacific while searching for an alternative to endangered bluefin tuna.
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13 Audiobooks Coming to the Big Screen at TIFF

Posted on September 6, 2018 by Michelle

Love books and film? This year’s Toronto International Film Festival, best known as TIFF, promises to be one for the books.

1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, narrated by Bahni Turpin

Starr moves between two worlds: her poor neighborhood and her fancy prep school. The balance between the two shatters when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed, and his death is a national headline. As protesters take to the streets, what Starr does or doesn’t say could upend her community and endanger her life.
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2. Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, narrated by Anthony Heald

Before meth, Sheff‘s son, Nic, was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After meth, he stole money from his eight-year-old brother and lived on the streets. With haunting candor, Sheff traces the first warning signs, the attempts at rehabilitation, and, at last, the way past addiction. Whatever an addict’s fate, the rest of the family must care for one another, too, lest they become addicted to addiction.
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3. Tweak by Nic Sheff, narrated by Paul Michael Garcia

Tweak.

Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age 11. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California to convince him otherwise.
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4. Boy Erased by Garrard Conley, narrated by Michael Crouch

The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, Garrard was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. While in college, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and his faith.
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5. First Man by James R. Hansen, narrated by Jeremy Bobb

Soon to be a major motion picture, this is the first-and only-definitive authorized account of Neil Armstrong, the man whose “one small step” changed history. When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the moon became a legend and American icon.
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6. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, narrated by John Pruden

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn’t share his brother’s appetite for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. But their prey isn’t easy, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living.
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7. Widows by Lynda La Plante, narrated by Ann Mitchell

Facing life alone, they turned to crime together. A van heist goes disastrously wrong and three women are left widowed. When Dolly Rawlins discovers her gang boss husband’s plans for the failed hijack, an idea forms. Could she and the other wives finish the job their husbands started? As the women rehearse, it becomes clear that someone else must have been involved. Who was he? And where is he now?
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8. If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, narrated by Bahni Turpin

Told through the eyes of Tish, a 19-year-old girl in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and is imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope.
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9. Girl Boy Girl by Savannah Knoop, narrated by Kristen Stewart

In 2006, the New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy. A media frenzy ensued as JT’s fans, mentors, and readers came to terms with the fact that the gay-male-ex-truck-stop-prostitute-turned literary-wunderkind was really a girl from San Francisco, whose sister-in-law wrote the books. Girl Boy Girl is the story of how Savannah led this bizarre double life for six years.
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10. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, narrated by Oliver Wyman

By the time James Frey enters a drug and alcohol treatment facility, he has so thoroughly ravaged his body that the doctors are shocked he is still alive. Inside the clinic, he is surrounded by patients whose friendship and advice seem stronger and truer than the clinic’s droning dogma of How to Recover.
He insists on accepting sole accountability for the person he has been and fights to survive on his own terms.
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11. Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto, narrated by Michael Kramer

On the same day that Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he senses that his boss, a dangerous loan-sharking bar-owner, wants him dead. Before Roy makes his getaway, he realizes there are two women in his apartment, one of them is still breathing. He takes her with him as he goes on the run to Galveston. The girl is too young, too tough, too sexy —and far too much trouble. They hide in the seascape of country-western bars and seedy hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pickups, and ashed-out hopes.
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12. Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden, narrated by James Jenner and Ali Ahn

Joseph Boyden‘s first novel, Three Day Road, was a Today Show Book Club selection. Through Black Spruce is the exceptional follow-up to his acclaimed debut. Cree bush pilot Will Bird lies comatose in a hospital, while his wayward niece Annie arrives to sit in silent vigil by his side. Slowly their stories reveal two people previously separated by great distances, beaten and broken, and searching for some sense of where they belong in the world.
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13. Hold The Dark by William Giraldi, narrated by Richard Ferrone

Three children have been taken from an isolated Alaskan village, including Medora and Vernon Slone’s son. Russell Core arrives to investigate the killings, and discovers the horrifying darkness at the heart of Medora Slone and learns of an unholy truth harbored by this village. As Russell Core attempts to rescue Medora from her husband, he comes face-to-face with an unspeakable secret.
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6 Fiction Audiobooks About College Life

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Michelle

Whether you’re a freshman or a graduate dreaming of your glory days, these audiobooks about college life will leave you yearning for the book stacks.

1. Sorority by Genevieve Sly Crane, narrated by Caitlin Davies

Twinsets and pearls, secrets and kinship, rituals that hold sisters together in a sacred bond of everlasting trust. Certain chaste images spring to mind when one thinks of sororities. But make no mistake: these women are not braiding each other’s hair and having pillow fights — not by a long shot.
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2. We Are Okay by Nina LaCour, narrated by Jorjeana Marie

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and confront her loneliness.
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3. The Preservationist by Justin Kramon, narrated by Charlie Thurston

To Sam, meeting Julia is the best thing that has ever happened to him. Working at the local college and unsuccessful in his previous relationships, he’d been feeling troubled about his approaching fortieth birthday, but being with Julia makes him feel young. Julia, a freshman, is flattered by Sam’s attention. But their relationship is tested by a shy young man with a secret.
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4. The Red Word by Sarah Henstra, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

A smart, dark, and take-no-prisoners look at rape culture and the extremes to which ideology can go, The Red Word is a campus novel like no other. As her sophomore year begins, Karen enters into the back-to-school revelry, particularly at a fraternity called GBC. When she wakes up one morning on the lawn of Raghurst, a house of radical feminists, she gets a crash course in the state of feminist activism on campus.
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5. We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han, narrated by Jessica Almasy

Belly has only loved two boys, Conrad Fisher and his brother Jeremiah. Now that she and Jeremiah are on the verge of a permanent commitment, Belly confronts her lingering feelings for Conrad and faces a painful reality. She must figure out which brother is her soulmate, which means someone’s heart will get broken.
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6. Inescapable by Amy A. Bartol, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

Inescapable.

Freshman Evie is determined to find out what an enigmatic fellow student is hiding. She hoped that once she arrived on campus, the nightmare she’s been having would go away. It hasn’t. Since meeting sophomore Reed Wellington, nothing makes any sense — but Reed acts as if Evie’s the worst thing that has ever happened. And for some reason, every time she turns around, he’s there. What is he hiding? Evie’s hoping that it’s anything but what she suspects: that he’s not exactly normal… and neither is she.
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STAFF PICK: The Piranhas by Roberto Saviano

Posted on September 4, 2018 by Michelle

Title: The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples
Author: Roberto Saviano
Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini

Seduced by easy money and pushed by a complex reality, Nicolas Fiorillo is the 15-year-old protagonist of The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples, which exposes the real-life phenomenon of youth gangs, or paranza. Paranza refers not only to gangs, but to the “boats that go out to catch fish through trickery of light… It takes possession of it, and the fish come looking for it.”

The author, an Italian journalist who grew up in Naples, saw his first murder victim at 13. His own father, a doctor, suffered a beating for trying to help an 18-year-old left to die in the street, who was a victim of the Camorra, an Italian Mafia-type crime syndicate.

Saviano begins his stunning novel with a profound statement:

“What you are about to read actually occurred. Facts have been modified and connected to others in order to make a violent and complex world more comprehensible…”

Violent and brutal and glamorous, The Piranhas is weaved with details found in his international crime classic, Gomorrah, which traced the decline of Naples under the Camorra rule. Since its publication, he has been placed under police protection.

Nicolas, an ambitious and promising teenager from the slums of Naples, has a dark desire to acquire power and wealth. Backed by a group of loyal friends, he sets out to create his own paranza, roaming the streets while learning how to become gangsters. What begins with small-time cheating and stealing soon becomes shooting semiautomatic pistols and AK-47s. Saviano succeeds at reminding listeners of the stark reality of child gangsters, such as having Nicolas and his friends play PlayStation in between committing crimes.

Narrator Edoardo Ballerini‘s ability to portray a variety of characters made listening a smooth and entrancing experience. Filled with inevitable consequences that all criminals face while climbing to the top, The Piranhas will leave you in awe of Naples while also grieving for it.

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13 Audiobooks Coming to the Big Screen at TIFF

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