27 March 2020
In a time of uncertainty and solitude, books are more important to us now than ever. They help us to feel connected to others, to inform ourselves, escape our realities, and find a little joy. Audiobooks, in particular, offer us the opportunity to block out the noise, travel from our homes and to immerse ourselves in a different setting. For all of us staying home, we made a list of our audiobooks to keep you company as you seek calm, understanding, or distraction.
Let us know what audiobook is keeping you company on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Audiobooks that inspire connection:
Together by Dr Vivek H. Murthy
Former US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy explores the root causes and devastating effects of loneliness on our physical and mental wellbeing. And most importantly, he offers a range of solutions inspired by the creative ways in which different individuals and communities around the world are making people feel more connected. Dr Murthy’s analysis and message are becoming increasingly relevant as self-distancing and isolation measures are imposed all around the world to contain the spread of COVID-19, putting many people (and especially the elderly and the most vulnerable in society) at increased risk of loneliness. Now more than ever we need to think of and implement ways to prevent loneliness for ourselves and others, and Together offers readers ideas and inspiration to do exactly that.
Pre-order your copy (out 7th April 2020):
Audiobooks that help you relax:
Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday
Throughout history, there’s been one indelible quality that great leaders, makers, artists and fighters have shared. The Zen Buddhists described it as inner peace, the Stoics called it ataraxia and Ryan Holiday calls it stillness: the ability to be steady, focused and calm in a constantly busy world. This quality is urgently necessary today. And, Holiday shows, it is entirely attainable. We can all benefit from stillness to feed into our greater ambitions – whether winning a battle, building a business, or simply finding happiness, peace and self-direction. Filled with wisdom and examples from historical and contemporary figures, this book shows how to cultivate this quality in your own life. Because stillness is not merely inactivity, but the doorway to the self-mastery, discipline and focus necessary to succeed in this competitive, noisy world.
Download your copy:
Everything Isn’t Terrible by Kathleen Smith
Licensed therapist and respected mental health writer Dr Kathleen Smith offers a smart, practical antidote to our anxiety-ridden times. Everything Isn’t Terrible is an informative, and fun guide – featuring a healthy dose of humour – for people who want to become beacons of calmness in our anxious world. It will inspire readers to confront their anxious selves, take charge of their anxiety, and increase their own capacity to choose how they respond to it. Comprised of short chapters containing anecdotal examples from Smith’s personal experience as well as those of her clients, in addition to engaging, actionable exercises for readers, Everything Isn’t Terrible will give anyone suffering from anxiety all the tools they need to finally be calm.
Download your copy:
Audiobooks that keep you informed:
The Rules of Contagion by Adam Kucharski
Our lives are shaped by outbreaks – of disease, of misinformation, even of violence – that appear, spread and fade away with bewildering speed. To understand them, we need to learn the hidden laws that govern them. From ‘superspreaders’ who might spark a pandemic or bring down a financial system to the social dynamics that make loneliness catch on, The Rules of Contagion offers compelling insights into human behaviour and explains how we can get better at predicting what happens next. Along the way, Adam Kucharski explores how innovations spread through friendship networks, what links computer viruses with folk stories – and why the most useful predictions aren’t necessarily the ones that come true.
Download your copy: Audible
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
In Being Mortal, Gawande examines his experiences as a surgeon, as he confronts the realities of aging and dying in his patients and in his family, as well as the limits of what he can do. And he emerges with a story that crosses the globe and history, exploring questions that range from the curious to the profound: What happens to people’s teeth as they get old? Did human beings really commit senecide, the sacrifice of the elderly? Why do the aged so dread nursing homes and hospitals? How should someone give another person the dreadful news that they will die? This is a story told only as Atul Gawande can – penetrating people’s lives and also the systems that have evolved to govern our mortality.
Download your copy:
Something Doesn’t Add Up by Paul Goodwin
Wry, witty and humane, Goodwin explains mathematical subtleties so painlessly that you hardly need to think about numbers at all. He demonstrates how statistics that are meant to make life simpler often make it simpler than it actually is, but also reveals some of the ways we really can use maths to make better decisions. Enter the world of fitness tracking, the history of IQ testing, China’s social credit system, Effective Altruism, and learn how someone should have noticed that Harold Shipman was killing his patients years before they actually did. In the right hands, maths is a useful tool. It’s just a pity there are so many of the wrong hands about.
Download your copy:
Audiobooks that entertain and distract you:
Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms. Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don’t understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices. Sardonic and sympathetic in equal measure, Confessions of a Bookseller will reunite readers with the characters they’ve come to know and love.
Download your copy:
The Professor and the Parson by Adam Sisman
One day in November 1958, the celebrated historian Hugh Trevor-Roper received a curious letter. It was an appeal for help, written on behalf of a student at Magdalen College, with the unlikely claim that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford. Curiosity piqued, Trevor-Roper agreed to a meeting. It was to be his first encounter with Robert Parkin Peters: plagiarist, bigamist, fraudulent priest and imposter extraordinaire. Based on Trevor-Roper’s own detailed ‘file on Peters’, The Professor and the Parson is a witty and charming account of eccentricity, extraordinary narcissism and a life as wild and unlikely as any in fiction.
Download your copy: