Narration may sound like an easy way to make money – you just sit there and read – but I can assure you, it isn’t. I narrated my own audiobook in 2014, an experience that I described at the time as being akin to an exorcism: three long days in a dark room, tripping through the minefield of my own words. All I could think was: if I’d known I was going to have to say this whole book out loud, I would have written a better one. Or maybe I wouldn’t have written one at all.
I’ve done two more audiobooks since – most recently, last spring – with the gently increasing confidence that comes of never, ever listening back to previous recordings. The first time, I agreed to the challenge only because I was assured it was not unusual for a first-person, non-fiction book to be read by its inexperienced author. But I never met anyone else like that in my three days at the studio. I met only professionals.
What else could I possibly need, I thought, fighting off a hint of anxiety and a faint longing for my swim goggles.
Soon after, I settled into my seat on the plane and we took off. I carefully folded my suit jacket, placed it on the empty seat next to me and began to drift off to sleep. I was jolted awake as a flight attendant walked swiftly past, heading toward the front of the airplane. Soon after came the inevitable announcement asking if there were medical personnel on board.
There are few better guides to the glories of reefs than Callum Roberts. Reef Life is a vibrant memoir of the joys, as well as the grind, of a research career beginning in the 1980s that has spanned a golden age of coral reef science. It is also a fine introduction to the ecology of reefs and the existential threats they now face.
In her new book, The Way Through the Woods, the Norwegian-Malaysian writer Long Litt Woon describes the various sensory pleasures that are involved in the gathering of mushrooms: the beguiling way they yield to the human hand; their different textures, whether velvety or hairy, rubbery or powdery; even the noises they make (some pop when snapped). Above all, there are the different ways that they smell. The prince mushroom comes with top notes of marzipan. The wood blewit brings to mind burnt rubber. The common stinkhorn emits the sweet aroma of rotting flesh.