Did you know Readings have a Libro.fm store? Which means you can buy audiobooks from Readings, see our curated recommendations and support independent retailers, all in one place!
And there's never been a better time to setup a Libro.fm account, because they're currently having a limited-time Indie Bookshop Appreciation Sale, meaning you can get great books at an amazing discount!
To help you make the most of these deals, here are some of our top recommendations from the sale, including everything from a fun romance, to a Booker Prize shortlistee, to an iconic memoir. No matter the occasion, we've got an audiobook that will suit!
If you want something to listen to while cooking:
Kitchen Confidential
Anthony Bourdain
After twenty-five years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain decided to tell all – and he meant all.
From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny.
Listen to Bourdain himself read his iconic memoir here!
If you're a lover of true crime podcasts:
Say Nothing
Patrick Radden Keefe
A stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.
One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of this terrible crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades.
In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters, presented in lyrical and unforgettable detail.
If you're looking for something to listen to on a walk:
Twelve Trees
Daniel Lewis
In Twelve Trees, professor Daniel Lewis takes us around the world – from Australia to the United States, from Easter Island and Mexico to Cameroon – and introduces us to twelve tree species that epitomise the many threats faced by our planet, from climate change, poachers and parasites, to fungi and even elephants. He celebrates their many strengths in the face of adversity, and their enduring abilities to survive in an increasingly dangerous planet.
Trees are essential to all of our lives – and they need our help. In this incredible tribute to the noble tree, Lewis dives deep into the cutting-edge science and inspiring community efforts helping to keep them alive. Saving the tree, as he argues, means the saving of humanity.
If you love a rom-com:
Can I Steal You for a Second?
Jodi McAlister
When you sign up to a dating show, you’re supposed to fall in love with the male lead, not another contestant… A delightful romantic comedy with ALL the feels by one of Australia’s leading romance experts.
Mandie Mitchell will do anything to get over her toxic ex. Even sign up to the polarising reality dating show, Marry Me Juliet. But with her self-esteem in tatters, she’s not sure she’s brave enough to actually go on the show until she forms a friendship with Dylan Gilchrist at the auditions that gives her the push she needs.
Dylan is everything Mandie is not - tough, strong, and totally unafraid to speak her mind. Unfortunately, she also looks set to win, as she soon becomes the clear favourite of the Romeo. Mandie’s jealous, but is it because she wants to win the show?
If you want to enjoy listening to an Irish accent, as well as a good book:
The Bee Sting
Paul Murray
Irresistibly funny, wise and thought-provoking, The Bee Sting is a tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart, available on Libro with a cast of talented Irish narrators!
The Barnes family are in trouble. Until recently they ran the biggest business in town, now they’re teetering on the brink of bankruptcy – and that’s just the start of their problems. Dickie and Imelda’s marriage is hanging by a thread; straight-A student Cass is careening off the rails; PJ is hopelessly in debt to the school bully. Meanwhile the ghosts of old mistakes are rising out of the past to meet them, but everyone’s too wrapped up in the present to see the danger looming…
If you're looking for a laugh:
The Unfinished Harauld Hughes
Richard Ayoade
The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author's photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes's writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.
Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes's final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam! This is the story of the story of that quest.
Richard Ayoade himself is joined by a sparkling cast for the audiobook, including Noel Fielding, David Mitchell and Sally Hawkins.
If you love insightful and eye-opening deep-dives:
How to Tell When We Will Die
Johanna Hedva
In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to ask: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, “Sick Woman Theory”, became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism, a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies, we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.
How to Tell When We Will Die expands upon Hedva’s paradigm-shifting perspective in a series of slyly subversive and razor-sharp essays that range from the theoretical to the personal.
If you're one of the few people in Melbourne who hasn't read Butter yet:
Butter
Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton
If you've somehow missed out on the cult bestseller that took bookshops by storm in 2024, there's no better time to pickup Butter!
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.
Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii, but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body…
If you want to finally read an intimidating classic:
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Smith’s day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends, their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax.
Virginia Woolf’s masterly novel, in which she perfected the interior monologue, brings past, present and future together on one momentous day in June 1923. And with the audiobook, Juliet Stevenson's spellbinding narration will guide you smoothly through Virginia Woolf's stream of consciousness prose!
