What to Read in Quarantine

Get the audio file of The Water Dancer

Like many people who are sheltering in place, I’m on the hunt for good books. But because I’m also easily distracted, and anxious, and restless, and particular, what I wanted most was a good audio book I could listen to while obsessively knitting baby blankets.

I found it in The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates, narrated by Joe Morton. You do not need an Audible account to hear this book. In fact, I advise against signing up for one, since Amazon owns Audible and is bent on world domination, and since it costs $15 a month for one lousy book a month, which is a spectacular ripoff. All I needed to do was order an audio version from my public library for free — the version with the little icon of headphones. Then I had to download some software (Adobe Digital Editions, in my case, which morphed into Axis 360) in order to listen to it. It took five minutes.

I knew listening would leave my hands and eyes free for knitting, but what I didn’t know was that listening would add so much to the book. The narrator has a wonderful baritone voice, which is a comfort to hear. He also knows how to voice southern accents, and black accents, and even the songs of Virginia slaves in a tobacco field, in a way this California gal would never be able to accurately imagine from reading the words on the…