AUDIBLE EDITOR

Michael Duke

Michael loves short stories, and any kind of mind-bending literature that is semi-surreal or speculative with a strong sense of voice (written and spoken). He's been known to shake up his listening routine with self dev books and has a habit of hoarding oatmeal raisin cookies in his desk.

I Can't Wait to Listen These Books

The Plotters Audiobook By Un-su Kim cover art
Gnomon Audiobook By Nick Harkaway cover art
Gingerbread Audiobook By Helen Oyeyemi cover art
Your Duck Is My Duck Audiobook By Deborah Eisenberg cover art
The Infinite Game Audiobook By Simon Sinek cover art
Queenie Audiobook By Candice Carty-Williams cover art

The Best Books I've Listened to Recently

Stories of Your Life and Others Audiobook By Ted Chiang cover art
Half Gods Audiobook By Akil Kumarasamy cover art
Freshwater Audiobook By Akwaeke Emezi cover art
The Laws of Human Nature Audiobook By Robert Greene cover art

Playing Now

The Infinite Game

By: Simon Sinek
Narrated by: Simon Sinek
Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
Unabridged
5 out of 5 stars 4.8 (10,360 ratings)
Listen now

Michael's Recent Reviews

  • Black Leopard, Red Wolf Audiobook By Marlon James cover art

    • Black Leopard, Red Wolf

    • The Dark Star Trilogy, Book 1
    • By: Marlon James
    • Narrated by: Dion Graham
    • Series: The Dark Star Trilogy, Book 1
    • Length: 24 hrs and 2 mins
    • Release date: 02-05-19
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 1,196 ratings
    • You will hear more about this series
    • I’m not claiming any credit for finding this one, as it has already become something of a movement, but I am definitely swept up in the transcendent force that is Marlon James and Dion Graham. I saw Neil Gaiman described the setting as "hallucinatory," and I haven’t heard a more apt description, but don’t let that fool you into thinking this is an aimless, vague, or overly literary effort. It is absolutely riveting: My "listening hours per day" have more than tripled since I started listening to Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Word is Marlon James spent a long time researching African languages as well, and Dion Graham just nails all of the different accents. But the merits of Graham’s performance aren’t limited to language or accents. In every minute there is a new threat, a new scheme, and a new astoundingly unique voice; be it beast, witch, demi-god, or amorphous liquid assassin. I can only imagine Graham took a good break after this performance because the sheer number of different voices would put any narrator to the test, and he aced it.
  • I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck Audiobook By John Kim cover art

    • I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck

    • An Everyman’s Guide to a Meaningful Life
    • By: John Kim
    • Narrated by: John Kim
    • Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
    • Release date: 01-29-19
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,007 ratings
    • Bromotional intelligence
    • I don’t think I’d describe myself as ever having been a miserable f*ck, but I was a teenager until around the age of 26. I also used to work in a really bad high school, and I’ve witnessed (and displayed) firsthand the epidemic deficit of emotional intelligence on the male end of the spectrum. I didn’t really come to terms with it either before listening to Brené Brown’s The Power of Vulnerability a few years ago, and that’s why I’m excited about I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck. It shows that the issue is gaining momentum, with the attention and mentorship it deserves. John Kim’s approach to the topic is definitely "dude-lier" than Brené Brown’s—his narration is gruff and serious, but he knows how to crack a joke—and I think that will appeal to some of the people who would benefit from this book the most.
  • Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful Audiobook By Arwen Elys Dayton cover art

    • Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful

    • By: Arwen Elys Dayton
    • Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Karissa Vacker, Brittany Pressley, Full Cast
    • Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
    • Release date: 12-04-18
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 90 ratings
    • A youthful future
    • On the spectrum from young adult to old adult my taste in books lies squarely in the geriatric, but Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful checked too many of my boxes otherwise to pass up. It is decidedly crafted for a younger audience, but that surprisingly didn’t distract me one bit from enjoying the sophisticated technological and emotional worlds that Arwen Elys Dayton deftly ties together between stories. These are real people struggling with the unforeseen complications of technology’s rabid acceleration. To my ears, the narrators do a fine job imbuing their performances with just a hint of adolescence, and as it turns out: a touch of naivety is precisely what makes each of these whole new worlds so captivating.
  • The Lonesome Bodybuilder Audiobook By Yukiko Motoya cover art

    • The Lonesome Bodybuilder

    • Stories
    • By: Yukiko Motoya
    • Narrated by: Natalie Naudus, Brian Nishii, Erin Bennett, Richard Powers, Tanya Eby, Kate Mulligan
    • Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
    • Release date: 11-06-18
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 120 ratings
    • Super strong short stories
    • I love short stories because their brevity often makes them more bewildering and more stimulating than longer form writing. Yukiko Motoya’s debut collection is a great example of just how shocking great short stories can be. Taken on their own, the stories in this collection are beyond baffling, but cumulatively they offer an intimate perspective of the deeply personal irrationalities we all wrestle with on a daily basis. With each new character, I felt I had fallen in on a subterranean well of emotion. And with each new narrator, even though I knew I was hearing a new voice, I felt a unifying urgency that kept me absorbed and for some reason, comfortable. Even when it got real weird.
  • Esther Perel's Where Should We Begin?: The Arc of Love Audiobook By Esther Perel cover art

    • Esther Perel's Where Should We Begin?: The Arc of Love

    • By: Esther Perel
    • Narrated by: Esther Perel
    • Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins
    • Release date: 10-04-18
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,818 ratings
    • A relationship wizard works her magic
    • Esther Perel’s book Mating in Captivity was a bible for me when I first moved in with my girlfriend a year and a half ago. And I kept coming back to it in those first few months (first…16 months?) as my girlfriend and I have worked on ironing out our different…perceptions of reality. Perel immediately established herself as someone with a next-level understanding of relationships in my mind, as I’m sure she will in yours. Nowhere is that on better display than when we get the chance to listen to her council couples through their complicated relationship issues, as she does in Arc of Love. It’s amazing to see how quickly she grasps the core issue each time, and how assertive she is in getting her patients to confront those issues in a productive way. And really, to be frank: it’s just a lot of fun to compare those core issues with ones I, for one, have experienced a few too many times.
  • The Silence of the Girls Audiobook By Pat Barker cover art

    • The Silence of the Girls

    • By: Pat Barker
    • Narrated by: Kristin Atherton, Michael Fox
    • Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
    • Release date: 09-04-18
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,918 ratings
    • The women of the Trojan War
    • Mythological retellings are definitely trending right now, and we’ve seen some truly excellent examples recently (Circe remains my favorite audiobook of 2018). Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is no exception. Barker focuses on The Illiad as experienced by the captured women, and the perspective shift is a perfect opportunity for audio; Kristin Atherton and Michael Fox’s intimate narration mirrors and reinforces the severely personal nature of this book. As a whole, The Silence of the Girls creates an experience that brings you so much closer emotionally to a story that continues to have profound influence.
  • Flights Audiobook By Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator cover art

    • Flights

    • By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
    • Narrated by: Julia Whelan
    • Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
    • Release date: 08-14-18
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 358 ratings
    • Delightfully Disorienting Vignettes
    • Olga Tokarczuk is apparently a very well known author in Poland, and while I’d never heard of her before she certainly has proven herself in awards, among them The Man Booker International Prize. Super weird short stories are also totally my thing, and when I saw the narrator was veteran Julia Whelan I was sold. Flights definitely falls into the super weird category. Its structure, content, and style all vary wildly between quirky and imaginative, to assertive and analytical. But it is extremely clear that Tokarczuk has a finger on exactly what bothers us most deeply. Her stories are inexplicably unsettling, and I can’t wait to test the knot that they tie themselves in, as I’ve heard the ending is particularly strong.
  • Florida Audiobook By Lauren Groff cover art

    • Florida

    • By: Lauren Groff
    • Narrated by: Lauren Groff
    • Length: 8 hrs
    • Release date: 06-05-18
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 460 ratings
    • Exploring Florida as a state of mind
    • As an almost lifelong New Jerseyian, Florida has always seemed a mystifying place—one that caters to extremes—and Lauren Groff’s new aptly titled book never loses sight of that dynamism. Her characters, like their vibrant settings, are entropic, overgrown, and saturated with the small dissatisfactions that make for great drama. The short story cycle format works too. To listen to her perform this collection is to meet many different people, see many different states, all in one.
  • Artificial Condition Audiobook By Martha Wells cover art

    • Artificial Condition

    • By: Martha Wells
    • Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
    • Series: Murderbot Diaries, Book 2
    • Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
    • Release date: 05-08-18
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,035 ratings
    • Punchy and fun Hugo finalist
    • The first book in Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series, All Systems Red, was recently named a 2018 Hugo Award finalist. It’s an excellent story and a great place to start if sarcastic quick-witted robots are your thing. With Artificial Condition, Wells has seized the opportunity to flush out Murderbot’s background and delivered another punchy and super fun addition to what is quickly becoming one of my favorite series. Kevin R. Free has a great approach to the performance as well; with his emphasis on Murderbot’s laid-back sardonic voice and perspective, never has a robot sounded so human.
  • Speak No Evil Audiobook By Uzodinma Iweala cover art

    • Speak No Evil

    • A Novel
    • By: Uzodinma Iweala
    • Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Julia Whelan
    • Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
    • Release date: 03-06-18
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 714 ratings
    • Lyrical and emotional
    • I’ve never seen nor read Beasts of No Nation, so Speak No Evil is my first experience with author Uzodinma Iweala. His writing is sublime. Clean, precise, evocative, whatever you want to call it, I am constantly impressed by how well he mirrors his character’s emotions with their physical environment. For example, the moment before Niru comes out as gay to his potential girlfriend (very early in the story), he is wandering through her unheated parents' house, in the dark, and half naked. Iweala’s imagery and style is surprising in this way. It’s lyrical but not prosaic, and sparse as a means of conveying honesty and reality, without feeling brusque or truncated. Narrators Prentice Oneyemi and Julia Whelan are really the reason I picked this one though, because they are two seasoned veterans who complement each other, and Iweala’s aesthetic immaculately.
  • The House of Impossible Beauties Audiobook By Joseph Cassara cover art

    • The House of Impossible Beauties

    • By: Joseph Cassara
    • Narrated by: Christian Barillas
    • Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
    • Release date: 02-06-18
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 316 ratings
    • Brutal. Unflinching. Beautiful.
    • The House of Impossible Beauties absolutely threw me into a world I knew close to nothing about. The Harlem Ball scene of the 80s and 90s was a culture born of intense, largely unrecognized struggle, and Joseph Cassara’s fictional ode to the time is likewise chock full of character. Pure, undiluted, super-concentrated character. This book is brutal. It is unflinching, and it is as real as it gets. Like have you ever seen Requiem for a Dream? It’s on the same page of, “Wow, I can’t believe anyone could endure this,” type emotional shock. But where that movie follows a drug addict's bleak downward spiral, Cassara’s characters never fail to demonstrate a life-affirming and indomitable strength that is, simply put, beautiful. Joseph Cassara clearly vetted narrator Christian Barillas super closely, as this is a book that demands fluidity between languages, genders, and class all at once—I think it would have been an impossible task for nearly anyone else, but Barillas nails it.
  • The Largesse of the Sea Maiden Audiobook By Denis Johnson cover art

    • The Largesse of the Sea Maiden

    • Stories
    • By: Denis Johnson
    • Narrated by: Nick Offerman, Michael Shannon, Dermot Mulroney, Will Patton
    • Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
    • Release date: 01-16-18
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 357 ratings
    • A master of short fiction—an all-star cast of narrators
    • Denis Johnson passed last year, but left us with this one last beautiful example of his wonderful writing. His stories are so refined, and transition so effortlessly, that there is often no noticeable distinction between the emotions they elicit. You might find yourself laughing at death, or worried for one of Johnson’s characters' untimely success. In this subtle way Johnson shocks his listeners into what I would guess is awareness, or clarity. At the very least, you can tell a book is good when it gets this many all-star narrators (Nick Offerman, Michael Shannon, Dermot Mulroney, Will Patton, and Liev Schreiber). They leave no stone of Johnson’s lyrical prowess unturned or unpolished.
  • The Dark Dark Audiobook By Samantha Hunt cover art

    • The Dark Dark

    • Stories
    • By: Samantha Hunt
    • Narrated by: Christa Lewis
    • Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
    • Release date: 07-18-17
    • Language: English
    • 4 out of 5 stars 45 ratings
    • A Total Trip
    • When you first read about The Dark Dark the inventive concepts draw you in. A woman who cheats on her husband after she turns into a deer? Sounds funky, you think to yourself. What keeps you listening is Hunt's incredible sense of aesthetic. In many ways, as weird as these stories are, they are all about the same thing: a woman struggling with her many internal identities, motherhood, and wrestling with herself and her relationships in general. That's where I think the underlying emotional current of this book runs, and it hits you on a real level.
  • American Wolf Audiobook By Nate Blakeslee cover art

    • American Wolf

    • A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West
    • By: Nate Blakeslee
    • Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Nate Blakeslee
    • Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
    • Release date: 10-17-17
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,400 ratings
    • My Favorite Book of 2017
    • The wolf is rife with symbolism in American culture, and no less so in Blakeslee’s dynamic exploration of the controversial Yellowstone wolf reintroduction. American Wolf is a story that really has it all: a charismatic (read: badass) female protagonist, fierce action scenes, gripping courtroom drama, a coming-of-age tale, and last minute political upheavals all served up with sturdy, hard-hitting narration. It diligently reveals a very real political and emotional landscape, illuminated by increasingly dire circumstances and bold personalities at every turn. The result of which is an upending portrait of a great and unmistakable bond that we all share, and is as strained as ever—the further you get into this modern-day epic, the more deeply you realize that our story and the wolf’s are one and the same.
  • Born to Run Audiobook By Bruce Springsteen cover art

    • Born to Run

    • By: Bruce Springsteen
    • Narrated by: Bruce Springsteen
    • Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
    • Release date: 12-06-16
    • Language: English
    • 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,700 ratings
    • A Marathon Concert Tell-All
    • Growing up in New Jersey it’s not too much of a stretch to say that Bruce Springsteen was something of a spiritual force. His voice is synonymous with a powerful sense of place, and it bears a rugged, scrappy idealism that can make you feel patriotic and subversive at the same time. That’s what makes this autobiography, written and performed by The Boss himself, nothing less than magical. It’s not simply a story of his path to success or a philosophy of greatness, but a marathon concert tell-all wherein he confronts demons of mental illness, poverty, and familial strife. It is nostalgic for a simpler time, but urgent in its display of discipline and individuality. Ultimately, Bruce delivers with this audiobook what he has done for nearly five decades with his music: a celebration of the commonplace and the struggles of American life with candor, imagination, and purpose.
  • Hell Divers II: Ghosts Audiobook By Nicholas Sansbury Smith cover art