I like podcasts as much as the next girl, but sometimes audiobooks are best; they are long enough to last a whole journey, and unencumbered by the “you knows” and “likes” that are impossible to utterly omit in extemporaneous speech. I have a special soft spot in my heart for celeb memoirs read by their authors. Sparkling performances, juicy dish: The best ones may not be Jane Austen but are sure to keep you awake at the wheel. Here are some of my favorites.
Celebrate the Dreamer in You by Dolly Parton
I don’t trust people who don’t like Dolly Parton. A sweet, smart survivor, she’s one of the brightest lights in contemporary entertainment. She’s also one of the most quotable (“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb, and I also know that I’m not blonde”), though her spirit is too pure to be dismissed as camp. Here she reads her inspirational tome in such bubbly, confiding cadences that you start to believe that you, too, can grow up dirt-poor and go on to own an amusement park, record best-selling albums, launch a Broadway show, and singlehandedly improve literacy rates in your home state. Bonus: Mz. Parton sings on this audio-tome as well. Continue Reading →
At the risk of sounding callous, Hollywood has always clamored for sagas about mental illness, especially when they’ve been books first. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Girl Interrupted,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Sybil,” “Ordinary People,” “I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can”: The list goes on and on. It’s not that all these movies are great (though I’m certainly fond of them). It’s that they possess all the key elements of a classic Hollywood weepie: Hero faces dark night of the soul; hero lives to tell the tale. But what of the hero who doesn’t live to tell the tale? Very few movies to date have told those stories, no doubt because they don’t offer the inspirational endings that fill multiplex seats. 
When Mike Nichols died in 2014, the news was met by such an enormous outpouring of grief that it’s surprising that, in the eighteen months since his passing, the director’s cinematic legacy mostly has been overlooked. As is the case with the late, great Robert Altman, it’s as if no one knows how to approach Nichols’s immensely varied – some might go so far as to say uneven – body of work.