BY SPOTIFY
Attention booklovers in Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand! Listening to your favorite audiobooks is about to get even easier. Beginning April 9, Spotify Premium users in these markets will have access to up to 15 hours of audiobooks per month, seamlessly integrated alongside music and podcasts, on a single platform through a unified subscription.
Our Premium audiobook catalog, already available in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, is one of the largest subscription-based audiobook-streaming platforms at 250,000 titles and growing—we’re already up from 200,000 titles since late last year. We’re excited for more listeners than ever to discover and engage with books, and to mark the occasion we asked authors from these markets—Canada’s Carley Fortune, New Zealand’s Chloe Gong, and Ireland’s Rosemary Mac Cabe—to share some of their favorites.
Carley Fortune
Canadian Carley Fortune is the best-selling author of Every Summer After and Meet Me at the Lake. Her new book, This Summer Will Be Different, will be published May 7.
What are three of your favorite audiobooks?
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, narrated by Tom Hanks
- Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, narrated by Adjoa Andoh
- Becoming by Michelle Obama, narrated by the author
What do you love most about audiobooks?
I’m not sure if this is a positive trait, but I’m a multitasker, and I love to figure out ways to use my time efficiently. I’m a full-time writer and a parent to two young, energetic boys—I will never be able to read all the books I’d like to, but audiobooks help! I can squeeze in reading while I’m driving or washing the dishes. But it’s not just that audiobooks help me read more. A truly excellent audiobook elevates the reading experience, absorbing you in the story and bringing the emotion to life. And they’re so accessible. Listening to an audiobook is reading: Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Chloe Gong
Raised in Auckland, New Zealand, Chloe Gong is the best-selling author of the Secret Shanghai novels and the Flesh and False Gods trilogy.
What are three of your favorite audiobooks?
- The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna, narrated by Samara MacLaren
- Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle, narrated by Gary Furlong, Shakira Shute, and Toni Frutin
- Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie, narrated by Maria Liatis
What’s your earliest memory of stories’ being read aloud to you, audiobooks or otherwise?
In primary school, we would read a class-selected book quietly, and then we would come together for the teacher to read it aloud while we sat cross-legged on the mat. It was one of the most joyous parts of my day as a five-year-old. I developed such an appreciation for how class read-aloud time held my attention, and I grew more and more intrigued by the act of storytelling until I became an avid reader myself and eventually an avid writer.
Rosemary Mac Cabe
Irish author and journalist Rosemary Mac Cabe was raised in Dublin and published her book, This Is Not About You: A Menmoir, in summer 2023.
What are three of your favorite audiobooks?
- Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner, narrated by the author
- Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris, narrated by the author
- Heartburn by Nora Ephron, narrated by Meryl Streep
What’s your earliest memory of books’ being read to you?
One of the few books from my very early childhood that I remember is Smoke and Fluff, a Ladybird book written and illustrated by AJ McGregor, a fact I didn’t even have to look up because it’s now on nightly rotation in my house. I ordered a secondhand copy online for my two-year-old pretty much the month he was conceived.
Opening it up again after so long was weird, though. I hadn’t seen or read it in probably three decades. I remembered it almost word for word. The illustrations were almost as familiar to me as my childhood bedroom, or a scarf my mum has worn every winter for my whole life.
There’s something about reading this same book—which is quite long, for a children’s book—every single night that reminds me just how much time goes into parenting. It makes me feel close to my own mum, too, who put in this same time, this same love, when she read it to me over and over so many years ago. I live in the U.S. now, while she’s still at home in Ireland, but when I’m reading this it’s like she’s there with us.
(Source: Spotify)
