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308: Nonfiction Audiobook Recommendations


Have you discovered a nonfiction audiobook that completely drew you in? In this episode, we’re sharing some of our favorite nonfiction audiobooks as part of the 2026 Unabridged Reading Challenge.


Before diving into our recommendations, we start with our bookish check-in. Then we turn to nonfiction audiobooks we’ve loved. Jen recommends Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), an accessible and hopeful look at climate change that balances honest data with practical, actionable solutions. Ashley shares Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm), a candid, funny, and informative guide to exploring gender and sexuality that tackles complex topics with openness and compassion.


We wrap up with a Lit Chat question about how we treat our books, including whether we annotate, use book darts, or keep every page pristine.


If you’re looking for a great nonfiction audiobook to add to your TBR (or your reading challenge list), we hope you’ll join us for the conversation!





Bookish Check-in

Ashley - Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Jen - Allen Levi’s Theo of Golden (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)


Our Nonfiction Audiobook Recommendations

Ashley - Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Jen - Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)


Lit Chat Game

Listen in to hear our responses to today’s lit chat game question.


(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)


Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.

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Full Transcript for Episode

[00:00:35] Ashley: Hi, and welcome to Unabridged. This is episode 308, and today we are discussing nonfiction audiobook recommendations. This is for a category on the 2026 Unabridged Pod Reading Challenge. Before we get started today, we're gonna share our bookish check-in. Jen, what are you reading?

[00:00:54] Jen: I am reading Allen Levi's Theo of Golden. I'm doing a buddy read of this one with Read with Tony on Instagram, and so far it's really good. I'm listening to the audio, which David Morse, the actor, if anyone knows who that is, is new. So, of course, that is a fantastic listening experience. The book is about a man named Theo, who just shows up in this small southern town called Golden one day.

[00:01:21] Nobody knows him. He doesn't really seem to have any connections with anyone in the town. He is, we learn originally from Portugal, and he just sort of wanders around, and he ends up going into this coffee shop. And on the walls are all of these portraits, I guess, of people, and he's really interested in them, and he decides that he is going to purchase them one at a time and give the portrait to the person who is the subject of the portrait.

[00:01:56] The subject's names are written on the back. So the first one he does is of a woman who is a local. She works in finance somehow. I think she's a CPA, and he looks her up on the internet and is able to find her address and writes a letter in longhand, this letter saying, I would like to give you a gift.

[00:02:19] Meet me on this bench by this fountain at this time, and I'd like to give you a gift of this portrait. And she, of course,  is like, who is this dude? Why is he writing to me? Is this a scam? Her husband is an attorney, so she has him look it over, and ultimately they are suspicious, but intrigued enough that they decide they'll go, and they'll kind of stand back and look before they approach the man and

[00:02:46] see what they think. So they get there. The attorney husband is distracted by someone. The woman sees this 80-year-old guy with a cap as he described, and decides to approach him. And they have this great conversation,  and he gives her the portrait. And it's this lovely interaction where he's basically just talking about how he loves to give gifts.

[00:03:07] He feels very rewarded by the act of giving and so on. So. That sort of starts the pattern of the book so far, where Theo was researching different people and finding out a little bit about their lives. In these brief conversations that he has, he is also able to find lodging. He rents from someone local.

[00:03:28] He makes friends with a local bookstore owner, and everybody's really intrigued by Theo and asks him questions, which he is very adept at. Avoiding. So he'll tell them a little bit, but only so much. And then he distracts with questions about them. So it's very much a situation where he is getting to know them better than they are getting to know him.

[00:03:50] And I just started a chapter. That goes back into Theo's history a little bit. So I, as a reader, am learning more about his backstory, even though the people in the town of Golden have not yet found out much. So, yeah, so far I'm really enjoying it. It's a really nice thing. That feels like such a pale word, but it's also just a nice narrative, a nice story.

[00:04:15] It very much has that sense, sort of like a parable, that kind of sense of this is something that is realistic, sort of, but not really. There may be a larger message, but anyway, so that is Allen Levi's Theo of Golden.

[00:04:29] Ashley: Huh. I am really intrigued to read that one. I've heard a lot of good things, but I didn't know anything about the plot. So yeah, I hope to read.

[00:04:35] Jen: Yeah. I'll be really interested to see kind of where the arc of the story goes. But what are you reading, Ashley?

[00:04:42] Ashley: One of the ones I'm reading right now is Charlotte McConaughey's, Wild Dark Shore.

[00:04:47] Jen: Yay.

[00:04:48] That is one that I have been waiting to get from the library. And so I was really excited when my hold came in. And it starts, I read her once there were wolves. It's the one I have read of hers so far. It was one of my favorite books of the year, the year that I read it. It has really stayed with me, so I was interested to read more of her work. And this one is set on a remote island near Antarctica. It's a fictional island called Shearwater, but it is based on some islands that are realand it's a tundra, and there is a family living there who lives in the lighthouse.

[00:05:25] It houses one of the seed banks. That is an attempt to protect all of the seeds of the world in case there is a disaster, and things are needed to repopulate our plants. And so there's a seed bank there, and there were all these researchers, but now the island is sinking because of the rising sea level, and because of that, all of the researchers have left, and they're trying to finalize the seed bank transfer as much as they can.

[00:06:01] And the family is still there for a few more weeks while they complete this process, and they're supposed to be leaving. Right at the beginning, we meet Dominic and his three children, Fen, Raff, and Orley. And then we also have a different perspective coming in from someone named Rowan. Rowan is a mysterious woman who washes up on the shore and

[00:06:29] Orly finds her. He actually believes that she's dead when he finds her because she washes ashore and is in really bad shape. But she is alive, and the family does what they can to help her there. Of course, they have medical supplies and things because the island has been stocked with the things that would be needed for the researchers in the family.

[00:06:51] But they don't have, of course, they don't have like, access to a hospital and stuff. So they're trying to address her wounds and help her heal and help her in that recovery process. And yet as the story is starting to unfold, we can also tell. Everyone is holding a lot of secrets. There are a lot of secrets on all sides, and it's unclear what those are, but that tension is rife throughout the beginning of trying to assess as a reader what it is that everyone knows that they're not saying.

[00:07:25] And so there's a lot of mysterious elements, and also like, and once there were wolves, there is a tremendous appreciation for nature and a bleak understanding of how much havoc humanity iswreakingg on the natural world. And so, I mean, I'm just swept away. I really love her work. I think that I'll probably read everything she writes.

[00:07:51] I just, I think that she is able to craft a really fascinating narrative while also setting. The environmental context is such a, like, really like a character in the story that I think is really rich. So I'm loving it. And again, that's Charlotte McConaughey's Wild Dark Shore, and I've been wanting to read this one for a long time, and I'm glad to be reading it.

[00:08:12] Yeah, I had an ARC of that one, nd I really enjoyed it. There was one thing at the end that I did not love, so when you're finished, we'll have to chat. But yeah, I really enjoyed that and I agree. I think her writing is amazing, and I love the way she's blending thatcli-fii with the very compelling story of this family.

[00:08:32] You've got a lot of cool things ahead of you in that story, so yeah, I'm like biting my lip.

[00:08:38] Ashley: Yes. I think the other thing I'm really enjoying is just like it's a propulsive read. So I really like that, and I think that is something that I have stayed away from recently. I've really noticed that, like, because I'm trying not to read things that are heavy, then I don't get that feeling sometimes.

[00:08:53] And so, I'm enjoying that piece. I'm like, oh, this is why it's worthwhile, even if things are a little emotionally taxing. So, we'll see. Today, we are discussing nonfiction audiobooks that we want to recommend. And again, the reason we're doing this specifically is just because it is a category on the Unabridged Reading Challenge this year.

[00:09:10] So we wanted to share ones that we have enjoyed recently and wanted to recommend. Jen, what is your recommendation?

[00:09:16] Jen: So this is actually a really topical book. This would qualify for another category as well.

[00:09:23] The book I'm recommending is Hannah Ritchie's, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. I have, I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast. I know I wrote about this in a post. This was one of my favorite books of the year that it was published, and first of all, it is narrated by the author Hannah Ritchie, nearing it.

[00:09:44] She is Scottish, which is fun, I always love a Scottish accent, butitt is an empowering book about climate change and the environment, and I think that is what drew me to it. She is not delusional about the state of the world. She acknowledges that there are a lot of things that have not gone well, that we have made some decisions that we cannot pull back from.

[00:10:08] But she also acknowledges that there has been a lot of progress, and she has some really concrete recommendations for things that we can do to move towards sustainability. After reading this, I really fell in love with it,  and every year at my school, we do a whole school read, and we actually did this as our whole school read.

[00:10:30] And I think the students had a similar reaction because I think so often when you read about how bad climate change is and about some of the things that we've done, you just feel hopeless because if it's that bad. The changes we make aren't actually going to make a difference. And Ritchie’s argument is that there are still actionable changes we can make that will make a difference.

[00:10:53] So it's divided into chapters about different topics. So, for example, there's one about carbon emissions. There's one about deforestation, there's one about air quality, and she goes through and provides a history of each of thesproblemsms of potential progress we may or may not have made. And then she has a section at the end about how people can act.

[00:11:20] to do something about those particular problems. So yeah, I just found it to be very readable. There is data within the text, so it is supported by data, but it's not overwhelming you with the data, if that makes sense. Our students found it to be very readable, and again, I think just that actionable quality without being deceptive about the seriousness of the problems we're facing.

[00:11:48] The fact that she presents things in an actionable way was really inspiring. So that is Hannah Ritchie's Not The End of The world: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.

[00:11:59] Ashley: Oh man, so I remember you talking about that at some point, and I have just really wanted to read it. Somebody who was in my master's program, which I recently completed. She focused on anxiety related to climate change and really did a lot of research around it. And what evolved throughout her research and her projects

[00:12:21] Was that exactly what you're saying, Jen? The thing that they have found most reduces the anxiety that some of our young people are experiencing is having actionable items and being able to do them in group ways, which is what the data is showing actually helps people. With their mental health related to it.

[00:12:40] But it reminded me a lot. Like there were lots of things that she shared that made me think about this book that I really wanna read that because yeah, I think that, Unfortunately, it's just not, when you think about like the Venn diagram of people who are talking about all the horrible things happening and then people who are hoping to make positive change, there's just not, unfortunately, like there's not a lot in that middle area because things are o bleak and a lot of times the people who are presenting that information are so attuned to that piece that then it's hard to have that balance.

[00:13:10] So yeah, I really wanna read this. I will. There's another one on my TBR.

[00:13:14] Jen: Yeah, I think you would enjoy it. She also talks about some things that have been advertised to be a big deal that don't ultimately make that much of a difference, and so she's also sort of assuaging the reader's guilt about maybe this is not a sacrifice they've chosen to make, and sometimes they're sacrifices that just really,, at the end of the day, aren't

[00:13:34] thais t necessary. So that was an interesting angle on it, too, which, yeah, there were a few things. I was like, oh yeah, I do that and feel self-righteous when I do that thing, and ultimately my time would be better spent on this other action, perhaps. So,

[00:13:48] Ashley: Yeah. That's cool. Very interesting.

[00:13:51] Jen: What would you recommend, Ashley?

[00:13:53] Ashley: So the one I wanted to share is Juno Dawson's. This Book is Gay. I, this one came out in 2014, I think it's been out a while, and I just had never read it. I really have wanted to; I heard great things when it came out. I think that David Leviathan does the introduction. I love his work,rk and so I just was like really interested to tune in to this and see what it was like.

[00:14:20] and I listened to this one on audio, and the audiobook was excellent. But essentially. It's kind of just a playbook for exploring gender and sexuality and just, chapter by chapter, really diving into being curious, asking questions,  and including, and being inclusive.

[00:14:41] And I think what I love throughout the book is that it is outright funny. It's like, laugh out loud, funny, but Dawson also openly and honestly states a lot of things that we as a culture just dance around. And so I think that, like in the publisher's synopsis, it says there's a long-running joke that, after quote unquote coming out, a lesbian, gugaybisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and instruction manual.

[00:15:09] This is that instruction manual. You're welcome. And I feel like that is the tone of the book, justa playful one. But an honest exploration of what all these terms mean o, of what some of the stereotypes are, how they can be hurtful, why they exist, and how they can be. Like as you're trying to have your own identity or support other people in their identity journeys, it's ways of talking about how to do that in an affirming way as opposed to in a non-affirming way.

[00:15:40] But even Dawson explores some of the stereotypes that exist and how sometimes the way that we help ourselves, associate with groups is by leaning into something that could be stereotypical, but is also like a way of identifying yourself, or showing yourself to be part of a group. And so I think all of that was just really nuanced and really interestingly explored.

[00:16:01] And so yeah, I just think, I think it's an important book. I think that it is a book that speaks to hard conversations that we absolutely should be having and so often aren't. And it reminds me a lot also of, like, when I first had kids, and I was looking at how to help them, develop like positive sexuality, like positive identity, positive ways of just learning things like consent, that a lot of it was about like.

[00:16:26] Having things on hand that they could access at an age-appropriate level for themselves. Because so often, like having access to information that isvetted information is so powerful because even if you, as an adult, feel comfortable having conversations, your younger person often might not. And so, like what I love about this book is just again, chapter by chapter is just like a very explicit, what I think is a really good way of just saying the things that might be a hard thing to ask, but something that somebody would really want to know. There's a lot about normalizing and just helping to be accepting. And again, something that I really took away was just this idea that, like, if we were all more curious about our identities and our sexuality, that.

[00:17:07] That would just be so helpful for our society. And so I think, you know, there's just a lot of takeaways from it, but I loved it, and it was just something that I've meant to read for a long time. Andase I said, the audiobook was really great. So again, this is Juno Dawson's, This Book Is Gay.

[00:17:22] Jen: That has been on my list for so long, and sadly, most recently I have seen it because it is on a lot of banned book lists for libraries and high schools and yeah, so I feel like I've seen it a lot for that reason, which makes me want to read it even more and support the author. It sounds great.

[00:17:41] Ashley: Yes. And I did look, Dawson is a trans woman, but she talks about transgender people, but does not talk about her own experience explicitly in the book. So it is very much about, I think, that she transitioned at least openly after this book was written. So she doesn't really talk about that.

[00:17:57] But what one thing that I think is really clear is, again, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about, I mean, a lot of people are just really ignorant about trans people, but it's very much about how being trans has nothing to do with your sexuality. Like, these are two very different things.

[00:18:11] And so, of course, being trans has to do with your gender identity. And so she really talks about that. But then she also talks about how sometimes that does overlap because of the way that romantic interests play into who we are as people. But I felt like all of that was really informative also, especially for younger people, you know, for teens, who aren't getting answers to any of that.

[00:18:30] Like I just, again, I just love normalization of the spectrum of things. And then also just about this idea of like, if we're just more curious, people are just happier and more loving and more accepting, and how beautiful that is.

[00:18:43] Jen: That sounds great.

[00:18:45] Ashley: Also, I forgot that the category is in fact an audiobook. So just circling back, like this is where I looked in my Libro FM, thanks to them.

[00:18:53] As I looked in my nonfiction audiobook list, and this was one that was like, like Jen said, I just had been meaning to read it for a long time, and I was like, oh, I wanna listen to this on audio. So, circling back to that piece, like yes, I did listen on audio because it's in fact the category. We hope that you have found a nonfiction audio book that you are enjoying, and we would love to hear what that is.

[00:19:15] And to end today, we're going to do a question from our lit chat game, I think. Is that right, Jen?

[00:19:21] Jen: That is correct. All right. How do you treat your books? Do you make notes in them, dog-ear pages, or do you keep every page absolutely pristine? If you do make notes in your books, have you ever gone back and looked at them?

[00:19:34] Ashley: This is a great question. My process on this has evolved a lot over time. I used to be a big note taker, underliner, and highlighter in my books, and I was shocked when I started teaching that a lot of my students were very resistant to marking in books. And now as a parent, I'm like, oh, I see where this happens.

[00:19:58] Because when they're very small, you're like, don't put that marker all over that book, because then you cannot read the book. So it's funny now as a parent, I'm like, oh, I see how kids internalize this message that it's like totally forbidden to write in a book. But I always did a lot of annotating, because I.

[00:20:13] Read a lot of literature. I was an English major, but then over time, I don't mark in them anymore, really. I did go back to the ones where I had the notes. Yes. Like when I was teaching books, it was really nice to have pencil notes in books. That was helpful, and having underlined all of that.

[00:20:30] Was helpful. But I've moved toward book darts. I hardly ever write in books anymore. Some of that is because I'm not teaching them in the classroom. Some of that is because, over time, like when I started working with kids who couldn't write in any of the books, which of course they can't, if the books belong to the school, I got away from that practice in a lot of ways.

[00:20:47] So yeah, my journey with that has really evolved. What about you, Jen?

[00:20:50] Jen: It depends. So I don'tdog-earr much unless I'm desperate. Instead

[00:20:55] Ashley: I forgot about the dog gear. Yeah, same. I don't like the dog.

[00:20:57] gear.

[00:20:58] Jen: Yeah. It depends on my purpose. So I'll, I'll use book darts if it's a library book or if I'm just reading it, maybe for a one-off discussion. If I am teaching it. I do still take notes in the books and just note things that I.

[00:21:12] I think I wanna highlight for the students or make sure they know, or go back to. And then those are the ones that I reread. So I don't go back just to books like when I was in college or grad school, unless I'm teaching it. I don't go back just to look at the notes, but of course, if I'm rereading, you can't help but see them along the way.

[00:21:32] And sometimes it's interesting to see the things that you thought were significant. Many years ago, and you're like, why did I markthats, or how did I not mark this passage? I would say for me, it's all of the things except dog gearing, but it does depend on context for me. Yeah.

[00:21:48] Ashley: Fair enough. Yeah. That's true about the dog earing. I really dislike that. So it's funny how there are some things and same, I do occasionally do it when I'm desperate,

[00:21:55] Jen: Uhhuh?

[00:21:56] Ashley: But it is one that I'm always regretting after because that crease is there forever, you know? Well, thank you all so much for listening today.

[00:22:03] We would love to hear what nonfiction audiobooks you are reading for the challenge,  and we'll see you next time. Thanks.

[00:22:10] Jen: Do you have comments or opinions about what you heard today? We'd love to hear them. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @unabridgedpod or on the web at unabridgedpod.com for ways to support us to get more involved. You can sign up for our newsletter. Join a Buddy Read or become an ambassador.

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