Joan Didion died in 2021, but the interest in her life and work has only increased since then. Alissa Wilkinson’s new biography comes out March 11; meanwhile, the Didionfest is well underway. One must-listen is the new audio edition of Didion’s 1968 debut essay collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Macmillan Audio, 6 hours and 23 minutes), read by actor Maya Hawke. Hawke finds the exact blend of unflappability, dry humor, and sensitivity that does justice to Didion’s observations about such topics as 5-year-olds on acid in Haight-Ashbury, John Wayne’s demeanor on the set of his last movie after his cancer diagnosis, and having a bit of a nervous breakdown in Manhattan in her 20s. Hawke delivers Didion’s epiphanies—like discovering “the dismal fact that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others”—with just the right note of ironic self-deprecation. For some readers, there are essays we know almost by heart—for me, it’s “Goodbye to All That” and “On Keeping a Notebook”—and the pleasure of hearing them read aloud is something like a believer listening to liturgy. If you really can’t get enough, go back and listen to Diane Keaton’s 2012 recording of the collection, also very good.

Lili Anolik is known for her podcast about the Bennington College “brat pack” (Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem, Bret Easton Ellis) and Eve’s Hollywood, her 2019 biography of Eve Babitz, an essayist, collagist, and party girl who was friends with Didion and her husband. Anolik now brings her gossipy, digressive, hold-that-thought style to a book that aims to show that Babitz and Didion’s relationship was central to the writings of both. While Didion & Babitz (Simon & Schuster Audio, 12 hours and 34 minutes), read by the author, may not convince you, it’s fun to watch her try. Be forewarned: True believers will surely be rubbed the wrong way by some of her wilder assertions about Didion—in discussing The Year of Magical Thinking, for instance, she asserts that the author “crawled over the corpses” of her husband and daughter to reinvigorate her career!

To form your own opinion of Babitz’s oeuvre, check out I Used To Be Charming (Brilliance Audio, 14 hours and 41 minutes), read by Brittany Presley. Babitz’s writings about posing nude with Marcel Duchamp, sleeping with Jim Morrison, and the spectacle of San Franciscans visiting Los Angeles, struck the Kirkus reviewer as “zesty essays by a sly observer.” Agreed. But let’s also agree that Babitz was not remotely trying to offer the kind of goose-bump-producing insight and rhetorical power Didion was after in every sentence.

Cory Leadbeater spent the last portion of Didion’s life as her full-time personal assistant, living for several years in her apartment—nearly as close to her, he points out more than once, as if they were married. At the same time, he was writing fiction, coping with his addictions and obsessive suicidal ideation, and dealing with the awful fact that his father was serving time in prison for fraud. Didion patiently read every word Leadbeater wrote, offering constant encouragement. But her real gift to him was this story. As read by Charlie Thurston, The Uptown Local: Joy, Death and Joan Didion (HarperAudio, 6 hours) is a moving and well-written memoir of an unusual relationship that got both parties through very difficult times. 

Marion Winik hosts The Weekly Reader podcast on NPR.