The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations

As a reader, author, and interviewer, Winfrey is a pro. Her introductions to each chapter describing how she discovered each of the 10 authors interviewed in the book are easily the best part of the audio edition, both in terms of sound quality and content. Her voice is so conversational that it feels like she is speaking heart-to-heart with the listener. But the interview portions of the book—all 10 of which are excerpted from the original recordings that aired on the television program Super Soul Sunday—are uneven. The volume is inconsistent as listeners move from Oprah’s chapter introduction to a new interview, and the interviews themselves sound choppy; it’s clear they were edited. Since the interviews were originally televised, the body language and facial expressions of the speakers are absent, which makes the conversations feel less resonant in this format. Selections from many of these interviews are already available for free on YouTube, and those segments feel richer and more focused than this compilation. A Flatiron hardcover. (Oct.)