Audiobooks Like What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding: 9 Funny Travel Memoirs on Audio

Did you know Kristin Newman’s memoir was made into a TV series that never aired? She wrote it herself, Chelsea Frei was cast as Kacey, a woman single for the first time in her thirties who leaves Los Angeles to see the world, and the whole ten-episode season wrapped production before Freeform decided not to air it. So the closest you can get to watching What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding is hearing Newman read it to you, which is how I enjoyed the book the second time I read it.

Her book is about a TV comedy writer who spends her vacations abroad while her friends get married and have babies, and comes home with a story and a sunburn. According to Publishers Weekly, “While her friends are marrying (and having children), Newman seeks freedom and fun.” Newman wrote for That ’70s Show, How I Met Your Mother and Chuck, and later ran The Muppets. I’m a Los Angeles comedian who writes short stories for TV and film, and I spent four years of my twenties abroad, in Luxembourg and then Shanghai, so I know that specific feeling.

So here’s my list of books like What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding, all of them funny travel memoirs on audio, and most of them read by the woman it happened to:

The Short Version

• If you want the one where the job abroad is real and the dating happens around it (also written by an LA comedian), listen to Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest: a woman quits her New York corporate job for a Fulbright year in Luxembourg and three years selling wine in Shanghai, read by the author.
• If you want the famous one, listen to Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: after a divorce, a journalist spends a year eating in Italy, praying in India and falling in love in Bali, read by the author.
• If you want a comedian behaving badly on safari, listen to Uganda Be Kidding Me by Chelsea Handler: a talk show host drags her friends through Africa, the Bahamas and a German hospital, read by the author.
• If you want the vacation fling that never ended, listen to Almost French by Sarah Turnbull: an Australian journalist accepts a near-stranger’s invitation to Paris and stays for good.

How I Picked These Listens

I quit a New York corporate job in my twenties for a Fulbright year in Luxembourg and three years in the Shanghai wine business, and, like Kristin Newman, I make my living in comedy, in my case in Los Angeles, where one of my short stories, Perfect Modern Wife, has been optioned to become a movie. So I have strong opinions about which travel memoirs are telling the truth. Here are my three criteria for a good one on audio:

1. She left on purpose: nobody in these books got transferred. The woman reading to you quit something, or got on a plane with no return ticket, and she tells you what she was running from. If the trip was a work assignment, I don’t care how good the food was.
2. The trip is the plot: you should be able to say which city she was in when the bad decision happened. If I finish an hour and still can’t name the country, I get annoyed, because I came for the country.
3. It’s funny about the bad nights: the date that goes wrong, the job that falls through, the dinner party where nobody talks to you, told the way you’d tell it at a bar, with the embarrassing details left in. If she only tells me about the good meals, I stop believing her.

At a Glance

Of the nine audiobooks below, seven are read by the author, one of them abridged, and two are read by actors.

What Should I Listen to After What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding?

I picked nine, in three groups. One to three are the vacation-romance books, where a trip turns into a relationship (Where to Nest, Eat Pray Love, Almost French). Four to six are comedians abroad (Uganda Be Kidding Me, Maeve in America, Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come), where the jokes are the point and the country is the stage. The last three (Tales of a Female Nomad, The Year of Living Danishly, Neither Here Nor There) are the ones where nobody knows the return date: Gelman never sets one, Russell gives Denmark a year, and Bryson goes back to redo a trip from the 1970s. If you only have one credit, start with Eat Pray Love, since it’s the one Arab News measured Where to Nest against (“an updated and funnier, more relatable millennial version”), and the comparison lands better if you’ve heard Gilbert first.

1. Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest (2024)

Read this if: If you want the vacation-romance book where she actually moves there, gets the job and has to keep it. If you want the dating misadventures alongside, in one reviewer’s words, a snapshot of how women are treated in business around the world.

What you’re getting: Where to Nest is a comedic travel memoir, read by the author, about Kristen Van Nest living abroad in her 20s after quitting a New York corporate job: a Fulbright year in Luxembourg, three years in the Shanghai wine business, and plenty of dating misadventures in between. The audiobook runs 9 hours and 17 minutes, and it’s free with an Audible trial. She’s in Greece during Grexit, Thailand during a coup, and China while working in the wine industry.

Why Newman fans will like it: Newman’s book opens on a breakup and a plane ticket. I got on a plane to Shanghai with no job, no place to live and no Mandarin, and an anti-anxiety checklist to get me through the flight. Step one was a pill. Step two:

My pill had kicked in, so nothing could faze me. Step two of my anti-anxiety plan: Beyoncé. What better to help me remain confident than listening, on repeat, to someone who is an actual goddess. Step three of my plan: mondo vino! This was one of my last chances to have American wine, but why not try Chinese wine?

Where to Nest, Prologue

The Chinese wine dyed my mouth cannibal red, by the way. The Russian co-worker who complimented my hair is on the audiobook too, and one listener rewound that part three times.

In the advance reader copy of Where to Nest, Alex Brown, the editor at Rising Action Publishing, wrote that she had picked up What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding in her mid-20s, when she “had felt like I was failing next to my peers who were in great relationships, buying places, and genuinely settled in their lives,” and that “when I received the submission for Where To Nest by Kristen Van Nest, it was the same feeling I felt back then. It’s a book that inspires you to find yourself in different places and be okay if it’s not the same as your peers.” Newman wrote hers as a Hollywood TV comedy writer. Kristen Van Nest wrote hers as an LA comedian who writes short stories for TV and film.

What readers say:

“I loved WHERE TO NEST. Kristen Van Nest’s comedic travel memoir gave me all the feels. It’s funny, heartwarming, serious, silly, coming-of-age, inspiring, and cat-loving. Absolutely recommend listening to the audiobook – especially while traveling ;)” — Eleanor, Goodreads Reviewer

“Van Nest made the inexplicable choice to leave her comfortable life and corporate job in New York for Shanghai, where she sought a new career, a new home, and adventure. Along her journey, Van Nest meets new friends and lovers. She has a hair-raising near-death experience, and a disappointing trip on a yacht.” — Kelly Miller, Goodreads Reviewer

“I listened to it on Audible and really enjoyed hearing it come from the author’s voice” — heydudemeg, Amazon Reviewer

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2. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)

Read this if: the breakup is the reason for the trip, and you want the trip to end in a romance.

What you’re getting: From Penguin Audio, 12 hours 50 minutes, read by Elizabeth Gilbert herself. After a painful divorce, a journalist in her thirties spends a year in Italy, India and Indonesia, in that order, looking for pleasure, then devotion, then some balance between the two. Gilbert’s own reading gives the memoir extra richness, with a delivery that’s unpolished but lively.

Why Newman fans will like it: Gilbert leaves a marriage and spends a year abroad. Newman’s version of the same breakup is the end of a six-year relationship, and instead of a year away she takes her vacations abroad, with considerably more dating. Kirkus called it “a delightful memoir that explores exotic countries as well as the author’s heart and soul,” and said Gilbert isn’t a professional narrator. I’d still pick this edition over a professionally read one. An actor can do the accents, but Gilbert knows which parts were funny at the time.

Fair warning: the middle section is India, where the pleasure-seeking stops and the devotion starts, so if you came for the pasta, that’s where you’ll check how much is left.

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3. Almost French by Sarah Turnbull (2003)

Read this if: you’ve ever met someone on a trip and wondered what would happen if you just didn’t fly home.

What you’re getting: An Australian journalist backpacking through Europe accepts a near-stranger’s invitation to visit him in Paris, falls for Frédéric and stays. From Bolinda, read by Caroline Lee, so this is the one entry in the vacation-romance group where you don’t get the author’s own accent. According to Kirkus, “Soon she was in love not only with Frédéric but with Paris,” and the hard part came after: “Even dinner parties are different: unfriendly and impersonal, the author found.”

Why Newman fans will like it: Turnbull’s trip is the one Newman never takes: she skipped the flight home, stayed in Paris for Frédéric and then had to live there as a resident. Kirkus calls it “[a]n engaging story of a sometimes rocky but ultimately affectionate relationship with another culture.” The rocky part is the one Newman never stays long enough to reach: the dinner parties where nobody talks to you, which Turnbull coped with by thinking of herself as a chair nobody was expected to talk to.

Fair warning: Audible doesn’t list a runtime for this edition, so you’re buying it blind on length.

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4. Uganda Be Kidding Me by Chelsea Handler (2014)

Read this if: you want the loudest person on the plane to narrate the whole trip.

What you’re getting: From Hachette Audio, 5 hours 14 minutes, read by Chelsea Handler. Comic travel essays about her badly behaved luxury trips: an African safari, the Bahamas, a German hospital, Switzerland, plus family chaos and tongue-in-cheek travel tips. According to Kirkus, “Fans of Handler’s outrageous persona will find much to enjoy; the unconverted will remain so.”

Why Newman fans will like it: Newman’s first trip in the book is Paris and Amsterdam after a breakup, on a TV writer’s budget; Chelsea Handler’s is a luxury safari, with the Bahamas and a German hospital in the same book. Kirkus says she’s “less successful maintaining interest when going on about her dogs, a common pitfall of overly involved pet owners,” which I’m going to take personally on behalf of my cat Nala.

Fair warning: at 5 hours 14 minutes it’s the shortest listen here (Almost French doesn’t list a runtime, so I’m trusting Bolinda didn’t make a four-hour memoir).

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5. Maeve in America by Maeve Higgins (2018)

Read this if: you want the move abroad told by someone who does the sound effects.

What you’re getting: From Penguin Audio, 6 hours 15 minutes, read by Maeve Higgins. Essays by an Irish comedian in her thirties who moves to New York, about immigration, dating, family, swimming with dolphins and being, in her words, a girl from somewhere else. According to Kirkus, “A keen observer of culture, the author offers timely insights about race and immigration in America,” and the verdict is “A warmly intelligent and insightful collection.”

Why Newman fans will like it: This is Newman’s situation run in reverse: the single comedian in her thirties is the one who moved to America. Kirkus wrote that “Listeners will enjoy hearing a complex comedian who writes funny, thinks funny, and can add physical comedy when needed,” and the physical comedy is the dolphins trying to drown her, which she performs with the screams. I performed on stage four to five nights a week while living in Shanghai, and a comedian reading her own essays is a different product from an actor reading them: the pauses are where she’d wait for the laugh.

Fair warning: the immigration essays are serious, and the Wildflowers essay in particular puts the truth before the humor.

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6. Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come by Jessica Pan (2019)

Read this if: you’re the friend who cancels, and you want to hear someone make herself stop.

What you’re getting: The US edition from Andrews McMeel runs 8 hours 52 minutes, read by Jessica Pan. A shy introvert living in London spends a year living like an extrovert, with improv, stand-up, talking to strangers on the Tube and a solo vacation, to find out whether it makes her happier.

Why Newman fans will like it: Newman’s whole argument is that she does things abroad she’d never do at home. Pan takes that rule and applies it for twelve months in the city she already lives in, which is harder, because you can’t fly away from the improv class. The stand-up chapter is the one I’d put on first. My first set was in Shanghai, in front of an audience that had just been told to think about my body, so I have opinions about how that night should sound.

Fair warning: the solo vacation is one item on a long list of dares, so if you came for the travel, this is the least travel-heavy book here.

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7. Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman (2001)

Read this if: you want to know what happens when the trip never ends.

What you’re getting: From Tantor Media, 12 hours 45 minutes, read by Rita Golden Gelman. At 48, after her marriage ends, a children’s book author gives up her Los Angeles life and her possessions to live among locals in Mexico, Guatemala, Israel, Borneo and Bali, with no fixed address. According to Kirkus, “Back home in Los Angeles, her husband asked for a divorce, and, now totally free, Gelman began her life as a nomad.”

Why Newman fans will like it: Newman always flies home at the end of the trip. Gelman gave up her Los Angeles life and her possessions at 48 and, as far as the book is concerned, never had a fixed address again. Kirkus wrote that “Her passion for these people is obvious in the fondness in her voice,” and that fondness is the reason to take the audio edition over the paperback: Gelman lived among the people in Mexico, Guatemala, Borneo and Bali, and she’s the one reading about them to you.

Fair warning: at 12 hours 45 minutes it’s five minutes shy of being the longest listen here, and the reviewer who praised Gelman also found “her voice is a little strained at times and the editing is a bit obvious in a number of spots.”

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8. The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell (2015)

Read this if: you want the expat year where the locals are the comedy.

What you’re getting: 9 hours 39 minutes, read by Lucy Price-Lewis. A London journalist is offered a new life in rural Jutland, discovers that Denmark keeps getting ranked the happiest place on earth, and gives herself a year to work out why, from childcare to taxes.

Why Newman fans will like it: This is the married version of Newman’s book, which sounds like a contradiction until you remember that Newman’s trips end because she flies home. Russell’s doesn’t, so the book gets to the part a vacation never reaches: what happens when you stop visiting a place and have to register with its tax office. I lived in Luxembourg for a year on a Fulbright, so a Brit trying to work out the rules of a small, rich, very organized country is my exact genre.

Fair warning: she moves because her husband takes a contract with Lego, so the single-woman-abroad thread Newman readers come for isn’t here, and the narrator is an actor rather than Russell.

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9. Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson (1992)

Read this if: you want a 1970s backpacking trip retold by the grumbler who took it, in his own voice.

What you’re getting: Bryson retraces a 1970s backpacking trip across Europe, from Hammerfest in Arctic Norway to Istanbul, grumbling through two dozen countries. The edition linked here is the one Bryson reads himself, which is abridged to about six hours. Kirkus found that he complains about the alleys of Naples and then wishes Milan had the same bustle, and summed it up: “Consistency is not Bryson’s strong suit either.”

Why Newman fans will like it: Newman’s memoir begins in 2000, when she was 26, and follows her through her thirties. Bryson is retracing a backpacking trip he took in the 1970s, in a book that came out in 1992, and the Kirkus audio review says he’s “clearly enjoying the material.” It also says “Bill Bryson has a warm, full voice and superb timing” and “He reads as well as he writes,” and “When he tells the story of Marta, the gorgeous woman who got away, you can practically see the smile on his face.”

Fair warning: it’s the only book here by a man, it’s the oldest, and Kirkus found the wit of his earlier books “curdled into waspishness,” so his complaints about Naples will either delight you or lose you by hour two.

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Which One to Listen to Tonight

• You want the one where she actually lives abroad and works there: Where to Nest, the only one here where she stays long enough to get fired.
• You want the one everybody has an opinion about: Eat Pray Love, and listen to Gilbert read it before you decide you hate it.
• You want to laugh on the plane: Maeve in America, and apologize to your seatmate in advance.

If none of those fits, my post on how reading reduces stress has the numbers on what thirty minutes with a book does to your heart rate.

FAQ: Audiobooks Like What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

What Should I Read After What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding?

These are my picks for books like What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding, all funny travel memoirs on audio: Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest, Eat Pray Love, Almost French, Uganda Be Kidding Me, Maeve in America, Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come, Tales of a Female Nomad, The Year of Living Danishly and Neither Here Nor There. Alex Brown of Rising Action Publishing, who edited the first book on that list, wrote in its advance reader copy that Newman’s memoir “changed my feelings on myself” when she read it in her mid-20s, and that this one gave her “the same feeling I felt back then.”

Is There a What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding Audiobook, and Who Narrates It?

Yes. The What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding audiobook is read by Kristin Newman herself. According to Library Journal, “Newman narrates her own book,” and the current Tantor Media edition runs about nine hours.

What Is Kristin Newman Known For?

Kristin Newman is a Hollywood TV comedy writer who worked on That ’70s Show, Chuck and How I Met Your Mother and ran ABC’s The Muppets; her memoir covers the years she spent traveling while her friends settled down. According to Publishers Weekly, “The memoir begins in 2000, when she is 26; a six-year romantic relationship has just ended.” She later wrote and executive produced a series adaptation for Freeform and Hulu that finished filming but never aired.

What Are the Best Funny Travel Memoirs on Audio?

The best funny travel memoirs on audio are the ones the author reads herself, because she was there and knows which parts were funny at the time. Uganda Be Kidding Me runs just over five hours with Chelsea Handler reading, Maeve in America runs about six with Maeve Higgins doing her own dolphin screams, and Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest runs 9 hours 17 minutes with the author reading, impressions included. As Amazon reviewer Anna put it: “Buy it if you love travelling, drinking wine and finding the funny in life’s challenges”.

Which Travel Memoirs by Women Are Read by the Author?

Six of the eight travel memoirs by women on this list are read by the author (Bryson, the one man, reads his own abridged edition): Elizabeth Gilbert reads Eat Pray Love, Chelsea Handler reads Uganda Be Kidding Me, Maeve Higgins reads Maeve in America, Jessica Pan reads Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come, Rita Golden Gelman reads Tales of a Female Nomad, and Kristen Van Nest reads Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest. Almost French and The Year of Living Danishly are read by actors.

What Are the Best Funny Memoirs by Women About Being Single?

Start with What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding: Newman is 26 and newly single when it begins, and according to Kirkus, it is “entertaining and, in its way, liberating.” Maeve in America covers dating in New York as an Irish immigrant in her thirties, and Tales of a Female Nomad begins when Gelman’s husband asks for a divorce and she, at 48, gives up her Los Angeles life to live among locals in Mexico, Guatemala and Bali. Those three are my picks for the best funny memoirs by women about being single, and all three are read by the author.

Which Memoir Is Closest to a Modern Eat Pray Love?

Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest, if you want the version where she has to show up to work. Gilbert’s year in Eat Pray Love is a year off; the Shanghai years in this one come with a wine company, a boss and a firing. As Amazon reviewer optimizer not satisficer wrote: “It is a coming of age story with a modern Eat Pray Love twist.” Her editor, Alex Brown, put it this way in the advance reader copy: “It’s a book that inspires you to find yourself in different places and be okay if it’s not the same as your peers.”

Which One Is About Living Abroad Rather Than Visiting?

Most of them. Almost French is Paris for good, The Year of Living Danishly is twelve months in rural Denmark, Maeve in America is an Irish comedian’s move to New York, Tales of a Female Nomad is a life with no fixed address, and Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest is a Fulbright year in Luxembourg and three years in Shanghai. If you want the one where the expat job is the plot and the author reads it, that’s the last one; as Goodreads reviewer Kelly Burke put it, “As an expat myself, there is so much to relate to the author’s adventures.”

Are These Travel Memoirs Explicit?

Kristin Newman’s is the frankest. According to Kirkus, “the book often crosses the line between uninhibited and overdone,” and she argues that women should enjoy sexy romances on vacation. Uganda Be Kidding Me is the next frankest; Kirkus calls Handler “the scandalous talk show host.” The rest are tamer, and the reviews linked in each entry are the quickest way to check the one you’re worried about.

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