Joe Marler Audiobooks

Loose Head: a sporting memoir, read aloud by its own author

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.6/5 average

3 listener ratings

Who is Joe Marler?

Loose head is a position rather than a mood: the left-hand side of a rugby front row, where a scrum is either won or comprehensively lost. As a title it does two jobs at once, naming a place on the pitch and hinting at a character, and it is how Joe Marler comes to our catalogue.

Our shelving puts the book in two places, biography and memoir alongside sport and the outdoors, which is where the better sporting books tend to land: a life told through a game rather than a game recounted at length. Eight hours leaves room for both, and the fact that the recording carries the author’s own voice suggests a book always meant to sound like conversation rather than record.

Joe Marler in audiobooks

Joe Marler narrates in person, which changes the character of a memoir entirely. Timing, self-deprecation and the pauses that carry a story arrive first-hand instead of being reconstructed by a performer, and for a book of this kind that is worth a great deal.

Ratings so far are far too few to lean on, so judge it on the premise instead: eight hours of a sporting life told by the person who lived it. Rugby followers are the obvious audience, though a well-told career story reaches further than any one sport. The full listing follows below.