Audio Everywhere (May 15, 2014, Library Journal cover story)

“Monica Claassen, a web content developer with a long commute, wistfully remembers a time when she could read a novel a week. Now that she spends between eight and ten hours weekly in the car, those days are far ­behind. ‘The time I would’ve spent reading at home is now taken up with driving,’ says Claassen. Still, she managed to squeeze in about 30 novels and memoirs last year, thanks to her growing audiobook habit.”

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Public Praxis: A Vision for Critical Information Literacy in Public Libraries (Public Library Quarterly vol. 29, issue 2)

“Public libraries in the United States have a radical opportunity to incorporate information literacy into their service missions. This article explores the reasons why public libraries are not addressing information literacy and engages the educational theories of John Dewey, Paolo Freire, and New Literacy studies to argue that critical information literacy in public libraries is essential to the vitality of democratic societies. In order to deliver these services to their communities, public libraries must provide not only the technologies and instruction for information literacy, but also the impetus for action—what Freire called ‘praxis.'”

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Winning audiobook of the year for Heavy surprised Kiese Laymon, but it meant even more to his mother

“It was clear from the start that the audio for Heavy was something special. Writing in the form of a letter to his mother, Kiese Laymon left everything on the table to tell us about his childhood as a black boy growing up in Mississippi. In poetic delivery, he details the eating disorders, addictions, and bittersweet family love that have followed him throughout his life. As the Audible editors’ memoir specialist, Rachel Smalter Hall made sure everyone caught on to the talent that Kiese brought to the table, as well as the unprecedented intimacy of what he chose to share. Listen in as Rachel and Kiese talk about what it meant to literally find his voice with his incredibly vulnerable and frank work.”

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Finding Self Help in Fiction: A Stranger Truth

“Fiction might not have a checklist at the end of each chapter to help one live a better life, but it does provide a narrative lens through which to view the human experience. It’s proven to help build empathy, and it can give us tools to make sense of our own lives and how we relate to others. As a lifelong, card-carrying bookworm, here are some of the unlikely lessons I’ve mined from the stories I’ve listened to and loved.”

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The Year I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Audiobooks

“Maybe it was a little weird to start a brand new job with an audiobook about loss and death, but I hit the slippery highway anyway that first morning listening to The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, about the incredible pain of losing her husband and her daughter nearly, too, all within one year. I was excited about my new library, but I guess I felt a little lonely, too; maybe even a tiny bit like dying from the unknownness of it all.”

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“Listening to Books is Cheating” and 7 More Myths About Audiobooks

“A few years back, I found myself in a situation where I needed to fold 300 origami peacocks in a very short window of time, and audiobooks became my bookish shame as I secretly listened to Jim Dale narrate Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire while making thousands of tiny creases. For most of my reading life, I’d been waaaay too snobby about books to even think about ‘reading’ audiobooks. But these days, I’m a commuting librarian who reads just as many books via audio as I do by print or eReader, and it’s made me a bit of an audiobook evangelist.”

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Genre Kryptonite: Badass Female Revenge Thrillers

“Enter Out by Natsuo Kirino, my initiation to the badass female revenge thriller. Out is about four women who work the graveyard shift at a Japanese bento factory and get pulled into a dark and twisty pact when one of them goes home and chops off her husband’s head. Out is the book that finally showed me I don’t like goody two-shoes detectives or tough-talking mob bosses. What I crave in a thriller is a slighted girl on the wrong side of the law who grabs her own justice by the balls.”

Read the rest at Book Riot »