100 Amazing People, 100 Unforgettable Stories

“I remember the exact moment I fell in love with audiobooks. I was driving on the highway in winter, listening to Patti Smith read her award-winning memoir, Just Kids, and I felt like she was right there in the car with me. I repeat: it’s like I was on a road trip with actual punk icon Patti Smith (!). There’s something so intimate and relatable about hearing someone tell you their own story in their own voice, and I’ve been totally hooked on audio memoirs ever since. These 100 unforgettable memoirs are all read by the authors themselves.”

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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.”

Read the rest at Library Journal »

Audiobooks! Newsletter Archive

“Howdy, audiobook friends. Pinch me, because I think I might be a ghost stuck in the bardo… I’m still recovering from talking to George Saunders about the making of his 166-voice celebrity studded audiobook, Lincoln in the Bardo (!!!). I loved this funny, spine-tingly listen more than I can say, and am so excited that George Saunders and executive producer Kelly Gildea kindly gave Book Riot this behind-the-scenes look at the making of this special audiobook. Enjoy!”

Read the rest at Book Riot Newsletters »

Book Riot Author Archive

“Maybe you’ve already heard of these excellent books, or even put a few on your To-Be-Read list. But what you might not know is that the audiobook versions elevate them to must-listen status. There’s something about each narrator’s performance that reveals just how funny, or sad, or insightful that particular book is. So suit up for your favorite audiobook-listening activity, and treat yourself to one of these fantastic listens!”

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36 Best Audiobooks For Your Road Trip And Beyond

“We at Book Riot heart audiobooks just as much as we heart adventure. Here are 36 of the best audiobooks we’ve been listening to lately — from brand-new to backlist, romance to history. Enjoy them on your next road trip or wherever you get your listening fix.”

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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.”

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The Reinvention of the Modern Book Club: Now With More Beer

“While each [book club] is unique, a few common threads bind them together: a penchant for pale ales and whiskey, a co-ed makeup, and an open-to-all ethos meant to attract like-minded book enthusiasts rather than invitation-only cliques. Above all, they share a longing to reclaim challenging books from institutions and situate them instead in rowdy bars and book-crammed lofts — the Third Space meeting rooms of a new generation of readers. This summer I caught up with five boozy book clubs from Brooklyn to Seattle to find out what they’ve been reading and how they’re reinventing the literary gathering.”

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Ozark Outlaws

“To characterize Woodrell’s work just as tough and gritty would be to miss out on some of its finer nuances. Following in the footsteps of other southern gothic writers like Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Cormac Carthy, Daniel Woodrell knows a thing or two about how to turn a sentence. His work is infused with eerie dreamlike enigmas, a quality that really shines through in the short story format.”

Read the rest on Lawrence Public Library’s website »