Welcome to another edition of AudioSynced, hosted by us here at STACKED and Abby over at Abby (the) Librarian. This monthly roundup features reviews and other links to all things audiobook. If you’ve posted any reviews in the last month or have other audiobook related links from April, drop them in the comments!

Reviews & Recommendations

• Michelle at Never Gonna Grow Up reviews Gayle Forman’s If I Stay.

• Over at Shelf Employed, you can read reviews of Jennifer Finney Boylan’s Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror and Sonya Hartnett’s The Midnight Zoo.

• Abby’s got a review of Wendelin van Draanen’s The Running Dream and she’s got a review of Carmen Agra Deedy’s The Cheshire Cheese Cat. 

• Flannery over at The Readventurer reviews Jack Gantos’s Dead End in Norvelt.

• Check out April at Good Books and Good Wine’s reviews of Suzanne Collins’s Gregor the Overlander,  Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday, and L. A. Meyer’s Bloody Jack.

• Adam at Hitting on Girls in Bookstores offers a review of Julie Cross’s Tempest. 

• Our friend Lee has reviews of Kristin Levine’s The Lions of Little Rock and Carolyn Turgeon’s Mermaid. 

• Beth Fish Reads offers up a ton of recommendations for non-fiction audiobook listening. 

News & Other Links

• Fan of Shakespeare? The BBC is making podcasts of their Shakespeare Unlocked series available for download.

• So is listening to audiobooks the same thing as reading? The Chicago Tribune asks this question, and there’s a great post from Scholastic exploring that very question.

• This feels a little like a cop-out, but Becky over at RA for All has amassed a ton of interesting audiobook related links. Rather than share them all with you, I’ll let you go over to her blog and check them out.

• I hope you all know about Sync, the audiobook community for YA Lit. I’ve been paying attention to them for the last couple of summers because they offer up — for free — two audiobook downloads each week. One of them is a newer YA title and one is always a classic. Bookmark this site because they’ve listed this year’s titles, and they look fabulous.

• The Audio Publishers Association has their finalists for Audiobook of the Year up. I love that Samuel L Jackson’s rendition of Go the Eff to Sleep is among them. 

Before diving into this month’s edition of AudioSynced, can we take a second and celebrate the fact Abby and I have been hosting this feature for two years now? Two years seems like such a long time in the blogging world, and I am so glad we’ve been able to “meet” so many new people through celebrating audiobooks. You can check out the Audiosynced archives here.

If you’ve reviewed or blogged about audiobooks this last month, drop a link into the comments and I’ll add it to our roundup! 

Reviews

• Our friend Lee at Reading with my Ears has reviews of Heidi W. Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Matthew Kirby’s Ice Fall, Amanda Quick’s The River Knows, Lauren Oliver’s Liesl and Po, and Daniel Kraus’s Rotters.

• Sarah at YA Librarian Tales has a review of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and read by Wil Wheaton.

• Beth at Foodie Bibliophile has a review of Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs.

• Michelle at Never Gonna Grow Up book reviews shares her thoughts on Anna Carey’s Eve. 

• Allison at Reading Everywhere has a review of Kirby Larson’s Hattie Big Sky.

• Melissa at The Book Nut offers up a review of Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants, narrated by none other than Fey herself.

• Over at Shelf Employed, there’s a nice review (with sound sample!) of Kate DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson.

• Last but not least, Jeanne has a review of Carol Plum-Ucci’s Fire Will Fall on a blog that looks like one any audiobook lover would want to check out, Books for Ears.
  

News & Other Audiobook fun

• Every year the Audio Publishers Association honors the best of audiobooks with the Audie awards, and the 2012 Audies finalists have been announced. Each of the audiobooks nominated also has a sample included, so check them out. 

• Want to check out behind-the-scenes stuff at Audible? They have a YouTube channel where you can check out various narrators in the process of recording their books. It’s very neat (via Publishers Weekly’s Audiobook Blog).    

• Speaking of audiobook narrators, check out this great interview with narrator Karen White.  

• Then check out this vlog by Jackson Pearce about recording her forthcoming book Purity. 

• Gretchen Kolderup has a great post up on YALSA’s blog about her experience serving on the Amazing Audiobooks committee (just look at the pile of audiobooks from this year!). And while you’re at it, check out her post about the Amazing Audiobooks list at YALSA’s The Hub.

Welcome to another edition of AudioSynced, a monthly roundup of audiobook reviews, news, and fun from around the blogosphere. It’s hosted by us and by Abby (the) Librarian. If you posted something about audiobooks in the month of December, drop a note in the comments with a link to your post.

Reviews
I’ve collected a ton this month, including a lot I just pulled up through my own RSS search. If I missed you, let me know!

• Lee has a wealth of reviews this month, including Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, Veronica Roth’s Divergent, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, George Pelecanos’s Cut, Mark Mills’s The Summer Garden, and Jack Gantos’s Dead End in Norvelt. I envy that amount of monthly listening! Another thing Lee wrote about this month were a couple other places audiophiles can read reviews (in round up style). Check it out.

• Beth’s A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust has a pair of reviews this month, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Catalyst and Lauren Oliver’s Liesl and Po. If you haven’t been by Beth’s blog, I suggest not going over there while hungry! Her header makes me crave ice cream every time.

• Abby reviewed Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday. She also talked about her favorite listens of 2011.

• Beth Fish Reads offered up a host of reviews this month, including Robert Massie’s Catherine the Great, Hector Tobar’s The Barbarian Nurseries, Charlaine Harris’s From Dead to Worse, Kathy Reichs’s Virals and Seizure, Alice Walker’s The Chicken Chronicles, and Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty and the Midnight Hour.

• Sarah at Green Bean Teen Queen reviewed the John Newman’s middle grade book Mimi and Nikki Grimes’s Planet Middle School.

• I really like this review of Amy Kathleen Ryan’s Glow by Yan at Books by Their Cover. It’s her first audiobook and I thought her review captured so well what does and doesn’t work in an audio production of a book (from a first time listener at that).

• Liz, over at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, reviewed Holly Cupala’s Tell Me a Secret. I’ve got a copy of this sitting on my shelf, and despite having read the book, I’m eager to listen to it since it’s narrated by my favorite reader, Jenna Lamia.

• Melissa over at One Librarian’s Book Reviews did a retro review feature on Christopher Paolini’s Eragon.

• Jenn at Jenn’s Bookshelves reviewed Toby Ball’s The Vaults.

• Michelle at Never Gonna Grow Up reviewed Marie Lu’s Legend at the tail end of November, but I thought it would be worth sharing anyway.

• Nerfreader’s got a review up of Jo Walton’s cozy mystery called Farthing.

Other Audiobook News

• I have a love-hate relationship with best of lists, but I read them anyway. Here’s Library Journal’s picks for Best Audiobooks of 2011.

• The Guilded Earlobe is an audiobook blog you should be following, and here, you can read his top 20 audiobook picks for 2011.

• If you weren’t familiar with Large Hearted Boy’s annual roundup of “best of” lists from around the web, then you’re going to love this little link. It’s not separated out by audiobooks, but you can find them with a little browsing.

• Publisher’s Weekly talks about how this year, there was not a children’s spoken word album among Grammy nominees.

And that’s a wrap on this month’s AudioSynced! We’ll be back next month at Abby (the) Librarian.