STACKED

books

CSN Store Giveaway

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You guys have probably seen this incredible giveaway a few times, and if you haven’t, well, you’re in for a treat.

CSN Stores is an online shopping site that sells everything from dining room furniture and decor, to bookshelves and even cool pet furniture. Oh, and librarians, they also sell library furniture! CSN has over 200 stores you can choose from, and I think that their products have really reasonable prices. Many also include free shipping — you know that anything free gets my heart pitter pattering just a little.

Come with me a second. Do you have any idea what, say, $60 could buy you?


This really sweet piece of modern art (I would buy this in a heartbeat).


This bookshelf, which would be perfect in the kitchen for storing your cookbooks.

Or, for $1 and some change, you can pick up this cool Ottomon with pockets (for storing your books, naturally).

Now that you’re salivating, why don’t you head over to their website right here and pick out something really cool you’d like. Why, you ask?

I have a $60 Gift Certificate to give away for their website. Most of their items have free shipping, so you’d not have to pay a penny.

This contest will be a quick one: you have until July 4 to enter. Fill out the form below to be entered.

Fat girl alert!

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It’s happened.

It took a long time, and it took a cover redesign, as well as a forthcoming show on ABC Family, but we have come to a day I have been looking forward to for a long time.

How awesome is that? This is an entirely marketable cover. It is appealing and relatable to so many young women out there. It’s not threatening, it’s not mocking, and it is a true representation.

A HUGE thanks goes out to Simon & Schuster for the redesign here. This is so much better than this, this, and this. Let’s not resort to this, this, or this again.

Audiosynced: Crocodile on the Sandbank

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The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters is one of the first series I can remember listening to on audio.  It was on one of those long car trips with my family that I was introduced to resourceful Amelia, a female English Egyptologist from the late 1800s.  The first book I listened to was actually Seeing a Large Cat, which falls smack dab in the middle of the series, and it’s only recently that I’ve gone back and listened to the series from the beginning.

Crocodile on the Sandbank introduces us to Amelia Peabody – an unmarried woman of thirty (and thus a spinster for her time) who has just inherited a large sum of money after her scholar father dies.  Naturally, due to her inheritance, suitors come knocking on her door, but Amelia is much more interested in traveling and pursuing archaeology, in particular Egyptology (digging up tombs is a standby of each book).  She has a knack for getting herself in trouble, mostly because she tends to seek it out.  Amelia’s love and partner in crime is Radcliffe Emerson, whom we meet in this first book.  The two exasperate each other on first sight, and their verbal sparring is one of the best features of the series.      

If you listen to the audio, the book will not only introduce you to one of the best female protagonists out there, but also to the wonderful narration of Barbara Rosenblat.  That woman is good.  I’m not English, so my opinion may not necessarily be the most valid, but she fooled me into believing she was, in fact, English herself.  (She is not – Barbara Rosenblat is American and her natural speaking voice is American.)  She also has the rare talent of accurately impersonating a person of the opposite gender, which is very difficult to do.  Emerson’s voice as portrayed by Barbara Rosenblat is so unique that it can be recognized just by its grunt – a noise Emerson is famous for and which cannot be reproduced effectively in print.  And it’s not just me who thinks Rosenblat is spectacular – she’s won a ridiculous number of awards, including six Audies.

These books are perfect in audio form – they’re funny, full of adventure, and narrated in the first person by a smart and strong-willed woman who is way ahead of her time.  Peters herself is an Egyptologist, which makes these books a fascinating blend of adventure, romance, and history.  When I was in library school, I took the bus to and from class, and those bus rides could get looooong.  I needed something to help pass the time, and I discovered that NetLibrary offered many of the earlier Amelia Peabodies.  I was thrilled, and I loved listening to how Amelia met Emerson for the first time.  This series is always one I recommend to people who are hesitant about audiobooks.  The books are fun, clean enough to not embarrass you if you listen to them with your parents (as I did when I was younger), and spectacularly narrated.

It’s all about the format

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You know why to listen, how to listen, and have a good idea of the types of audiobooks there are out there, but do you have a preference for how you get your audiobooks? Do you download them, transfer from your computer onto a portable player, or are you a traditional audiobook-on-cd listener? We’ll give you a little walk through some of the different formats — there is something for everyone.

Traditional Audiobook (Kelly):

I’m a huge fan of these. They come fully set to pop into your car’s CD player and play. You don’t need to do anything, but you do need to be aware these bad boys can get long (and if you’re purchasing them, expensive). The Help, for example, ran 15 discs long. If you’re anything like me, I pull out ALL of the discs of a book at once and put them in the change tray in my car — 15 of those bad boys sometimes leads to the CDs falling off and under the seat in the car.

On the plus side, they require little to no work to begin listening. On the downside, they aren’t super versatile. You need a CD player of some sort to use them, unless you want to copy them onto your computer’s hard drive and then save them in your music player of choice.

MP3 Audiobook (Kimberly):

I’m going to be honest and say that I’ve never actually listened to one of these before, but they’ve got a lot going for them.  I was lucky enough to receive a free (signed) copy of Rick Riordan’s newest book, The Red Pyramid, at BEA on mp3 CD.  The print book is over 500 pages and the audio runs over fourteen and a half hours, but the entire book fits on ONE mp3 CD. 

Obviously, the compact size is a huge pro.  There’s no need to swap out discs while driving (yikes!) and they take up much less space on the shelf.  On the other hand, not all CD players are compatible with the format.  Most CD players being manufactured today can play mp3 discs just fine, but both my car CD player (from 2004) and my boom box (from the Jurassic Age) – the two players I use most often – won’t play them.  If I want to listen to an mp3 CD, I’ve got to use my computer, which is a pain.

In my experience, this lack of compatibility problem applies to most public library users today.  My library is not yet purchasing mp3 CDs, but I have a feeling that’s the way the technology is heading (along with downloadables, as described below).  Will we see the traditional CD going the way of the cassette tape soon?

Downloadable Audiobook (Kelly):

Many libraries offer a way for users to download audiobooks directly from their database to your home computer (and now, sometimes right onto your portable device). Though I haven’t tried this out yet, it’s on my list of things to achieve in the next few weeks. . . fitting with the goal of using audiobooks on my ipod for working out.

There are a few vendors for downloadable books, but the two biggest include NetLibrary and Overdrive. Both have their pluses and minuses, so you have to figure out the quirks of your library’s system for yourself (or ask the librarian, of course). Don’t think you have access to downloadable audio? Think again. Janssen has pointed out that there is a wonderful way to find out if your library has access to Overdrive via this link.

Another downloadable option is LibriVox. I’ve never used it, but I know people who do. It’s run on a volunteer basis, where readers choose to help record all of the books in the public domain. In other words, if you’re looking to listen to a classic, try them out. And, if you’re so inspired, try your hand at recording a title, too.

Playaway (Kimberly):

The Playaway is such a good idea – an audiobook player that comes pre-loaded with the audiobook.  No need to convert any files or go to the trouble of loading the files onto the device.  No need to even HAVE a device. 

It seems like Playaways are best for people who want a portable audiobook but may not be able to afford their own mp3 player or just don’t feel technologically savvy enough to download or transfer files to one.  I’ve read anecdotal evidence that public libraries in poorer communities see more use of the Playaway, but I don’t have any numbers to back that up.  There are some definite downsides – they can be pricey, require the user to supply their own batteries and headphones, and lack the flexibility of a normal audio player which can hold more than one book at a time.

Which format do you prefer?

AudioSynced: Highway Cats by Janet Taylor Lisle

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Before I headed out for a long weekend, I wanted to pick up a very short audiobook for the couple of days of commuting to work I’d be doing. When I stumbled upon Highway Cats, I remembered putting it on my GoodReads “to read” list a long time ago, and I was excited to see it was only 2 discs long. It’d be a quick one.

I was wrong.

There is nothing bad about this story at all. A group of cats who live along the highway are going to lose their homes to the greedy politician who wants to expand the highway in order to build more shopping centers. A litter of kittens is abandoned there, as well, and it is the kittens who will ultimately help scare away the construction crew and ultimately shift what happens to the politician in the story. It’s a cute premise with a pretty interesting message about human land use versus animal habitats.

I loved the narrator of this audio, James Jenner. He has a nice commentator voice on this, and he manages to make the politician a source of evil with just slight changes in his tone. His reading style reminded me quite a bit of the style of reading that we have in Hold Tight. Tension is build well.

Weighing in at only 2 hour-long discs, this should have been a very quick listen, but it took me nearly two weeks to listen to it. I had a hard time getting into the characters, and I felt all of the cats who played big roles in the story were one and the same. Highway Cats reminded me a lot of The Underneath by Kathi Appelt. It’s the animals as the main characters and people as the bad forces. Perhaps my problem is it’s hard to listen to that, as well as hard to read it. I’m an animal lover, so hearing a story about mistreated or forgotten about animals makes for a less-than-enjoyable experience for me. I haven’t read a single news story about the oil spill for the same reason.

Highway Cats has an audience, and there is ultimately a positive ending in the story. Fans of Appelt’s story will love this, and this would make for a good family listen. For a quick trip in the car, it’s a worthwhile listen. If for no other reason, listen for Jenner’s great narration and the excellent production — everything is seamless.