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Mystery audiobook family-listening favorites are featured in this Voices in My Head column. Use these suggestions to pack your vacation travel bag or load up the kids’ listening devices. May is Mystery Month here at Booklist, but why not take spend the whole summer with the very best narrators sharing great stories?

It’s no mystery that listening to audiobooks in the car drives audiobook circulation and sales. A 2012 survey by the Audio Publishers Association (APA) found that adults listen while commuting in the car and on vacation driving trips and that youngsters under the age of 18 also listen to audios with their parents while traveling around town or out on the open road. So what genre is the preferred choice? Mystery is the overwhelming favorite of 47 percent of all listeners. Nearly half the survey respondents listed “entertainment for a long drive or trip” as the reason for their first audiobook experience, and a strong proportion of listeners indicated that “listening to an audiobook is good entertainment for a long drive or trip.” Why should librarians care about these details? The APA survey found that 42 percent of audiobook listeners borrow titles from the library.

I’m sure your library is gearing up for summer-reading programs, so why not add in-car family listening to your promotions? No matter if the trip is down the block or across the country, shared listening is a great way to foster family bonding. Parents will welcome the idea that audiobooks help develop and maintain reading skills that often slump in the summer. Librarians can provide handouts and find information on audiobook publishers’ websites, including Booksontape.com and Recordedbooks.com, that highlight the educational advantages of audiobook listening. Capitalize on the appetite for mysteries by creating themed recommended-listening lists for family groups. An added plus for parents looking for a hook to captivate reluctant readers is the potato-chip effect of a mystery series. Listening to one title often spurs youngsters to devour the whole series on audio.

Looking for audiobook titles that will satisfy young listeners while maintaining adult interest? Adult fans of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series will be happy to treat youngsters to The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case(Listening Library), and parents who remember Gertrude Chandler Warner’s Boxcar Children series can revisit the series through Oasis Audio’s Bicycle Mystery: The Boxcar Children and many other titles from this popular series. Also, intermediate-grade listeners will identify with narrator Tara Sands’ youthful voice that perfectly conveys the humor and suspense in Wendelin Van Draanen’s sassy Sammy Keyes series (Live Oak Media), which begins with Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief. The 39 Clues series (Scholastic), narrated by David Pittu, is a perfect fit for multimedia learners who will appreciate the online gaming aspect.

Middle-school listeners can acquaint their parents with the youthful exploits of two mystery mainstays, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes. Charlie Higson’s Young Bond series (Listening Library), including Blood Fever, narrated with cool British aplomb by Nathaniel Parker, and Death Cloud (AudioGO), the first title in Andrew Lane’s Sherlock Holmes: The Legend Begins series, narrated by Dan Weyman, fit the bill. The Case of the Gypsy Good-Bye (Recorded Books) is the newest entry in Nancy Springer’s series featuring Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister, Enola. Both adult and tween listeners looking for tongue-in-cheek humor will revel in Katherine Kellgren’s reading of all three titles in Maryrose Wood’s zany The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series (Listening Library). Matthew J. Kirby’s Norse saga Icefall (Scholastic) is a stand-alone historical mystery with a Norse princess and battle action mesmerizingly narrated by Jenna Lamia.

Adults traveling with teens can turn to YA titles with strong crossover appeal. Libba Bray’s supernatural mystery The Diviners (Listening Library), stunningly narrated by January LaVoy, is set in atmospheric 1926 New York City. If you have a taste for dark, disturbing mysteries, you’ll relish Charlie Thurston’s gripping reading of Barry Lyga’s I Hunt Killers (AudioGO). And Elizabeth Wein’s WWII thriller Code Name Verity(Brilliance/Bolinda), Booklist’s 2012 Top of the List audio selection, features superlative narration by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell. You can also share adult titles with teens, including Robin Slone’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Macmillan), a charming literary mystery, or Steve Hamilton’s The Lock Artist(Brilliance), centering on the safecracking ability of a traumatized teen. Alan Bradley’s Speaking from among the Bones (Books on Tape) and other series titles featuring spunky 12-year-old Flavia de Luce is perfectly read by Jane Entwistle, whose voice is a good match for the intrepid young chemist.

A fantastic audiobook promotion to tie to your school or public library’s website and summer-reading clubs is Sync YA Listening, a program in which audio publishers donate two free weekly downloads throughout the summer. Check out audiobooksync.com for more information. The weekly offerings feature a teen title paired with a classic, and the 2013 lineup includes such duos as 2012 Odyssey Award winner, Rotters (Listening Library), by Daniel Kraus, coupled with Frankenstein (Listening Library), by Mary Shelley, and The Raven Boys (Scholastic) tied with Bless Me, Ultima (Recorded Books), by Rudolfo Anaya.

So prepare for the onslaught of parents searching for ways to encourage literacy when school is out, tweens looking for entertainment for vacation travel, and teens clutching summer-reading lists. Arm yourself with handouts detailing the benefits of audiobook listening, include audiobooks in your summer-reading lists and displays, and spread the word about Sync YA Listening. It will soon be summertime, and audiobooks make reading easy!

Christian Audio’s free download of the month is a biography of Pastor A. W. Tozer, author of the Christian classics The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy. Be sure to grab this 6 hour title before the end of May: A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer, written by Lyle Dorsett and narrated Arthur Morey.

And sign up NOW for text alerts or email reminders for this year’s SYNC promotion – two free downloads a week all summer. Here’s the link for the complete schedule, promotion materials for your library or school, and more: http://www.audiobooksync.com/free-sync-downloads/sync-schedule-13/

Happy listening!

Narrators have a terrific resource: AudioEloquence.com, maintained by Judith West and Heather Henderson. I spoke with these two narrators about the need for a collection of accent and pronunciation aids found on AudioEloquence, and have their interview below. I can’t wait to actually meet Judith & Heather at the Audio Publishers Association’s APAC conference in New York later this month. I’m sure they’ll be gathering more tips & tricks during the meeting. But the resources aren’t just for industry insiders – browse around the site and you’ll find some links that will come in handy someday in your personal life. Or use the resources to check out whether the narrator on your current audio listen made a flub

Who is your audience for your resource website?

JUDITH: The primary audience is audiobook narrators, the same group that generated our original collection. Some producers and proofers have also contributed. Actors, announcers, and teachers would certainly find it helpful. But audiobook narrators have an ongoing and ever-changing need for all manner of pronunciations, dialects, and accents — and each book comes with its own new set of challenges. For instance, you can go from needing to know how a truckload of 20^th-century artists and writers pronounced their names, to how Gullah (the slave dialect of the Sea Islands) differs from a Caribbean accent, to distinguishing the spoken English of a Chinese-born woman from that of a Japanese-born one.

HEATHER: And we’ve partitioned the site to reflect the needs of different narrators and book projects. The first two sections, Pronunciation Sites by Topic and by Language, have sites that let you quickly browse or search for a single word or phrase in a given language or on a given topic. These “look-up” sites serve both for script prep and as quick mid-session references. The other main section, Dialects, Accents, and General Language Sites, provides resources allowing narrators to listen to, study, and practice the speech of various native and non-native English speakers, as well as extended samples of native speakers of many foreign languages. These sites are invaluable in preparing character work for dialogue and some first-person narration.

 Why did you create the site? How did you compile the links?

JUDITH: The genesis was a discussion in “The Green Room,” which was the narrator’s group on the original Audiobook Community social website. (ABC is now on Facebook, to accommodate a larger community.) Narrator Adam Verner started (thanks, Adam!) by sharing a fabulous interactive map of U.S. dialects with audio and video samples. (And yes, you can find it on AudioEloquence.com!) The link-exchange frenzy grew from there.

Heather, who moderated the Green Room forum, mused about how great it would be to compile these into a master list of sites, and I leapt at the chance to help. Heather and I share the rare bibliography-geek gene (her doctoral dissertation was an annotated analysis of a Shaw play, and I edited and researched for Britannica for many years). We’ve been “virtually” inseparable ever since.

We’ve just launched the new-and-improved 2013 AudioEloquence, but our results first appeared as a printed handout at the 2011 APAC, and shortly thereafter we set up its current online home. We announced a major online update at APAC 2012 by handing out postcards with a fortune cookie message on the front, one that I actually opened with some Chinese takeout: “You will soon be receiving sound spoken advice. Listen!”

HEATHER: Well, Judith and I remember differently how it started, but I think that’s because it was parallel evolution — there were so many lively discussions on this topic in The Green Room. What I remember is Katherine Kellgren’s posting the question, “What are everyone’s favorite pronunciation resources?” and a deluge of answers pouring in from narrators. Judith and I didn’t know each other very well before then, but we discovered that each of us was compiling a list of these sites and that each of us had a background in research and annotation. We teamed up to put all these sites into a nifty list to share with other narrators, and then we needed to park it somewhere for people to access . . . and the whole project has continued growing from there.

Do narrators also receive help in choosing proper accents and dialects from producers and directors?

JUDITH: Assistance varies from client to client. Some producer-publishers have research built into their process before the narrator gets the script, usually done by the same people who do audio proofing. But often you’re on your own, especially as narrators become more their own director-producers. That’s one way that AE can be a real boon. I used to work in a booth with a director and an engineer just a few feet away to shepherd me through the book. Now, both of those jobs are done by me in my own custom-built booth — the researcher’s job too, often. So having a large and convenient-to-use stash of pronunciation links is vital.

Most professional narrators are meticulous about nailing a character’s accent or dialect, in many cases right down to the region. A poorly executed accent — especially one from a native English-speaking area — can undercut your credibility and, thus, your authenticity. Readers can be put off by bad accents and pronunciation errors, usually depending on how central they are to the book; and you can bet that major problems will come up in reviews. So a resource like AE can be a lifesaver and is definitely much speedier than having to ferret out everything on your own.

HEATHER: I might have a quick phone consult with my producer about characters before I start rolling, but mostly I fly solo. I live in Eugene, Oregon, so I’m one of a growing number of narrators who are cast by producers because we have excellent home studios and sound, and because we can reliably self-direct. Most of the producers I work for have proofers who provide me with the bulk of the pronunciation research in advance. But I often lend a hand, and I try to handle the inevitable stragglers that I run across during recording.

Most of the accent/dialect discussions I have, actually, are with my proofer, usually mid-recording or during the corrections stage, and my producer weighs in at the end to make or approve the final call. It’s surprising how much time you can spend deciding about a single word, never mind a whole character voice or narrative mood. For instance, in a horror novel I once did, my proofer and I went around and around about which pronunciation of the word “coyote” I should use. In Oregon, we often pronounce it KAI-oht, which was my preference. In Merriam-Webster Unabridged (which is the definitive dictionary for most producers), both KAI-oht and kai-OH-tee get equal weight, the former as the “Western standard” variation. In the American Heritage dictionary (which is my favorite dictionary but don’t get me started), KAI-oht seems to be preferred. We finally decided on KAI-oht because the book was set in the contemporary West. We were both ambivalent, but we had to move on, because this word only occurred twice in the book!

Has the changing world of audiobook creation – digital technology, home studios, economics – impacted the need for your resource?

JUDITH: Absolutely! Just as new technology and economic realities have helped shift more and more production responsibility to the narrator, it’s also made more, and more dependable, resources quickly and freely available to us. On the pronunciation front, we’ve gone from frequent best-guess decisions or time-consuming primary-source research to, in many cases, easy certainty — because so many sites provide audio samples, as well as phonetic transcriptions, of even the most obscure or complex speech features. On AE, we indicate whether each site provides audio or phonetic renderings or both. In addition, technology, together with the growing number of home-studio-experienced narrators, has produced great social media opportunities for conferring with your fellow performers — which set AE in motion in the first place!

HEATHER: AE is a response to changes in the industry, as Judith said, but I think it’s also a response to the growth of resources available online. There are so many that it can be overwhelming and time-consuming to find and keep track of them all.

I should mention that the least helpful online resources are synthesized speech, like text-to-speech translators. These are so variable in their reliability that I usually don’t even use them. On AE, we select for the sites that are human-voiced, and our annotations indicate when sound samples are synthetic.

Are there any other fun and interesting facts about narration and choosing the correct pronunciation that you’d like to share?

HEATHER: This could be a wonderful blog post on its own — narrators have some wonderful anecdotes about pronunciation searches. I’ve called bars in Michigan at 1 AM (to find an obscure local place-name when all other businesses were closed), police non-emergency lines all over the U.S., an Amish man who gives buggy-rides to tourists. Once I called an Air Force base in Montana, at midnight, about a word I needed for a book I was narrating about a secret government cover-up of a UFO sighting at that airbase. (That call was not one of my best decisions.)

One natural history book I did had dozens of Latin taxonomic names of obscure species, and I could not find them on the Internet for love nor money. Finally I tracked down the scientist interviewed most often in the book, and he was kind enough to go over all the pronunciations with me. As we talked we discovered we had a lot in common, and when he was in town for a research trip, he stayed with us. I took him to a patch of old-growth forest to dig for native worms, and he found a species that he believed was undiscovered. I’m waiting to hear the DNA results — if it is a new species, he might name it after me! (At least I’d know how to pronounce that one.)

Judith and I like to challenge a site by looking up unusual words or names. One promising-looking site offered pronunciations of contemporary public figures worldwide. It was maintained by an Italian linguistics professor who said he hand-selected native speakers to record his sound files. But my “Henry Kissinger” search yielded a pronunciation by a woman with a strong East End (London) accent. And “Celine Dion” was given in a native Parisian accent. Judith tried rappers 2Pac and 50 Cent, which returned really garbled synthetic renderings. Needless to say, we nixed the site for AE!

JUDITH: Oh, I wish more of my pronunciation anecdotes were fun! Most of mine have been real-life gaffes and pretty mortifying — which may be why I feel so strongly about the subject! But maybe someone should create an AE offshoot collection of pronunciation bloopers. I can contribute!

I suppose, in the face of all our tech talk, one of the most interesting and important facts remains that while you can find loads of data you couldn’t a few years ago, “correct pronunciation” is always a context-driven judgment. I narrated a wonderful book for HarperCollins recently, The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian, and in it a woman-of-a-certain-age who works at Walmart and lives in a trailer park mentions eating her lunch of Salisbury steak. One of the production team, very politely but firmly, insisted that I should pronounce it “correctly,” as “SAWLZ-buhr-ee.” I balked, politely, I hope, insisting that given this character’s demographics and the other traits revealed in her full-throttle stream-of-consciousness monologue, I knew that she would pronounce it “SAL-ihz-behr-ee.” After a couple more rounds of entreaties and demurrals, I finally found a casual online discussion about this very term that supported my point. All this to say that info and data do not equal knowledge, and it’s the context of words — who says them, why, to whom — coupled with human experience and understanding — yours or someone else’s — that determines correct pronunciation.

Audiobooks everywhere! Zombies, celebrities, and media icons – in print, out loud & on video. A round-up of audio awesomeness:

I am a HUGE fan on the 2007 abridged audiobook version of Max Brooks’ World War Z, and CANNOT wait for the new & improved unabridged production – here’s some insider info from Brooks himself: http://www.maxbrookszombieworld.com/#tab1

Even Margaret Atwood is getting into zombies, lending her voice to the audio for a new app, “Zomies, Run!,” part of the Rolex Arts Initiative. Atwood is mentoring award-winning U.K. novelist Naomi Alderman, who also happens to be the app’s co- creator and lead writer. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-02/zombies-chase-author-atwood-in-global-apocalpse-game.html

Catch a bit of David Sedaris’ newest, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls in this Soundcloud clip of the story “Dentists without Boarders” http://www.bookish.com/articles/david-sedaris-reads-from-lets-explore-diabetes-with-owls-audio

And there’s even an audiobook in-joke in Sedaris’ new audiobook – learn more about the Pimsleur Method language audios and Sedaris’ private Japanese lesson http://pimsleurspeaks.pimsleur.com/david-sedaris-laughs-in-three-languages-thanks-to-pimsleur/

MTV takes notice of audiobooks as Hollywood hunk Jesse Williams of Grey’s Anatomy offer his reflections on narrating his first audio,  The Bane Chronicles: What Really Happened In Peru, by Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan http://hollywoodcrush.mtv.com/2013/04/17/jesse-williams-bane-chronicles-what-really-happened-in-peru/

Comic icon Carol Burnett shares details about her audio memoir Carrie and Me http://youtu.be/1zeGXIFmTG0

Eve Ensler’s in-studio video gives you a sneak peek of her cancer-experience memoir  In the Body of the World http://youtu.be/rmCKp4mBqfE

Audiobooks get a shout-out from Tony Award-winner Alan Cumming as he mentions his Tantor recordings of Shakespeare on The Colbert Report http://broadwayworld.com/videoplay.php?colid=491795

Preacher & teacher – two inspirational audios: Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail &  Educating Esme: A Teacher’s Diary. 

Christian Audio is offering the free download of MLK’s classic defense of non-violence against segregation, written from the Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1966, narrated by Dion Graham. Download by April 30th! Here’s the link: http://christianaudio.com/letter-from-birmingham-jail-martin-luther-king-jr

Educating Esme is the journal kept by Esmé Raji Codell during her first year teaching fifth grade in a Chicago public school,  presented here as a radio show based on her book, part of the  Life Stories series on Chicago Public Radio: http://hearingvoices.com/news/2009/06/hv061-educating-esme/

Earth Day classic Walden, Christian self-help, Gatsby, & the Moby Dick Big Read project. Here are the links – grab these quick!

Tantor Audio offers Walden by Henry David Thoreau, narrated by Mel Foster, as both an MP3 & PDF eBook:

http://www.tantor.com/BookDetail.asp?Product=0693_Walden

Christian Audio’s monthly freebie is Enemies of the Heart: Breaking Free from the Four Emotions That Control You by Andy Stanley, narrated Lloyd James:

http://christianaudio.com/free/

AudioFile magazine features The Great Gatsby, with a free download from Downpour narrated by Anthony Heald, just in time for the movie release:

http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/gatsby.html

Moby-Dick Big Read: an online version of Melville’s magisterial tome: each of its 135 chapters read out aloud, by a mixture of the celebrated and the unknown, online in a sequence of 135 downloads, publicly and freely accessible via a project by Peninsula Arts, the dedicated contemporary art space at Plymouth University:

http://www.mobydickbigread.com/

Wow! 24 totally free downloadable audiobooks, both current YA bestsellers and classics – a gift from audio publishing partners through the Sync YA Literature promotion. Grab two freebies all summer long, and build your personal audiobook collection. School & public librarians are encouraged to promote this great way to keep tweens & teens (and adults!) engaged in great literature, and prevent a summer slump in reading skills. Find out more – and set up text alerts so you don’t forget to download – at  http://www.audiobooksync.com

Here’s the line up of titles:

SYNC Titles
Summer 2013

May 30 – June 5, 2013
Of Poseidon by Anna Banks, read by Rebecca Gibel (AudioGO)
The Tempest by William Shakespeare, read by a Full Cast (AudioGO)

June 6 – June 12, 2013
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Book 1: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood, read by Katherine Kellgren (HarperAudio)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, read by Wanda McCaddon (Tantor Audio)

June 13 – June 19, 2013
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, read by Will Patton (Scholastic Audiobooks)
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, read by Robert Ramirez (Recorded Books)

June 20 – June 26, 2013
Once by Morris Gleitzman, read by Morris Gleitzman (Bolinda Audio)
Letter From Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr., read by Dion Graham (christianaudio)

June 27 – July 3, 2013
Rotters by Daniel Kraus, read by Kirby Heyborne (Listening Library)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, read by Jim Weiss (Listening Library)

July 4 – July 10, 2013
Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford, read by Nick Podehl (Brilliance Audio)
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, read by a Full Cast (L.A. Theatre Works)

July 11 – July 17, 2013
The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann, read by Peter Altschuler (HarperAudio)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, read by Simon Vance (Tantor Audio)

July 18 – July 24, 2013
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers, read by Erin Moon (Recorded Books)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare, read by a Full Cast (L.A. Theatre Works)

July 25 – July 31, 2013
The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen, read by Charlie McWade (Scholastic Audiobooks)
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, read by Steve West (Blackstone Audio)

Aug 1 – Aug 7, 2013
Death Cloud by Andrew Lane, read by Dan Weyman (Macmillan Audio)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Ralph Cosham (Blackstone Audio)

Aug 8 – Aug 14, 2013
Enchanted by Alethea Kontis, read by Katherine Kellgren (Brilliance Audio)
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, read by Miriam Margolyes (Bolinda Audio)

Aug 15 – Aug 21, 2013
Sold by Patricia McCormick, read by Justine Eyre (Tantor Audio)
Let Me Stand Alone by Rachel Corrie, read by Tavia Gilbert (Blackstone Audio)

The best audiobook experience? The top four titles of 2013, according to the Audio Publishers Association, are listed below. The organization announce the finalists for the two premier categories recognized at the Audies Awards today. I announced the nominees for Audiobook of the Year earlier today, and the complete list of all 28 categories in this Audiobooker post. I’m thrilled at the spectrum of titles, from We Are America, a marvelous youth title, to Janis Ian’s musical memoir, to a celebration of short stories to honor Bradbury, and a new look at the classic Dracula - great listening all! Here’s more from the APA:

The four titles competing for Distinguished Achievement in Production are:

• Dracula, by Bram Stoker, Narrated by Simon Vance, Katherine Kellgren, Alan Cumming, Tim Curry and a full cast, Audible, Inc.
• Shadow Show: All New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle, stories by Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Audrey Niffenegger, Dave Eggers and others, Narrated by George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, F. Murray Abraham, Neil Gaiman, Peter Appel and James Urbaniak, HarperAudio.
• Society’s Child: My Autobiography, by Janis Ian, Narrated by Janis Ian, Audible, Inc.
• We Are America: A Tribute from the Heart, by Walter Dean Myers, Narrated by Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Myers, Dion Graham, Olivia DuFord and others, Live Oak Media.

This award recognizes a production that represents the best the format has to offer in listening excellence.

“Every year our task to select the best and the most impactful audiobooks becomes harder as the quality of the productions and innovation in marketing reaches new heights,” said Ellen Myrick, Audies Judging Chair.

Michele Cobb, President of the APA, adds, “It’s no wonder that the audience and enthusiasm for audiobooks continue to grow as our members produce high caliber and high visibility titles such as these. We are pleased to recognize their accomplishments.”

A round-up of links featuring all things audiobook. And apologies for my blog absence while I’ve been handling all things family…

The Office grappled with the NSFW use of the audiobook of Fifty Shades of Grey: http://youtu.be/uX9fDnS9jU

The American Library Association’s ALSC blog has suggestions for Family Listening:  http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2013/03/listen-up/

Romeo and Juliet—Q&A with Blackstone’s Studio Director on recording a stage production adapted for audio: http://blog.blackstoneaudio.com/archives/14345

HEAR Now – a successful Kickstarter project to fund the National Audio Theatre Festivals (NATF), a non-profit organization, production of the HEAR Now: The Audio Fiction and Arts Festival: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/988219584/hear-now-audio-fiction-and-arts-festival-2013

Not exactly an audiobook link, but a terrific collection of Books That Made Us Cry – including some of the best tear-jerker audiobooks ever: https://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/books-that-made-us-cry_b67374#more-67374

Portland Press Herald’s lovely feature on narrator Tavia Gilbert: http://www.pressherald.com/life/giving-voice_2013-03-24.html?pagenum=1

OverDrive’s ideas for a digital book club are easily adaptable for an audiobook club: http://prezi.com/6yizr5vkaok4/create-a-digital-book-club/

Nice coverage of the star-power narrators of Maupin’s Tales of the City audiobook in Playbill: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/176420-Armistead-Maupin-Audio-Book-Series-Features-Alan-Cumming-Frances-McDormand-Cynthia-Nixon-and-More-Audio

AudioFile magazine & Sharon Grover team to provide a great family listening list every year – here’s the 2013 edition: http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/abotg13.html

Great article in Library Journal on marketing audiobooks: http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2013/04/media/audio/audio-spotlight-marketing-strategies-to-vitalize-audiobook-collections/

Fascinating look at extracting audio from images of the oldest gramophone recordings: http://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extracting-audio-from-pictures/

Salon magazine’s shout-out to Booklist “Voice of Choice” Simon Vance: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/04/river_of_stars_picture_game_of_thrones_in_china/