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And now for the Audies! Awards for the best-produced audiobooks are presented annually by the Audio Publishers Association.  Below is a list of the 2013 winners with links to Booklist reviews when applicable. You might recognize some famous names among these narrators, including Colin Firth—let’s hope he channelled the always composed Mr. Darcy and not the stuttering King George [...]

The Audio Publishers Association announced finalists for the 2011 Audies. The list of potential winners includes Laura Bush and Alfre Woodward in best solo vocal performance. In the fiction category we have the following nominees: Every Last One, by Anna Quindlen, Narrated by Hope Davis, Simon & Schuster Audio Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett, [...]

Since we can’t all be in San Diego, we’re bringing the Youth Media Awards to you. This morning some of the most prestigious awards in youth literature were announced at the Midwinter Meeting. Here are the 2011 award winners: Newbery  Medal Moon Over Manifest, by Clare Vanderpool (Delacorte) Caldecott Medal A Sick Day for Amos McGee, by Philip C. Stead, Illustrated by [...]

…along with 299 other people. (Cory Doctorow, thanks for lending your celebrity to this blog post!) As anyone who read “Do-It-Yourself Audiobooks” knows, I’m in love with the sound of my own voice. (The problem is finding other people who love that sound, too.) Give me a microphone and a script, and I’ll narrate anything. Heck, I’ll [...]

I have a confession to make. I was among the many who thought romance novels were silly. Formulaic, pure fluff. Damsels in distress. Ladies in long dresses and painful bodices. Men in puffy shirts. Then I became Booklist‘s romance editor. I scrutinized the wonderfully varied array of romance novels that arrived in the mail. I attended a Romance Writers of America [...]

The movie Julie and Julia is as delightful as everyone says. Even the men in the audience seemed to like it. The viewing prompted me to go back to the books from whence the movie came. Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France (delivered posthumously by her grandnephew, Alex Prud’Homme) both charms you and makes you want [...]

For the four of you that watched the Grammys last night, I’m sure that you were watching to: A) see if there was indeed going to be a live-broadcast birth, as M.I.A. looked about ready to pop, and; B) find out who won the Spoken Word Grammys . . . why else? If you didn’t [...]

Audiobook addicts, rejoice: today, we at Booklist Online are proud to introduce the newest member of our family of blogs, Audiobooker.  It’s written by Mary Burkey, a teacher, librarian, and audiobook addict who will be writing about “listening, learning, and the joy of headsets.” This isn’t a launch but a very meaningful change of address. Mary has blogged [...]

Last year while Keir was away fighting forest fires in the wilds of Montana, I was battling a faulty compact disc player. You may recall that I won the scuffle with the CD player when I introduced it to my hammer. But I lost the war. I bought an iPod that same day. My fellow [...]

  What a wonderful night! The Booklist Magazine Books for Youth Forum at the 2008 American Library Association conference in Anaheim celebrated the very first Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production. Stephanie Zvirin welcomed the standing-room-only audience of 500 or so with the bittersweet announcement that this was her last Forum, as she will [...]