Read On … Audiobooks: Reading Lists for Every Taste by Joyce Saricks

This week I'll focus on the Public Library Association Conference in Philadelphia. Joyce will be at the conference. You learn where to spot her in the next to last sentence of this post.

  Spring approaches and I will soon be gardening. It is a fortunate time to borrow Read On … Audiobooks by Joyce G. Saricks. I am browsing and creating a listening list for my hours with the flowers.

Like all of the guides in the Read On … Series, Joyce's book is divided into five sections according to the appeals of reading. The order, however, differs from other books in the series. She starts with language/voice and follows with mood, which are numbers 4 and 5 in other guides. Then she adds story, character, and setting. I turn to the last first because I enjoy new or unusual settings, and I immediately find the list "We Are So Not Amused: The Dark Side of Amusement Parks." I have already enjoyed Something This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury in audio. Maybe I will like The Rabbit Factory by Matthew Karp or Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen. Maybe I will be laughing wickedly as I rip weeds from the soil.

I like Joyce's comment in her introduction that audiobooks appeal to us because we were weaned from having others read to us at too early an age. Some of us do still hear Bible passages read at church, but we hear little else read live. I remember fondly enjoying my fourth grade teacher reading Johnny Tremain aloud while we sat at our desks. It is hard to imagine such stillness in a schoolroom today. 

Joyce will be at the ABC-Clio/Libraries Unlimited exhibit at the Public Library Association Conference in Philadelphia this Thursday signing her book. If you are at PLA, come by at 4 p.m. Barry Trott and I be there, too.

Saricks, Joyce G. Read On … Audiobooks: Reading Lists for Every Taste. Libraries Unlimited, 2011. 145p. ISBN 9781591588047.