FolioFiles

And we’re LIVE!

Kirsten — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:49:51 +0000

Today marks the launch of a new community all about audiobooks! I’m so excited to have become a part of the AudioFile Magazine staff at the perfect time to help get this off the ground, and I hope that you will join us, and then share the news far and wide – tweet it, link to it on Facebook, blog about it, stumble it, digg it, send up smoke signals, just do that thing you do! (there’s even a nifty little “ShareThis” button at the bottom of this post that makes it absurdly easy… *grin*)

Joining ABC is simple, and if you’re already a member of any Ning communities (I’m also on Book Blogs), your basic profile is already there and ready to go. Come see the list of stage events at BEA as shared by APA PR Manager Kaitlin Friedmann, tell us what releases you’re particularly excited about in the New and Upcoming Titles Group, and join us for our Sync YA summer listening program, which will feature two absolutely FREE titles every week from July to September!

I think this community is going to be an amazing way to bring together industry professionals and listeners, and I hope that wherever you fall on the spectrum, from narrator to publisher to occasional listener to avid audiobookaholic, you’ll come on by and help us make this a great place to discuss and learn about everything to do with the world of audiobooks. Hope to see you there!

Booking Through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:51:02 +0000

Are your book choices influenced by friends and family? Do their recommendations carry weight for you? Or do you choose your books solely by what you want to read?

The books I buy are almost exclusively based on recommendations from family, friends, and book bloggers whose opinions I value. Rarely do I pick up a book without having heard anything about it previously, though I’ve been broadening my horizons that way with audiobooks recently.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of memoir and “creative” autobiography, as Rachel is a huge fan of Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, and James Frey. We also have Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee on its way from AudioFile for us to listen to and review. Neil Gaiman’s Stardust was a recent read based on a recommendation from my roommates, and I think everything I have lined up for anytime soon was suggested by my partner, one of my closest friends, a new colleague at the magazine, or someone from the blogosphere. What on earth would I do if I had to choose my books entirely from scratch??? :)

Now it’s all you – what turns you onto the books you read?

Happy Mother’s Day!

Kirsten — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:21:28 +0000

To all of the bloggin’ mommas out there, and to my own mom, who encouraged and supported my passion for books and reading, may today be a day full of love and appreciation for all that you do.

Reading is something my mother and I have always had in common; my first grown-up reads, when I was still in elementary school, were her Agatha Christie novels and the occasional Dick Francis, Reader’s Digest condensed books and Janette Oke Christian fiction. One of my mom’s favorite stories to tell is of the day she discovered that I knew how to read. I was three years old and she was reading to me, and decided to ask me what some of the words were. I told her without hesitation. She thought maybe it was because I was so familiar with the book, so she pulled out one I didn’t know. Again, I was able to tell her the words she pointed out. She asked me how long I’d been able to read, and apparently I answered, “Oh mom, I’ve been reading for a long time!” Exactly how long that is in three-year-old terms shall always remain a mystery, but to this day, she gets a kick out of my response.

Do you have a fun mom story to share, reading/book-related or otherwise?

Free-form Friday

Kirsten — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:42:02 +0000

It’s official: I am now the Social Media Editor for AudioFile magazine, the print and online resource for audiobooks! Tim Spalding, the founder of LibraryThing, let me know about the opportunity a couple of weeks ago, and it is truly a dream job for me on many levels. I’m very excited about the new community we’re launching on May 14, and will be sure to post an open invitation here once we’ve officially come out of beta. I hope you’ll join us even if you aren’t a regular audiobook listener; we’re going to have some exciting guest moderators, YA titles that you can download free from the publishing partners in our Sync teen summer listening program, and lively discussions about new and upcoming titles, technology in the publishing world, and so much more. I’m new to audiobooks myself, and have already been introduced to some great books and fabulous narrators.

That being said, what would your dream job in the bookish world be?

Booking through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:26:24 +0000

So … you’re halfway through a book and you’re hating it. It’s boring. It’s trite. It’s badly written. But … you’ve invested all this time to reading the first half.

What do you do? Read the second half? Just to finish out the story? Find out what happens?

Or, cut your losses and dump the second half?

I used to have such a hard time leaving a book unfinished, but in recent years, I have forced myself to abandon a book if I’m just not feeling it. There are far too many books I know I will actively enjoy, even love, and my reading time is precious. Why spend it trudging through something I’m not getting any pleasure out of reading?

This comes at an apropos time, as I’ve been struggling with my guilt around having only read part of The Mayor of Castro Street. It’s not Harvey, it’s the author. I’m just not into his journalistic style, and the attempts at making it sound more like a biography than a news article fall short of the mark; they’re clearly not his natural voice, and thus they stick out like sore thumbs. I needed a reminder that it’s okay to leave the book unfinished, and this served the purpose. Thanks, Deb!

Manic Monday

Kirsten — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:01:52 +0000

Not much time today, but I did want to share these beautiful shelves I discovered yesterday, courtesy of Definatalie.

Aren’t they gorgeous??? I’ve already requested that Rachel build me some when the time and space are right :)

Have you seen any good accessories, furniture, or other bookish delights around the interwebs lately?

Booking through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:15:54 +0000

God* comes to you and tells you that, from this day forward, you may only read ONE type of book–one genre–period, but you get to choose what it is. Classics, Science-Fiction, Mystery, Romance, Cookbooks, History, Business … you can choose, but you only get ONE.

What genre do you pick, and why?

*Whether you believe in God or not, pretend for the purposes of this discussion that He is real.

First of all, thank all higher powers that I will never actually have to make this decision! Were I forced though, it didn’t take long to decide that I’d choose fantasy (provided I didn’t have to distinguish between adult, YA, and youth titles). The realm of fantasy is so broad that, though “it’s all been done” and of course there will be some formulaic plots and regurgitated settings, there is much more scope than with other genres, in my opinion.

How about you?

WWW Wednesday

Kirsten — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:12:41 +0000

WWW Wednesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. To play along, just answer the following three questions…

What are you currently reading? I’m currently reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, A Million Little Pieces, The Mayor of Castro Street, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and listening to Aesop’s Fables.

What did you recently finish reading? I most recently finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

What do you think you’ll read next? Because five books in the works doesn’t keep me busy enough until next Wednesday??? :) I’ll probably finish HP6 this week and move on to book 7, and hopefully get through the Twain as well, which I’m reading on Stanza on my iPod. I feel bad for abandoning Harvey, but I’m just not great at soldiering on through non-fiction; I really ought to keep that one in my bag so I’m forced to read it on the bus, and have to be home to read the “fun” stuff.

What’s your WWW this week?

Teaser Tuesday

Kirsten — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:48:30 +0000

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“Well, I don’t say it wasn’t a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody suffering ‘most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a hint some way that you warn’t dead, but only run off.”

It took me flipping pages for a solid five minutes to decide that a non-spoiler teaser from a Harry Potter book is relatively impossible if it’s to be interesting at all. So, I just re-downloaded Stanza to my iPod last night, and decided to find an e-book to use for my teaser today instead.

I read Mark Twain for the first time last year, and loved loved loved Huck Finn. Now, it’s time to move on to Tom Sawyer (though it’s now my understanding that I’m doin’ it wrong. Go figure!). I can’t get enough of the way Twain makes you truly hear the way the words are spoken; whenever I read this style of written speech, I will always think of my friend Rob, who took Huck Finn from me and read me the first page in exactly the accent I imagined as I was reading. I was delighted, and only wished he could have read the whole book aloud!

So your turn – whatcha readin’?

Free-form Friday

Kirsten — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:32:59 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about audiobooks this week, and I’m curious about the other bookish bloggers out there. Do you listen to audiobooks? How do you choose which books to listen to and which to read? Do you have favorite narrators whose audiobooks you’ll seek out? What resources do you use in order to choose your audiobooks? Do you get them from the library, buy them, use a web rental site? Have you ditched an audiobook because of the narrator? Do you think the quality of the reading affects your opinion of the book’s content?