A Picture Is Worth a 1000 Spoken Words

I usually try to illustrate my reviews with the images provided by the publisher of the audiobook. LibriVox volunteers in particular have done a great job at designing covers for their public domain audiobooks. Sometimes, there is no cover image for the book, especially when I'm reviewing a short story or poem. In these cases, I have to search for a Creative Commons or public domain image to use instead.  These searches often turn up with great images. I've included a few of my favorites below. You can find the license and credits by clicking on the story links.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month in the United States, when people are encouraged to read poems, write poems, and celebrate poets and poetry. To mark the occasion, I'll be posting two poem reviews later this week. If you'd like to see more reviews of free audio poems, go to the links in the sidebar to find a whole month of poetry reviews I did back in November, plus some other poetry. If you don't read poetry, listen to "How to Pick Up a Poetry Habit" from The Poetry Foundation podcast (mp3). For more information on National Poetry Month, visit Poets.org.

Back-to-school

The school year is starting this month in the United States. Soon, students will be getting their lists of books for book reports and class-wide reading. Yesterday, I posted a review of Call of the Wild, a popular choice for assigned reading in U.S. schools. For the rest of the month, I'll be continuing this theme by reviewing books and stories that are often read in English literature classes.

For students and parents of student reading this, I hope that by being able to listen as well as read the books that more students would actually complete their assignments. By using audiobooks as a supplement, not a replacement for reading, I think students have a greater chance of actually enjoying the books the read. This after all is one of the goals of literature classes: to instill in students a life-long love of reading that will continue their education long after they've graduated.

March comes in like a lion

I've finished my February-long run of short novels; next week it'll be back to reviews of one regular-length audiobook per week. I will have one exception, however. As you may have noticed, I've been running bonus reviews of short stories on some holidays. Since Good Friday and the normal date for St. Patrick's Day (though not the actual liturgical feast) fall on the same week, I'll have two short stories reviews that week: one Irish and one . . . let's just say it's Good Friday-related.

I'd like to thank all the blogs that have been sending traffic my way of late: largeheartedboy, venangago-go, Dogberry Patch and the aforementioned Read, Write, Now. SFFaudio.com has also been reprinting my science fiction audiobook reviews. Thanks, everybody, for spreading the word.

Book selection

With four books in the archives, I'll point out a few of my tendencies concerning book selection.

• Solo recordings - I tend to review recordings made by one person, rather than the chapter-per-person organization of the Librivox group recordings. I do this for two reasons: 1) I like solo recordings better and 2) it's easier to review. Listing the qualities of 14 different readers is difficult enough as it is without the possibility that I'll have to own up that one of the 14 is sub-par.


• No bad reviews - If I'm reading a book and decide I don't like it, I'll put it aside; no hard feelings. I've come back to books from time to time and discovered that they're actually good books, but I just wasn't in the right mental state to enjoy it. The same goes with readers. I won't continue listening if I dislike the reader, but neither will I publish my opinion that the reader is awful. There's too much of good stuff out there to spend time dwelling on the negative.

For the month of January, I've been choosing classics: Lord Jim, Pride & Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Conn. Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I decided that since everyone would be visiting my blog for the first time, they would like to see something familiar - either something they've read or something they've been meaning to read. I can introduce off-the-beaten path finds later.

These classics tend to be long books, so to introduce a little variety, I've decided to review short books for February, the shortest month of the year. Occasionally, I'll pick a month and do a theme for that month, like science fiction or mysteries. I'll also start throwing in a short story review at irregular intervals in addition to my weekly book reviews.