Massood Farivar draws on his unique experience as a native Afghan, a former mujahideen fighter, and a longtime U.S. resident to provide unprecedented insight into the recent collision between Islam and the West.
Looking for some good content for your iPod? Give these a try… (more…)
With over 1,000 mp3 downloadable audio titles currently available, the question then becomes this: How do I find them? There are a couple answers to that question, but the easiest ways are listed here:
Approach 1: Go to Netlibrary under “Subscription Databases.” Under “Advanced Search,” users can limit their search by format. Select “eAudiobooks” and then choose “mp3.” This will bring up the 1,097 titles that are available.
Approach 2: Open up the Netlibrary Media Center (downloadable through the link above). Click on “Search” in the upper-right hand corner and limit by “mp3″ under “Format.” This will pull up all available mp3 titles. Alternately, users can go to the “Browse” tab, select mp3 as the format then limit by broad subject area such as Memoirs, Business, Classics, Mystery & Suspense, etc.
Happy listening!
They’re here!!!! The mp3/iPod compatible titles from Netlibrary are now available! You can’t see me (I hope) but I’m doing a little victory dance right now. There are still a few wrinkles to be hammered out with the catalog records, but for now just know there are two ways to get a listing of the current iPod compatilble titles:
Approach 1: Go to Netlibrary under “Subscription Databases.” Under “Advanced Search,” users can limit their search by format. Select “eAudiobooks” and then choose “mp3.” This will bring up the 375 titles that are available.
Approach 2: Open up the Netlibrary Media Center. Click on “Search” in the upper-right hand corner and limit by “mp3″ under “Format.” This will pull up all available mp3 titles. Alternately, users can go to the “Browse” tab, select mp3 as the format then limit by broad subject area such as Memoirs, Business, Classics, Mystery & Suspense, etc.
Enjoy!
Hello, Spokane!
Apologies for the delay in updating this blog but we’ve had a change of guard here in the Purchasing/Cataloging department. As the person now in charge of purchasing movies, music and audio books for the Spokane Public Library, I went out on a limb and assumed that you, our dear public, would be more interested in having me focus my time on purchasing new titles and subsequently figuring out how to catalog them than spending time on the blog.
But now that I have a couple months under my belt, I’m to the point where I can do both both!
Stay tuned for regular (and maybe frequent even?) updates to this site.
All the best,
Mark Pond
Most engaging author was won by SHERMAN ALEXIE. No surprise to anyone who has heard him speak!
The American Booksellers Association (ABA) announced the winners of the inaugural Indies Choice Book Awards. Formerly the Book Sense Book of the Year Awards, the new Indies Choice Book Awards reflect the spirit of independent bookstores nationwide through new categories and a broader range of winners and honor books. Audiobook copies of the 2009 Indies Choice Book Award Winners available at Spokane Public Library include:
Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction):
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Fiery Shaffer and Annie Barrows.
Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction):
The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell. Read by Sarah Vowell, with celebrity guests.
Best Author Discovery:
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski. Read by Richard Poe.
Most Engaging Author:
Other Indie Buzz Honor Book recipients include:
Best Book (Fiction) Honor Books
City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Read by Ron Perlman.
The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane. Read by Michael Boatman.
People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. Read by Edwina Wren and [Downloadable audio] version
Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction) Honor Books:
Hurry Down Sunshine: A Memoir, written and read by Michael Greenberg
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel. Read by Ray Porter.[Downloadable audio]
The titles below were nominated for Spoken Word Grammy award and the 2009 winner is in BOLD below.
CHILDREN: Best Spoken Word Album (For albums consisting of predominantly spoken word vs. music or song.)
Around The Campfire
Buck Howdy With BB
[Prairie Dog Entertainment]
The Big One-Oh
Dean Pitchford
[Random House Audio/Listening Library]
Brown Bear And Friends
Gwyneth Paltrow
[Macmillan Audio]
The Cricket In Times Square
Tony Shalhoub
[Macmillan Audio]
Yes To Running! Bill Harley Live
Bill Harley
[Round River Records]
ADULT: Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Story Telling)
An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore)
Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon & Blair Underwood
[Simon & Schuster Audio]
Born Standing Up
Steve Martin
[Simon & Schuster Audio]
I Am America (And So Can You!)
Stephen Colbert (& Various Artists)
[Hachette Audio]
Life Beyond Measure
Sidney Poitier
[HarperAudio]
When You Are Engulfed In Flames
David Sedaris
[Hachette Audio]
In March, 2009, the most downloaded non-fiction audiobook in libraries nationally was. . . . DRUM-ROLL, please. . . .
Twenty-five things to say to the interviewer, to get the job you want by Dexter Hawk. 
This is one of the many non-fiction books now available to download from Spokane Public Library. New downloadable audiobooks will be added each month. [Be aware that before you can download a book, you must establish a free NetLibrary account.] Our eAudiobook subscription, with Blackstone Audio in Oregon, provides a broad range of popular fiction, biographies and classics, like Little Women and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
Moving between the 1930s and the present, O’Farrell’s novel is an unforgettable portrait of a woman edited out of her family’s history. The heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and Edinburgh bound together by loneliness and driven apart by rivalries that lead to a cruel betrayal, it is also the gripping story of how, 60 years later, their shocking secret comes to light.
The Nightingale’s Song by Robert Timberg
Timberg weaves together the lives of Annapolis graduates John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter to reveal how the Vietnam War continues to haunt America. Casting all five men as metaphors for a legion of well-meaning if ill-starred warriors, the author probes the fault line between those who fought the war and those who used money, wit, and connections to avoid battle.
Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories by Ian Fleming
A collection of secret agent James Bond stories, including From a view to a kill, For your eyes only, Quantum of solace, Risico, The Hildebrand rarity, Octopussy, The property of a lady, The living daylights and 700 in New York.
Die for Love by Elizabeth Peters
A librarian takes a trip to the convention of the Historical Romance Writers of the World, and when one of the attendees turns up dead and another is being threatened she becomes involved.
Traitor by Ralph Peters
“As powerful men in Washington lean hard on Congress to approve funding for the Next-Generation Fighter Bomber-a controversial ‘miracle’ war machine with a $300 billion price tag-a savage terror bombing levels an aircraft research facility in France. The loss of lives is staggering-and retribution begins even before the guilty are clearly identified. While murder haunts the halls of power, Lt. Col. John Reynolds struggles to remain an honorable man and a loyal soldier. “–Publisher’s web site.
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
“When Orwell went to the north of England in the thirties to find out how industrial workers lived, he not only observed but shared in their experience. . . . In his searing yet beautiful account of life on the bottom rung, Orwell asks himself why socialism, which alone, he felt, could conserve human values from the ravages of industrialism, had so little appeal. His answer was a harsh critique of the socialism and socialists of his time. “–Publisher’s web site.
The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits by David Horowitz
“Politics is war; but in America, one side is doing all the shooting, the liberals. Shell-shocked conservatives blame their failures on the media or on unscrupulous opponents, but they refuse to name the real culprit: themselves.”
Using the library’s online catalog, do a keyword search for the term “downloadable audio” for a current list of titles.
Michael Daugherty
Letters from Lincoln (2009)
for Baritone and Orchestra
(in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth)
Commissioned by the Spokane Symphony and funded by the Bruce Ferden Endowment Fund for New Music
This serious work was performed by the Spokane Symphony in March, 2009. The complete text can be found at http://www.spokanesymphony.org/zlcms/editor/uploads/files/Letters%20From%20Lincoln%20Text.pdf
A light-hearted excerpt is from Lincoln’s autobiography: Abraham Lincoln is My Name (1824-26, Indiana)
Abraham Lincoln is my name
And with my pen I wrote the same
I wrote in both haste and speed
And left it here for fools to read
Abraham Lincoln his hand and pen
He will be good but God knows when
Swift as an Indian arrow
Fly like a shooting star
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
The library WILL acquire copies of this as soon as the music is released on CD.
I’m an aging librarian who once worked for a book publisher; now I watch the current waves in publishing and wonder how any business model will enable publishers to stay afloat. A new acquaintance who works for the city shared her interest in a recent Time Magazine article and the issue of self-published authors.
When I went to library school, self-publishing was generally interpreted to mean that one’s work wasn’t good enough or of interest to a broad enough range of readers for any publisher to buy the rights. Now, as the Time article linked below reveals, it is such a risky time for mainstream publishers to take on new material, we are quite likely to see much much more self-publishing of great material like Still Alice.
With Sony ebook Readers, pod-casts and blogs, print and non-print formats are blurring daily and information is less and less distinguishable by format alone. As an audiovisual librarian I find this intriguing, but philosophically I wonder about our culture, the reader and the ability to identify balanced points of view on wide-ranging topics. Hmmm. “May we live in interesting times. . . .” What are YOUR thoughts?
Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature
By Lev Grossman, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009, Time Magazine
Chris Jackson / Getty
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