Audiobooks: CDs for the Male Road Warrior: by Trisha Rigsby
A/V Special Topics—03/19/10
I have several male road warriors in my family. Long drives, frequently to varying locations, are part of their job descriptions. To make the drives less arduous, these men have made audiobooks their constant companion on the road for years. Since they don’t always have time to get to the library, and none care to travel without a good book riding shotgun, I often find myself at our library, selecting audiobooks on their behalf. My choices tend to focus on their common interests in action films, thrillers, suspense, westerns, sports, the Science Channel and the History Channel. Because while my brother-in-law and I both like The Lost City of Z and Harry Potter, I can’t say he enjoyed Remembering Kate or Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason in audio as much as I did. So, for your male road warrior patrons, I recommend authors like Robert Parker, David Baldacci, John Grisham, Stephen Coonts, Steve Martini, Nelson Demille, David Grann and John Feinstein; and areas like history, military history and popular science.
Blog: Action and Adventure for Boys and Teen Guys: by Heather Ji
Juvenile & YA Special Topics Post—03/19/10
Just as we girls are enjoying great new books featuring strong female characters fighting their own battles, guys will find plenty of stories full of action and adventure to appreciate in 2010. And these adventures go beyond survival on the high seas or fights in the Wild West. Teens can find books in the newly popular steampunk subgenre, such as Worldshaker by Richard Harland or Behemoth, the next adventure in Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series. Video game and comics enthusiasts will want to pick up superhero adventures like The Rise of Renegade X, the story of a teen aiming for supervillain university, but ending up with the good guys. Invisible City, first in The Joshua Files series, featuring a jungle, a conspiracy and a prophecy, will captivate fans of The Da Vinci Code, and for teens more interested in reality, Rush, by Jonathan Friesen, follows one teen’s move from extreme sports to fighting wildfires with a team of firefighters.
For younger readers, the new series by D.J. MacHale, Morpheus Road, combines horror and adventure, while Eoin Mcnamee’s The Ring of Five is a fresh take on the more traditional espionage subgenre. Pickle Impossible is a wacky story for kids who don’t take their adventure seriously, and Dark Life is a dystopian environmental story about a boy fighting to save his world on the sea floor. So if the boys in your library or in your life are looking for a book to rival what’s playing on the big screen, or what they are playing on the smallest of screens, try handing them one of these options.
This month, we sit down with Ken Burns
Ken Burns has been making films for more than 30 years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1982, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made. The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.” Burns’ documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards (Brooklyn Bridge in 1982 and The Statue of Liberty in 1986) and have won seven Emmy Awards, mostly from The Civil War and Baseball.
Recent Interviews
BWI’s Collection Development Department has had the pleasure of sharing some time with several of today’s top authors, artists and illustrators.
- Ken Burns
- Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier
- Meg Cabot
- Christopher Moore
- Richelle Mead
- Allan Stratton
- Pam Muñoz Ryan
- Francisco X. Stork
- Frank Cottrell Boyce
- Eric Carle
- Paula Young Shelton & Raúl Colón
- Mo Willems
- Linwood Barclay
- Barbara Taylor Bradford
- Scott Westerfeld
- Walter Dean Meyers & Christopher Myers
- Stephan Talty
- Buzz Aldrin
- Grace Lin
- S.E. Hinton
- Eliza Dresang
- The Low Anthem
- David Grann
- Kadir Nelson
- Fred Kaplan
- Matthew Holm & Jennifer L. Holm
- Alex Robinson
- Laura Amy Schlitz
- Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher
- John Green
- Jon Scieszka
- Naomi Shihab Nye
- Neil Gaiman
- Garth Stein
- Jim Aylesworth
- Linda Buckley-Archer
- Jenny Downham
- Judy Schachner
- Mark Teague
- Melanie Watt
- Sharon Draper
- Kenneth Oppel
Collection Development
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