As we worked on creating AudioFile’s new podcast, Behind the Mic, we planned to have as many “voices” as possible to amplify our audiobook conversations. In our early weeks, listeners have heard our host Jo Reed and me as well as AudioFile Publisher Michele Cobb recommending the titles. This week, AudioFile Assistant Editor & reviewer Emily Connelly joins in with five new audiobook picks. Next week, reviewer Jonathan Smith will join us to share recent favorites. We each take a slightly different approach as we talk about the highlights and why each audiobook will be a great listen.
If you are having fun with our podcast—and finding good things to listen to— please hop over to iTunes and leave us a review or rate the show!
On the podcast this week, Emily discusses new and notable audiobooks, including some for younger listeners. Read more…
Regardless of individual political allegiance, Americans—and many in Europe, Asia, and Africa, too—are gaining new and more popular awareness of how words can be used to both contract and expand communication. Whether used as singular epithets or strung into carefully designed phrasing, words and the meanings they carry can persuade, enrage, comfort, and signal a lowering or heightening of tension. People who love to read know this as surely as do gossips and clergy crafting sermons. Adding the high-octane fuel of skilled performance of the written words guides listeners through pace, tone, and inflection to burn every spark of available meaning and potential nuance from the written word and bring it to the audiobook reader’s attention. 
The history of Pride marches and events stretches back now nearly half a century. Books and audiobooks for young listeners continue to grow in both number and depth of treatment, where LGBTQI characters have moved from props to tropes to engaging people who happen to identify along the diverse orientation spectrum. It’s a little—well, a lot—harder to find such an audiobook presence for adult listeners seeking books, authors, and narrators with whom to celebrate Pride.
