Back to School: Promoting Literacy With Audiobooks. Plus Win a One-Year Subscription To Audiobooks.com!

Have you tried audiobooks yet? I've been a big listener ever since Books On Tape but now listen through the Overdrive or Audible apps on my iPhone. Books are usually borrowed from my local library, although I've purchased many through Audible.com and downloaded dozens from Audiofile's Audiobook Sync summer program. Like my Kindle library, my audiobook library is stuffed to overflowing and my to-be-read list may never get fully read.

Some of my favorite times to listen? In the car, especially on long trips back home to Massachusetts, while floating in my pool, during the dreaded housework. 

I love audiobooks so much that all of my own books are available in audio.

New Release Spotlight: "In a Jam" by Cindy Dorminy

I fell in love with the cover of this book and its sweet premise, and just had to invite the author to visit the blog. Welcome to Adventures in Publishing Cindy! 

Andie Carson has to do three things to inherit her grandmother’s lottery winnings—sober up, spend a month running her grandmother’s Georgia coffee shop, and enter homemade jam in the county fair. If she can’t meet those terms, the money goes to the church, and Andie gets nothing. She figures her tasks will be easy enough, and once she completes them, Andie plans to sell the shop, take the money, and run back to Boston.

After a rough breakup from his crazy ex-fiancée, Officer Gunnar Wills decides to take a hiatus from women. All he wants is to help make his small town thrive the way it did when he was a kid. But when wild and beautiful Andie shows up, Gunnar’s hesitant heart begins to flutter.

9 Reasons Why YA Fiction Still Gets Me

photo by BillionPhotos.com via AdobeStock

There's something about YA fiction. Although I've been an adult for decades, I love it. I love to read it and I love to write it. 

Maybe it's because it pulls me back to my teenage years, when everything was all wrong, and gives me a chance to view life from a different lens, to a life where I wasn't gawky, awkward, and insecure, where money wasn't an issue and I had the right jeans and the right sneakers, where my father didn't pass away and leave me rudderless. 

Or maybe it's because I have my own young adult (now a perfect 22) and lived through her much happier teen years, seeing that she had everything I lacked. 

My love of books and reading solidified when I was a teen, providing a much needed escape. YA spans a variety of genres - historical, fantasy, paranormal, romance, social - and brought me places I could only dream of seeing or didn't know existed. 

It introduced me to cultures and worlds beyond my own. 

I met important and famous people, and time traveled throughout the ages.

I learned about dark things in life while never leaving my comfort zone. 

I fell in love with heroes and heroines. 

I read and reread many books that touched my soul.

I still need to escape sometimes and a YA novel is often the best transporter. Some favorites: John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Game series, the Harry Potters, Cynthia Toney's Bird Face series, Ruta Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray, and Alyssa Sheinmel's R.I.P. Eliza Hart. 

How about you? Are you a YA fan? What's moved you lately?

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Here's a collection of 14 YA books currently free to download in the Discoveries promo sponsored by My Book Cave.  Multi authors, multi genres, rated all ages to moderate+ for language, sexuality, and violence. A sample of my novel Swim Season is included. Download now! Offer ends October 31st. 

What I Read on My Summer Vacation, Part Two

Summer is my favorite season, and my favorite activity during summer is catching up on my reading. This time, I have an extra large stack of books to get through because I picked up 25 additional titles at Book Con, some of my favorite authors recently published, and a number of titles about Alzheimer's and dementia are on my list because I'm an administrator for the AlzAuthors website. Here I'll share a few of the books that made me think, made me laugh, and /or made me wish that I had written them.

Gone: A Girl, A Violin, a Life Unstrung, by Min Kym

It's the Book Blogger Hop! Week of June 16-22

This is something new for me and it looks like fun.

Each week, the Book Blogger Hop starts on Friday and ends on Thursday, with a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The Hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to their own blogs. 

Here's this week’s question:

How do you organize your blog in terms of what is in your side bar? 

Do you have categories and defined sections in your side bar?

  (submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver's Reviews)

I'll go first. 

If you look at the right side of my blog you'll see I've organized my sidebar into different sections. At the top is my book trailer for Swim Season, which I'm so excited about. It's my first one and the bright young man who made it with me did a super job. Then you'll see my AlzAuthors badge, which identifies me as an author writing in the Alzheimer's  and dementia genre. I am a founding member of AlzAuthors, dedicated to helping those on the dementia journey find great sources for understanding and support. I also display my Books Go Social Ambassador's badge. BGS is a great group for authors and I keep active with it each week. Below that there's a link to translate my blog into different languages, and  a link to follow the blog. Then you'll see my most popular posts, followed by other pages on the blog. I try to keep my blog  as clean and simple as possible. How'd I do? How do you organize your blog? If you don't have a blog, how do you like to see a blog organized? Please reply in the comments.

About the Book Blogger Hop

The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer from Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer’s permission, Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the hop on February 15, 2013.

It's the Book Blogger Hop! Week of June 9-15

This is something new for me and it looks like fun.

Each week, the Book Blogger Hop starts on Friday and ends on Thursday, with a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The Hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to their own blogs. 

Here's this week’s question:

If you could have lunch with any living authors and/or 

book bloggers, who would you choose and why?

 (submitted by Kitty @ Vicarious Bookworm)

I'll go first.

 This is a tough one because I have so many beloved authors, but I'd have to ask the New York Times bestselling writer who motivated me to stop talking about writing and start writing: Elizabeth Berg. Her novel True to Form captured my interest in such a way that I had to begin my own novel. I'd also invite Anne Tyler, the subject of my Honors thesis back at UMass Boston. Incidentally, she's a favorite author of Elizabeth Berg. Lastly, I'd save a seat for Jan Karon, because I adore her Mitford series; each novel in the series makes me feel like I live in the town. 

What about you? Who would you invite to your writer's table? 

About the Book Blogger Hop

The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer from Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer’s permission, Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the hop on February 15, 2013.

Book Blogger Hop Week of May 26 - June 1

 

This is something new and it looks like fun.  

About the Book Blogger Hop
The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer from Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012.

With Jennifer’s permission, Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the hop on February 15, 2013.

Each week the hop starts on Friday and ends on Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to their own blogs.

Here's this week’s question:
(submitted by Kristin @ Lukten av Trykksverte)

 

What is the most fun part/aspect of being a book blogger?

 

I'll go first:

 

I love to read and I love books. Sharing my love of good books and great authors with others who appreciate the same enhances my reading experience. Through blogging, I get to share my favorite reads with others, and by following other book bloggers I learn of new books and authors I might enjoy.  It's a great way to keep on top of what's out there, in the vastness of the literary world, where millions of books and millions of authors fight for my attention. I blog primarily for my fellow authors in Clean Indie Reads, sharing their new releases, and for AlzAuthors, spotlighting books and other blogs in the dementia genre so those in need  of knowledge and support can easily find meaningful resources.

 

What do you find is the most fun about book blogging? I look forward to your comments.