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From Denmark to Ireland by Way of Brooklyn

"The sky was swept of clouds when I noticed a figure bent over his broke-down 1950 Vincent Comet dream machine and cursing under his breath. I slowed on my bicycle, not thinking he'd notice. But he turned to face me on the narrow street. And with one look, he cracked me open like a safe and stole everything inside."

So begins Darling Jim, Christian Moerk's impressive debut novel, the Tantor Audio edition of which won the Audio Publishers Association's "Audie" award last May in the category of "Thriller-Suspense". It was up against some pretty stiff competition, including recent works from Greg Iles and Elmore Leonard.

Moerk is a 40-year-old writer, born and raised in Denmark who came to the U.S. for college, received a graduate degree from the Columbia School of Journalism, worked in Hollywood for Warner Brothers, wrote for the New York Times, and now resides in Brooklyn. He spent considerable time in Dublin during his days in the film industry, and he does quite a good job evoking the accents, slang expressions, and locales of modern-day, small-town Ireland.

Dual narrators, Stephen Hoye and Justine Eyre, worked hard for that Audie, and, like the author's, their evocations of Ireland are convincing. Raised in New England, Hoye studied and worked in London theater for 20 years. Eyre is a Nova Scotian Canadian by birth, spent much of her childhood in the Phillipines where she was educated at British schools, then trained in theater at McGill University in Toronto.

(Fans of vampire lit -- and who is not? -- may be interested to note that Eyre was involved in another male-female co-narration: the Books on Tape library edition of Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 best-seller The Historian, co-narrated with Paul Michael. She can also be heard reading the forthcoming vamp mash-up, Dracula My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker -- due in August from Tantor Audio and available on Playaway this Fall.)

Moerk's inspiration for Darling Jim was an Irish newspaper story about an aunt and three nieces found dead in the house in which they'd lived for months as shut-ins. From this gruesome starting point, Moerk imagines an irresistable vintage-motorcycle-riding, silver-tongued, blue-eyed shanachie or story-teller who leaves a convoluted trail of mayhem that must be pieced together by the novel's characters and readers alike. The book was first published in Denmark in 2007. The first U.S. edition was published by Henry Holt in 2009 and received very favorable notices -- a starred review in Publishers Weekly and raves from Booklist and The Washington Post.

The story is told in three parts that interweave an after-the-fact third-person narrative (read by Hoye) with two separate diaries written by two of the three sisters and read by Eyre. Each narrator does an impressive number of distinct voices and accents. Hoye's section is focussed primarily on a hapless but determined young artist and postal clerk named Niall. Eyre is especially convincing in her strikingly different renditions of the three sisters.

Typically for this genre, a goodly amount of the willing suspension of disbelief is required of the reader, but those willing to go along for the ride will be rewarded with an entertaining yarn, rendered skillfully for audio and justly deserving of its recent Audie award.

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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta

Philip Pullman: Good Man or Scoundrel?

Philip Pullman's retelling of the Gospels will not be everyone's cup of theological tea (as evidenced by its underwhelming first print run of only 50,000 -- the "His Dark Materials" series has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide -- and its publication in the U.S. by independent press Canongate rather than by Random House). But for inquisitive students of Christianity, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a thought-provoking exploration of myth-making and morality.

The book was published in print in the U.S. on April 1 (by Canongate U.S., now a division of independent publisher Grove-Atlantic). The Playaway version launches May 20, simultaneously with other audio formats.

Pullman is not the first fiction writer to imagine an alternate version of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov presented the disciple Matthew as a not-so-reliable reporter of Jesus' time in Jerusalem. And Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, imagined a Jesus who returned to earth and found himself at odds with the Church.

Pullman's story also fits within a very well-developed body of scholarship on the historical and literary process of Biblical canonization. In Pullman's tale, Jesus' twin brother, Christ, is an ardent admirer of the preacher of Galilee but also a skillful author and editor in his own right.

All of this might be more than a little confusing to a Sunday school class who's only exposure to the Bible has been in the context of religious instruction. But for those students -- young and old, both believers and non-believers -- who are interested in a scholarly approach to religion, Pullman's work has much to offer.

Beyond whatever philosophical points Pullman may be trying to make with his book (a self-described atheist, he has spoken publicly about his desires to de-mystify and undermine Christian beliefs -- statements that have made him an enemy to many practicing Christians), The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is also a carefully crafted and captivating story.

And the audiobook version is magnificently narrated by the author himself. If you've heard the Random House Audio productions of the "His Dark Materials" books, featuring Pullman and a full cast, you'll know what a talented reader he is. If you haven't heard him before, this engaging three-and-a-half-hour work is a good way to introduce yourself to his skills as a voice actor.

For more of the man himself, take a listen to NPR's recent story about Pullman and his latest work. Among other things, he recounts his discussion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and says he hopes his book will send readers back to the Bible for their own re-examination of the Gospels.

And, if you're interested in critical Bible studies, here are a few Playaway titles to consider as companion listening:

Bart Ehrman: The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot (2008), and, available on Playaway from Recorded Books: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005).

Garry Wills: What Jesus Meant (2007); What Paul Meant (2007)

Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita

Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov (particularly the section known as "The Grand Inquisitor").

Off to Book Expo America next week. If you'll be attending, come visit Playaway at Booth #4077.

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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta

A is for APA... G is for Grafton... P is for PLA... Top mystery writers (and narrator) enthrall audience at PLA dinner

For audiobook fans, the Audio Publishers Association audiobook dinner is always one of the brightest moments of the biennial Public Library Association conference. This year in Portland, a crowd of around 600 turned out to hear an exceptionally entertaining line-up of speakers: best-selling mystery/suspense authors Chelsea Cain, Marcia Muller, and Sue Grafton, along with Judy Kaye,  accomplished stage actress and the longtime narrator of Grafton's super-popular "alphabet mysteries" series.

The evening started off with a paean to both libraries and audiobooks from Chelsea Cain, author of Evil at Heart (2009), Sweetheart (2008), and Heartsick (2007), all of which feature detective Archie Sheridan and serial killer Gretchen Lowell. (The 38-year-old Portland author has also written 5 other books including a 2004 parody of Nancy Drew, Confessions of a Teen Sleuth.)

Cain told a not-uncommon story among writers -- a bookish childhood spent carrying armloads of titles home from the library every week. Cain's own version involved a confession of being left unattended for long hours at the library by a harried single mom. Librarians, she said, save more lives than doctors.

Cain's happy ending came when, after years of renting audiobooks on cassette, she finally met -- and eventually married -- the guy from the tape rental company, who now works for a living as... A LIBRARIAN. Needless to say, the crowd loved this.

Next up was Marcia Muller who talked about her popular Sharon McCone series and confessed that she can't bear to read her own work after it's been published (too great an urge to mark it up with a blue pencil) but that she can LISTEN to the audiobook version and thereby hear the voice of her heroine in a new way. She shared selections from a large collection of favorite e-mails from her readers, each sample strangely "off" in one way or another.  For example: "I love having your books on audio. Now I don't have to read them."

Nine of Muller's novels are available on Playaway. Click here, to see them all. Two other titles, including her most recent, Locked In, are available on Playaway from BBC Audiobooks America.

By the way, Muller is married to author Bill Pronzini, and they are the only married couple to have each been named a "Grand Master" by the Mystery Writers of America.

Narrator Judy Kaye, whose stellar stage career has included a Tony award for Carlotta in "Phantom of the Opera" and a lengthy run in the original cast of "Mama Mia," declared that narrating Sue Grafton's alphabet series has been "one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life" -- no small claim for one so accomplished. She called the Grafton books the most popular thing she's ever been involved in, which ought to tell you something about just how huge Grafton's fan base is.

And then came the mistress herself. Grafton's alphabet mysteries (which she's been writing at the rate of nearly one per year since 1982) have sold in the hundreds of millions and been translated into over two dozen languages. The audiobook versions alone have sold over 1.75 million copies.

Like her series heroine, Kinsey Milhone, Grafton spoke bluntly and forcefully. For example: "I would rather roll naked in broken glass than sell [Hollywood] these stories." (Come on Sue -- tell us how you really feel.) She went on to explain that, having spent 15 years as a Hollywood scriptwriter, she wanted nothing more to do with that world. "I am not a team player. I am not a good sport." 

Grafton comes by her trade honestly -- her father, C.W. (Cornelius Warren) Grafton wrote detective novels in the 1940s and 50s. His books are out of print, but he may have inspired her practice of catchy serial titles. Borrowing from the folk tale of The Old Woman and Her Pig, "Chip" Grafton named his first two books The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope and The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher. According to Wikipedia, "a partial manuscript of a third novel, The Butcher Began to Kill the Ox, is known to exist.")

Tongue firmly in cheek, Grafton spoke about the many trials of the writing life, her many hours of therapy, and ultimately her decision to get a life and slow down the pace.

Grafton credited Jungian therapy ("very intellectual and abstract -- not 'boo-hoo' therapy") with teaching her that everyone has inside them both the person that they want to be and a repressed, "shadow side." Her fiction, she said, is her way of giving voice to that dark, repressed side.

Her assertion that the things we most despise are a part of each and every one of us and that we all should own these pieces of ourselves rather than deny them drew noises of both protest and agreement from the audience. A librarian sitting near me whispered, "That's why I read mystery fiction -- to feed my shadow side."

"Kinsey Millhone is my shadow," said Grafton, "and realizing that has changed the way I work." "Everything is process," she said. "I need to learn to trust the process."

It wasn't entirely clear that Grafton is always able to heed her own advice, but her self-deprecating observations frequently had the audience howling with laughter. At various points in the evening, many folks were laughing so hard that tears were streaming down their cheeks -- the mark, clearly, of a writer who connects with her audience.

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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta

Carter Finally Gets It - the new Catcher in the Rye?

Like many readers, I've been thinking about J.D. Salinger quite a bit in the six weeks since he passed away at the age of 91.

Apparently, he was an eccentric and, in many ways, unpleasant man (the New York Times called him "enigmatic" and a "literary recluse," "the Garbo of letters").  But there's no doubt he has left his mark on 2 or 3 generations of readers in the nearly 60 years since publication of The Catcher in the Rye.

Just 6 months prior to Salinger's death, a New York Times piece by Jennifer Schuessler explored the question of whether, after all those years, young readers had finally ceased to identify with the novel's unhappy adolescent hero, Holden Caulfield.

And practically at the very moment of Salinger's final exit -- by sheer coincidence -- I was listening to one of the most-talked about* YA audiobooks of 2009: Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford.

The hero of Crawford's book is a different sort of adolescent boy, but he's an adolescent boy nonetheless. It got me wondering if maybe the Times article was right and if perhaps Crawford's hero, Will Carter, is the new Holden.  Well, maybe not really... 

Holden is depressed. Carter has Attention Deficit Disorder.

Holden worries about what a crummy world it is. Carter worries about dying a virgin and what the exact definition of "third base" is.

Holden is self-destructive.  Carter works as hard as he can to not screw up, and space out, and do the wrong thing; it's just that, often, he can't quite figure out how to pull it off. 

In the end, Carter gains a little maturity, a little confidence, and a little self-knowledge -- but not too much.  Holden too is sort of redeemed in the end, or at least offers something like a note of optimism.   Still, it's not quite the same. 

Nothing in Carter Finally Gets It is very metaphorical.  Its meaning is pretty easy to grasp, and it's not likely to be the subject of quite so much literary criticism as Salinger's famous work.  Maybe that's what makes it Young Adult literature in the end.

This gets me thinking about the difference between a true YA title and an adult title offered to young adults.  I'm pretty sure that Catcher in the Rye is an adult book that gets read by young readers (sometimes by choice, sometimes not).  Carter Finally Gets It might be something like the opposite -- a Young Adult book best appreciated by adults.

Crawford's book has been described as laugh-outloud funny, and this is particularly true of the audiobook, expertly read by Nick Podehl.  (Part of what makes the experience so amusing for adults is hearing a grown-up narrator doing a pitch-perfect adolescent "awesooooome!")   But might it be funnier for an adult to read about a kid's ridiculous thoughts and feelings than for a kid to see the foibles of adolescence so accurately depicted?  Not to worry:  to hold everyone's attention Carter Finally Gets It is full of fart jokes, barfing jokes, and crude utterances about heavy petting.  

Obviously Catcher in the Rye was going for something other than laughs.  Carter Finally Gets It unashamedly goes for the laughs.  So many laughs, in fact, that reading it or listening to it probably won't feel like very hard work to young readers.   Still, Crawford throws in some food for thought, including such questions as:  How do the girls feel about being taken for granted, objectified, and gossiped about?  What are relationships about beyond making out?  Does hard work really pay off? 

It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but in liberal environments perhaps it's just the ticket.  And for young readers, maybe it's more compelling than Holden Caulfield, who maybe after all is better left to the adults.   

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* For LOTS more views of Carter Finally Gets It, visit the archives of the YALSA-bk listserv discussion at:
http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/yalsa- bk

YOU can weigh in on the question of what makes a book YA literature by leaving a COMMENT -- click here or use the link below.

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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Senior Content Strategist
Twitter: david_perrotta

Alfred Martino: Entrepreneur, Author

Alfred Martino isn't just an audiobook executive, he's also an author.

Alfred serves as president of Listen & Live Audio, the company he co-founded in 1994 with his partner Alisa Weberman. Since then, they've put out dozens of great audio titles including Tea House On Mulberry Street, by Irish author, Sharon Owens, and the very popular YA series of Bloody Jack books, written by L.A. Meyer and superbly read by the Audie-award-winning narrator Katherine Kellgren. Nearly all of L&L's titles are available on Playaway.

To date, Alfred has written two books for Young Adult/Teen audiences: Pinned (2006) and Over the End Line (2009). Both were published in hardcover by Harcourt and produced as audiobooks by Listen & Live. They deal with two of Alfred's greatest passions: wrestling (Pinned) and soccer (Over the End Line), but also with a whole lot more.

I recently took a listen to Over the End Line and found it very engaging. As a forty-something who grew up on the East Coast, it's evocation of the early-Eighties high school scene rang very true for me, as did its references to the New York Cosmos and such soccer luminaries of the day as Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, and Giorgio Chinaglia. The themes of popularity, friendship, love, and responsibility all rang very true as well.

The story should be engaging even for reluctant readers (I performed a pretty successful test on my reluctant nephew). There's some profanity, a little bit of discreetly described teen sex, and a fair amount of high-school partying, early-eighties style. This rough stuff is presented frankly enough to catch the interest of teen readers, but it's not glorified. The audio production is expertly narrated by Todd Licea.

Both of Alfred's titles are available on Playaway: 

     Pinned

     Over the End Line (release date: 2-1-2010, available now for pre-order.)

You can learn more about Alfred and Listen and Live at: http://alfredmartino.listenandlive.com/

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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Sr. Manager for Content Strategy

Green Metropolis: What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability

With the beginning of a new year, many of us are looking for a good read (or listen:) to inspire a new & improved life in 2010.  My selection may be a little heavier than the traditional motivational title -  "10 steps to success" or weight-loss - but as Playaway released David Owen's Green Metropolis this month, I thought it was worth highlighting as we form our new year's resolutions.

David Owen, staff writer at The New Yorker and prolific author, challenges conventional thinking on how lifestyle impacts the future of our environment.  The current movement focuses on green pastures, condemning cities for their over-development, energy consumption, and overall lack of green space.  Owen argues against that popular belief and suggests that metropolis - specifically Manhattan - is a model for sustainability.  Citing numerous examples, he demonstrates how a city-dweller consumes fewer resources and creates less greenhouse emission than the average American living in a suburb or more rural area.  Walking or taking public transportation, residing in apartment buildings that are more energy efficient than stand-alone houses, and living in concentration in place of sprawl – these are among the impacting lifestyle choices that Owen believes are crucial to sustainability.   While some environmentalists may disagree with Owen, Green Metropolis provides an interesting perspective on the current environmental crisis: good food-for-thought as we start a new year and reflect on our own lifestyle choices.  Besides, it got great reviews and was one of the "Best Books of 2009" from Publisher's Weekly, so it can't be half-bad.

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Posted by Caroline Duke

Playaway Content Development Coordinator

The {blank's} Daughter - variation #5,327

On January 1, 2010 Playaway releases The Calligrapher's Daughter, Eugenia Kim's debut novel.  It's a work of historical fiction inspired by the life of the author's mother and taking place in Korea during the 35 years when that nation was brutally controlled by Imperial Japan (1910-1945). The book received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly.

Kim's book makes me think about a lot of things including forgotten history and mothers and daughters.  But it also got me wondering how many books there are with titles in the form of The [blank]'s Daughter.  Currently on Playaway we have the following:

The Bonesetter's Daughter	Tan, Amy
The President's Daughter	Higgins, Jack
The Abortionist's Daughter	Hyde, Elisabeth
The General's Daughter	DeMille, Nelson
The Memory Keeper's Daughter*	Edwards, Kim
The Bootlegger's Daughter*	Maron, Margaret
The Preacher's Daughter*	Lewis, Beverly
The Fortune Teller's Daughter*	Shaara, Lila
The Apothecary's Daughter*	Klassen, Julie
The Bishop's Daughter*	Brunstetter, Wanda
The Quilter's Daughter*	Brunstetter, Wanda
The Storekeeper's Daughter*	Brunstetter, Wanda
The Tsarina's Daughter**	Erickson, Carolly

--
* available on Playaway from Recorded Books
* available on Playaway from BBC Audiobooks America

But the list above barely scratches the surface.  There are dozens and dozens of books with titles like this.  Wondering what was up with all the daughters and whether this was a relatively recent formulation, I went scurrying to WorldCat.

I found a bunch of relatively recent titles, starting with The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty, which won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Others included:

The narcissist's daughter	Craig Holden	2005
The mapmaker's daughter	John Pilkington	2004
The firework-maker's daughter	Philip Pullman	1995
The demon count's daughter	Anne Stuart	1980
The taxidermist's daughter	Nancy Schoenberger	1980

(You've got to admit that one about the taxidermist is special -- published in Missoula, Montana by Calliopea Press.) 

I also found these sorts of titles beginning to appear in significant numbers early in the 1800's and continuing on into the early 20th century.   The examples from this period are often morality tales or romantic adventures:

The clergyman's daughter	William Charles White	1810
The robber's daughter	author unknown	1818
The consul's daughter	author unknown	1841
The distiller's daughter	Osgood Bradbury	1844
The pirate's daughter	Eliza A Dupuy	1845
The banditt's daughter	H.L. Williams	1845
The commodore's daughter	B. Barker	1846
The matricide's daughter	Newton Mallory Curtis	1847
The lawyer's daughter	Joseph Alden	1847
The debtor's daughter	T.S. Arthur	1850
The slaveholder's daughter	F. Colburn Adams	1855
The begum's daughter	Edwin Lassetter Bynner	1890
The squire's daughter	Archibald Marshall	1912
The charwoman's daughter	James Stephens	1912
The minister's daughter	Hildur Dixelius	1926

Although there were earlier instances, the trend may have been set by Alexander Pushkin's historical novel, The Captain's Daughter, published in 1836.  The earliest example I found was a 1775 English farce with an unknown author, entitled The Citizen's Daughter.  Obviously, it's a powerful formula for a catchy title.

All of this makes me think of Michael Chabon, who skewers this magnificently in Wonder Boys, the tale of a burned-out academic who, after 10 years of writing, hasn't been able to follow up on his best-selling debut novel: The Arsonist's Daughter.

The 1995 Chabon novel was made into an excellent film in 2000, directed by Curtis Hanson.  Starring Michael Douglas, Tobey McGuire, Robert Downey, Jr., Frances McDormand, and Rip Torn, it's a pitch-perfect send-up of the world of higher education and, come to think of it, the world of publishing as well.  Bob Dylan even won an Oscar for writing the theme song, Things Have Changed.

(By the way, Michael Chabon's 2006 children's title Summerland is available on Playaway.  And his 2007 novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union is available on Playaway from Recorded Books.)

I'm still not sure I get what this whole "daughter" phenomenon is about.  Maybe I'll ask my daughter...

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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Sr. Manager for Content Strategy

Ayn Rand: I {heart} The Self

NPR's "Diane Rehm Show" had a great segment last week [10/28/2009] with Anne Heller, author of the new biography Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Nan A. Talese, KnopfDoubleday). Heller's book was published in print on October 27th. The Playaway version launches January 1, 2010.

Much of the discussion was about Atlas Shrugged, Rand's 1957 novel that's still a top-seller and still widely read more than 50 years after its publication - especially remarkable considering that it's over 1,000 pages in length.

In addition to Heller's book, a second Rand biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns (Oxford Press), was also released in October and has been receiving similarly positive reviews.  There's been a lot of talk lately about a resurgence of interest in Rand.  According to the Ayn Rand Institute, total sales of her books reached 25 million in 2008.  And according to Heller, combined sales of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are expected to top 2 million copies this year -- double the number sold last in 2009. 

There's likely to be still more interest to come when production is completed on a long-awaited film adaptation. Lionsgate acquired movie rights in 2006 and names like "Jolie" and "Pitt" were originally bandied about. More recently, Charlize Theron has been mentioned as a possible lead. IMDB lists the project as "announced" and "in production" for 2011.

Playaway offers an excellent unabridged edition of Atlas Shrugged from Blackstone Audio, narrated by the talented and prolific Scott Brick. It runs an impressive sixty-three and a half hours. If you're interested in a "just the good parts" version, we also offer an abridged version from HighBridge Audio, clocking in at a more manageable twelve hours. It's narrated by venerable actor of stage and screen, Edward Herrmann.

In all, there are currently thirteen Ayn Rand titles available on Playaway. View them here.

And In March of 2010 look for one more: Ayn Rand Answers. Drawn from Rand's taped lectures and question-and-answer sessions, the title promises to offer fresh insight into her views on such topics as racism, gun control, love, and marriage.

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Posted by David Perrotta, MLIS
Playaway Sr. Manager for Content Strategy

Blood-Sucking Creatures of the Night: Why We Love ThemFrom Bram Stoker to Charlaine Harris

One of the members of the Playaway content team recently suggested we overhaul our genre classification scheme. Instead of the 2 or 3 dozen subject headings we currently employ, why not simplify the whole system down to just two basic categories: VAMPIRE and NON-VAMPIRE?

He was kidding of course (I think), but, as with most sardonic workplace remarks, there was perhaps a kernel of truth. With Halloween just around the corner, what better time to ask, "Why are stories about vampires so darned appealing anyway?"

A quick scan of popular culture makes it pretty clear that, as a culture, we are ga-ga about the blood-sucking undead:

WorldCat returns over 5,000 fiction titles with keyword "vampire" (including of course not only adult titles but also items such as Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe.)

On Amazon, 6,700 book titles have been user-tagged "vampire".

Such searches turn up titles like the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead and the Morganville Vampires series from Rachel Caine.  For teens, there's Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga plus what seem like a zillion copycat works. And then there's the equally huge phenom of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books about a good-hearted telepathic waitress with some seriously odd friends and relatives.  It's now a wildly popular series on HBO, starring (OMG!) Anna Paquin.

Even the Jane Austen crowd can join in. When you're done listening on Playaway to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (the former available now and the latter coming soon, both are masterfully narrated by Katherine Kellgren), you can switch back to print and check out Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange and Vampire Darcy's Desire: A Pride and Prejudice Adaptation by Regina Jeffers (both out in paperback this year).

Remember, this all started with ONE book by ONE writer: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1847-1912).

At ALA annual meeting in Chicago this past July, Playaway, Recorded Books, and OCLC jointly hosted a very fun evening with author Charlaine Harris along with Johanna Parker, narrator of eight Recorded Books audio editions of Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books. We had over 100 librarians there, many of them huge fans themselves and all of them interested in the topic. 

Harris, herself seemed to have a wonderful time.  Of Playaway, she says on her blog, "This was all new technology to me, and I enjoyed [meeting] some of the men [and women] who’d made it possible; the people who designed the technology, and the staff of Playaway, who put it all together."  (You can see the rest of her comments here.)

“First of all, 

it's always been about sex... ”

After the evening's festivities, I got the chance to speak in depth with several librarian friends about the "vampire thing". Here's some of what I learned:

First of all, it's always been about sex, though not always in the same ways. In 1897, when Stoker published Dracula, the topic of sex couldn't be presented directly, but that doesn't mean people weren't interested. The vampire represents otherwise undiscussable social taboos. Count Dracula stalks virgins and is dangerously seductive, as are the members of his harem. It's a cautionary tale about the dangers of sex -- give in to the seduction and you will be ruined, "undead," beyond rescue.

In contemporary VampLit, those sexy vampires (it's hard to find an ugly one, one friend pointed out to me) are acting out a somewhat different set of issues. They seem to appeal to readers for several reasons:

They are otherworldy, imbued with fantastic, paranormal qualities that we ordinary folks don't have but sometimes wish we did: vamps don't age, they have extraordinary physical and psychic powers -- some turn into bats, some are telepathic. Female readers often seem attracted to stories about men who can read women's minds.  After all, what is sexier than someone who knows what you want without your having to say it outloud? It's scary, yes, but also kind of appealing. Some of these hunkie vamps really  understand women.

Yes, they're otherworldly, but not too much -- they still are recognizably human, so they make for good love interests. (A werewolf might be sensitive, but would you really want to take him or her to bed? Think of the shedding, the scratched furniture, the territorial marking... Zombies can be sympathetic, but they are in too advanced a state of decomposition to be physically attractive.)

And the vampire fills another bill: the wounded hero. The poor things are often emotionally scarred, and why shouldn't they be? They can't ever die, and so they know that they can't ever love completely. They are often sensitive, intuitive, emotionally open. But they maintain a protective shell that must be broken down so they can be rescued from their torment. Get it?

Plus they have their fun side: if you're an immortal vamp you can throw away your wrinkle cream, sleep all day, and party all night. It's easy to make friends...

At Playaway, we don't actually have a dedicated "Vampire" genre (yet), but at last count, we had over three dozen vampirish titles. Here's a downloadable list.

In addition, there are currently 13 Charlaine Harris titles available on Playaway from Recorded Books. A downloadable list is here.

And, by the way, if you've never read the original Dracula, it's really a neat book -- stylistically as well as thematically. The entire work is presented as a carefully collected "case book," telling the story from multiple perspectives such as diary entries, correspondence, and news accounts. This was a pretty different kind of story telling back in 1897.

We currently offer a great version from Blackstone on Playaway, narrated by Robert Whitfield, and coming soon, we'll have a new version from Tantor, narrated by the superb John Lee.

OK, now I've got to go get some garlic.

Playaway, RB, & OCLC host Edgar Sawtelle Author & Narrator at Midwinter

Saturday night at ALA Midwinter.  Playaway, Recorded Books, and OCLC jointly hosted a dinner with David Wroblewski, author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and Richard Poe, narrator of the Recorded Books audio edition (available on Playaway from Recorded Books).  About 130 invited guests were on hand.

The New York Times summarizes the book as follows:  “A young mute who can communicate with the dogs his family raises takes refuge with three of them in the Wisconsin woods after his father’s death.”  It’s also an imaginative reworking of Hamlet (complete with mother Trudy, uncle/stepfather Claude, a father’s ghost in the rain, etc.)  You can read the first chapter online at the New York Times website: 

Some nine years in the writing, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is Wrobelewski’s debut novel, and he envisions it as the first installment in a trilogy.  It’s been on the Times bestseller list for the past 32 weeks (currently at number five) and was a 2008 Oprah’s Book Club pick and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2008.

Booklist magazine recently chose the Recorded Books audio edition as the “Top of the List” 2008 choice for best audiobook of 2008, and just one day before the Saturday night event, Richard Poe was announced as one of AudioFile magazine’s 2008 Best Voices in Audiobooks.

The two guests of honor shared the stage and took turns addressing the audience, with   author Wroblewski talking about his own upbringing in Wisconsin and how the book came to be written and introducing sections of the story, which Richard Poe then read aloud. 

Poe’s reading was so inspired and the two complemented each other so well, that audience members were surprised to learn Wroblewski and Poe had never met in person until earlier that day.  No one I spoke with can recall ever seeing an author and a narrator together in a single presentation of this sort, but based on the overwhelmingly positive reaction, this is a formula we’ll certainly try to repeat in the future. 

On the exhibit floor Sunday morning, there was much talk of the book, which I described to a few people as “Hamlet with dogs” – but I meant it in a good-natured way. 

Indeed, the topic of dogs – their prominence in the story and in the author’s own life -- was woven throughout the evening’s discussion.  The night closed out with a lively question-and-answer session, but the one big question NOT asked:  had Wroblewski ever considered writing the book from the point of view of a cat?