Books with Kamara

Ebooks and audiobooks are a part of our landscape. What does the change in medium mean for appeal factors? One of the most interesting differences pointed out by the articles this week is that genre appeal factors do not necessarily contribute to whether or not the reader will choose an audiobook or ebook. Audiobooks tend to be more dependent upon who is narrating the book. Interestingly enough when I was younger I loved audiobooks and only really liked ones read by female narrators who had a excited sounding voice or who read at a faster pace to make the story go by. I especially loved the Princess Diaries series because of the pace on audio because I was and still am a slow reader. Another appeal with audiobooks is the mobility factor especially with today's downloadable audiobooks. While I personally don't like to listen to audiobooks in the car others do because it helps them relax while driving. Some people even exercise to audiobooks. Ebooks can have the appeal fac...

Fantasy Annotation Stars of Fortune By: Nora Roberts Berkley Books 314 pages ISBN 9780425280102 Synopsis:  Long ago three goddesses made three stars for a newborn princess knowing that she would be good and he stars powers would be use for good. Evil goddess Nerezza decided she wanted the powers to herself to rule the worlds. To keep this from happening the goddess sisters brought the stars down and sent them in three separate "safe spaces" to be later found to fulfill their destiny. On present day earth Sasha Riggs is a painter who paints fantastic pictures from her dreams. Bothered by her dreams Sasha sets off to find out if there is more to them. Upon meeting five "strangers" Sasha realizes her dreams are more vision than dream. The five band together to form a powerful search team in charge of finding the Stars of Fortune hidden by the Goddess sisters. Nerezza's darkness lurks everywhere and threatens to disband the team before they can really come to...

The Spades Park Book Club is an intimate book club with an attendance of about five to seven people at any given meeting.  The meeting I observed had five in attendance not including myself. The book club is made up of mostly women with the occasional attendance of a lone man. At first glance one can tell that these ladies are friendly with one another. However, upon further observation through conversation it is apparent that this book club crew is connected at a deeper level as they begin by discussing what is going on in their lives before delving into actual book discussion. The character differences amongst the crew made for an interesting observation. Who is asking the questions, is there a leader or do people take turns? The leader of the Spades Park Book Club is an older woman who is retired and also attends the library's Shared Reading program which is another book club hosted weekly. Her leading style tends to be to guide the discussion back to...

Book clubs have been around since, well since the American library has been around. Actually before American libraries the French apparently had salons that had book clubs (Chelton, 2001). In more recent history Oprah brought about the celebrity book club. Of course, before Oprah Americans read books, but reading was apparently on the decline. Maybe this had something to do with Americans watching more TV than reading, but Oprah set out to get Americans reading again. Through her television talk show Oprah brought about a book club that got many Americans reading again. Other celebrities followed suit. In Britain a talk show husband and wife pair Richard and Judy had a talk show that went on for several years. As time passed book both Oprah and Richard and Judy's book clubs became top book clubs in their respective countries. Oprah's book club was a sensation and soon became an online presence. The book club gave way to other celebrity book clubs from the likes of Reese Withe...