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Tag Archives: Talking Books
Friday Reads: A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas
Recently I was with one of my daughters, and asked her what she was currently reading. The conversation that followed was all about the book genre that both my daughters have fallen completely in love with: Fantasy Romance. In general this is not a genre I’ve been drawn to, but they are so enthusiastic about it I thought I would give one a try. A Court of Thorns and Roses was the one recommended I read first, so I jumped out of my comfort zone and read something different. I will admit that it was a fun read, with faeries, demons, magic, and adventure galore. I both read and listened to it, and enjoyed both. Sarah J. Maas is an excellent writer, and it was easy to imagine the settings, characters, and story.
“When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives at her house to demand retribution. She is dragged away from her family to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends. There, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world. At least, he’s not a beast all the time. As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever. “
A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first in a series of five books. Ms. Maas has written four series in the Fantasy Romance genre, and there are other authors to choose from as well: Rebecca Yarros, Raven Kennedy, and Callie Hart just to name a few. There are also titles in this genre available to our Talking Book and Braille patrons–just search in BARD, or call your reader advisor. Enjoy! **Synopsis courtesy of Amazon and Audible.
#BookFaceFriday “Five Stories” by Willa Cather
We’re among the wild flowers with this #BookFaceFriday!
Is there anything more iconically Midwestern than Willa Cather? We love highlighting Nebraska authors in our NLC collections; this week’s #BookFace selection, “Five Stories” by Willa Cather (Random House, 1956), is available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service, from our Talking Book & Braille (TBBS) collection. It’s a part of our collection of Nebraska books and publications made available to Nebraska TBBS customers. Originally recorded on cassette by NLC in 1982, and narrated by Peggy Johnson, it was digitized and added to the National Library Service collection in 2023. For our non-TBBS users, we have many Cather titles, as well as biographies and nonfiction titles about the author, available on Nebraska OverDrive Libraries. We also have ten of Willa Cather’s novels available for check out in our Book Club Kit collection.
“These five stories span almost the entire length of Willa Cather’s career and juxtapose her two worlds: the Nebraska prairie and the world of art. Five short stories; The Enchanted Bluff, Tom Outland’s Story, Neighbor Rosicky, Paul’s Case, and The Best Years, along with an article by George N. Kates on Miss Cather’s last unfinished, and unpublished Avignon story.“
— From the BARD description
This week’s #BookFace model is long TBBS narrator Connie Healy! A volunteer with TBBS for over ten years, Connie has narrated more than eleven books and countless magazines in her time with us, including three One Book One Nebraska titles: “Dancing with the Octopus” by Debora Harding, “The Bones of Paradise” by Jonis Agee, and “Prairie Forge” by James J. Kimble. You can find all of the books she’s narrated on the National Library Service website.
TBBS borrowers can request “Five Stories” DBC02016 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
Love this #BookFace & reading? We suggest checking out all the titles available for book clubs at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub. Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!
New Book on BARD!
“The Cutters” by Bess Streeter Aldrich is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
All Unhappy families are alike, to invert Tolstoy, but each happy family is happy in its own way. Take the Cutters. Although they live in a rambling white house in a midwestern town called Meadows, the Cutters are too irreducibly real to stand in for the average all-American family created by pollsters, popular magazines, and television sitcoms. Witty Nell Cutter is not a Good Housekeeping model with lacquered hair. Big Ed Cutter is a lawyer not destined for Easy Street. There are three sons and a daughter-not the right number of children. Gramma, who lives with them, is inimitably Gramma. They compete for the reader’s attention, pursuing happiness in human ways that have not changed since 1926, when The Cutters was first published. But it is Nell Cutter who best illustrates Bess Streeter Aldrich’s strength in drawing memorable characters. Whether she is decorating the house on a budget for wealthy guests or testing child-raising theories or trying to make the daily loaf a little more yeasty. Nell Cutter is not afraid to experiment. She may go out on a limb, but it is seldom a dead one.
“The Cutters is well conceived and written. It is piched in a light, pleasant key and…comes as a welcome relief from adventure yarns and tales of mooncalf love. “
— Literary Review
TBBS borrowers can request “The Cutters,” DCB02017 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Nebraska Book on BARD!
“In Reach” by Pamela Carter Joern is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
“In Reach” was chosen as one of the 150 notable Nebraska books to highlight for the Nebraska 150 Celebration. These books represent the best literature produced from Nebraska during the past 150 years and highlight the varied cultures, diverse experiences and the shared history of Nebraskans.
In writing both rich and evocative, Pamela Carter Joern conjures the small plains town of Reach, Nebraska, where residents are stuck tight in the tension between loneliness and the risks of relationships. With insight, wry humor, and deep compassion, Joern renders a cast of recurring characters engaged in battles public and private, epic and mundane: a husband and wife find themselves the center of a local scandal; a widow yearns for companionship, but on her own terms; a father and son struggle with their broken relationship; a man longs for escape from a community’s limited view of love; a boy’s misguided attempt to protect his brother results in a senseless tragedy. In the town of Reach, where there is hope and hardship, connections may happen in surprising ways or lie achingly beyond grasp.
“Pamela Carter Joern’s fictional village of Reach, Nebraska, is populated by people you have known, or known of, all your life. In these glimpses of life as it is really lived, you will encounter your aunt Ella, your grandfather Leland, even the uncle no one mentions. You may agree that God is not absent if you are there. You will never forget Marlene and Vernon. Each character is doing “the best he can do” to harvest satisfaction from their lives. Searching for connections, you will find these folks in reach of your heart.”
—Linda M. Hasselstrom, author of “No Place Like Home” and “Dirt Song”
TBBS borrowers can request “In Reach,” DBC01891 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Book Now on BARD!
“The Old-Time Cowhand” by Ramon F. Adams is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
The American cowboy emerges from these pages as a recognizable human being with little resemblance to the picturesque inventions of the horse opera. Ramon F. Adams, a highly respected authority on the Old West, talks straight about what the cowhand really did and thought. His cow-punching, broncobusting, trail driving; his rodeo riding, poker playing, socializing; his horse, guns, ripe, clothing, sleeping bag; his eating and drinking habits; his attitude toward God, women, bosses; his unwritten code of conduct–everything about this vanished breed is told with absorbing authenticity, in the rich and varied lingo of the range.
“Encyclopedic in its coverage of the subject.”—Library Journal
TBBS borrowers can request “The Old-Time Cowhand,” DBC02042 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
“Abandoned Prayers” Now Available on BARD!
“Abandoned Prayers” by Gregg Olson is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
Eli Stutzman was born and raised in one of Ohio’s strictest Amish communities. But behind the peaceful facade was a quietly tormented rebel. After the suspicious death of his pregnant wife, Stutzman abruptly severed his ties with the Amish. Taking his young son Danny with him, he embarked on a cross-country spree of compulsive pickups, rampant drug abuse and violence.
TBBS borrowers can request “Abandoned Prayers,” DBC01998, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Book Available on BARD!
“A Rose is a Rose” by Ruth Richert Jones is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
Kelley stopped believing in God when she stopped believing in Santa Claus. And she’s managed just fine without Him. She has a good career, a handsome man who wants to marry her, and now an exciting trip to England to fill her life. But suddenly everything falls apart. She meets Ian Stewart in England, and she begins to question her feelings for Charles, the man waiting for her in America. Shadows surround Ian, though, and Kelley is afraid to trust him. As the days go by, she realizes that either Ian or Charles is involved in the theft of a valuable microchip. One of the men who loves her is a thief. What’s more, the authorities suspect that Kelley was also involved in the robbery. Kelly is in danger of losing her career, her good name, maybe even her life. Where can she turn of help, when she doesn’t know whom she can trust? But, Kelley’s great aunt promises Jesus is a Friend one can always trust, for He never fails. What would it be like, Kelley wonders, to have a Friend like that?
TBBS borrowers can request “A Rose is a Rose,” DBC01994, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
2024 One Book One Nebraska: Now Available on BARD!
“Dancing with the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime” by Debora Harding is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.
This memoir of native Nebraskan, Debora Harding, is all about a traumatic childhood event, the aftereffects of which would change her family forever. Harding expertly weaves the past with the present in a riveting story of survival and family dynamics.
“With remarkable narrative skill, Harding untangles the lingering effects of family dysfunction and criminal trauma. This is a page-turner with a deep heart and soul, full of forgiveness but demanding of accountability.”
BookPage, “Best Books of 2020: Memoirs”
This title has been selected as the 2024 One Book One Nebraska. The program is now in its 20th year of bringing Nebraskans together for the reading and discussion of one great book written by Nebraska authors or that have a Nebraska theme or setting. Nearly every One Book One Nebraska winner is available on cartridge and for download on BARD.
The narration was done by Connie Healey, who has been volunteering for Talking Book and Braille for 10 years and received a Nebraska Library Association Outstanding Volunteer Award in 2022. The recording took over 30 hours in the studio and an additional 20 hours of post-production to prepare for our patrons. Connie has now read three One Book One Nebraska selections, the other two being “The Bones of Paradise” by Jonis Agee and “Prairie Forge” by James J. Kimble.
TBBS borrowers can request “Dancing with the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime,” DBC02052, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Book Available on BARD!
“Take All to Nebraska” by Sophus Keith Winther is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
A novel about a Danish family struggling to establish themselves on a rented farm in Nebraska at the turn of the century.
TBBS borrowers can request “Take All to Nebraska”, DBC02009, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
“The Home Place” Now Available on BARD
“The Home Place” by Wright Morris is available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
First published in 1948, this novel, written in the first person, describes the one-day visit of Clyde Muncy to “the home place” at Lone Tree, Nebraska. This tale of a New York family’s visit to a Nebraska farm has been acclaimed for its human interest and humor, stemming from the quiet collision of ways of life going in opposite directions. It was selected as the 2010 One Book One Nebraska and is listed on the 150 Greatest Nebraska Books list — a list that represent the best literature produced from Nebraska during the past 150 years.
A fine piece of Americana.
Library Journal
TBBS borrowers can request “The Home Place,” DBC02005, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Book Available on BARD!
“No Time on My Hands“ by Grace Snyder is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
Snyder grew up on the high plains of Custer County, Nebraska and lived in the western Nebraska all her life. This book serves as her autobiography, a full life in which, “I have been blessed by having no time on my hands.”
“Snyder’s lengthy narrative is filled with humorous incidents, and she rarely fails to see a light side to even the most dreary event. Still the pathos comes through. . . . We realize Snyder’s importance as a folk artist, an outstanding quilter whose work was shown all over the country.”
Denver Post
TBBS borrowers can request “No Time on My Hands,” DBC01997, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Book Available on BARD!
“The Saga of Hugh Glass: Pirate, Pawnee, and Mountain Man“ by John Myers Myers is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
This title relates the adventures of Hugh Glass, who was by turns a pirate, a captive of the Pawnee, and a mountain man who dragged himself 2,000 miles after being left to die in the wilderness.
“There is no story like it in all literature and in all history. . . . The greatest and truest hero of all time was once a buckskin man living on the American frontier. Mr. Myers has done a fine job of scholarly research. He offers many new insights as to the true character of the mountain man. And the bibliography is alone worth the price of admission.”
Frederick Manfred, Chicago News
TBBS borrowers can request “The Saga of Hugh Glass“, DBC01996, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Summer Book Available on BARD!
“Jack and Noah’s Big Day: The Summer When Everything Happened Just Like No One Had Imagined” by Jay Patrick Slagle has been recorded by our Talking Book and Braille Service and is perfect for summer!
Best friends Jack and Noah are facing what promises to be a long boring summer. They decide that Jack needs the world’s greatest birthday party, for which they will need to raise a lot of money. As fundraisers, they start a summer camp, staff a slushie stand, and try to sell glow-in-the-dark necklaces at the city’s July 4th fireworks show. Along the way, a house is blown up; there are visits by police, foremen, and news reporters; and an elephant marches down the driveway.
TBBS borrowers can request “Jack and Noah’s Big Day,” DBC01984, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Autobiography Available on BARD!
“Behind the 8-Ball“ by Nebraska author Tom Frye is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
“This is the story behind all of my stories, starting from when I was a kid growing up in Havelock and moving on through the 45 years I spent in the field of youth work. I may have a wild imagination, but this one is non-fiction and filled with true stories of my life and times.”
Author, Tom Frye
TBBS borrowers can request “Behind the 8-Ball,” DBC01988, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
“Becker’s Farm” Now Available on BARD!
“Becker’s Farm: A Novel” by William Timmons is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
World War II prisoner of war Helmut Sommerfield is interned at a small POW camp in western Nebraska. He soon earns the good will of surrounding farmers as he puts his mechanical skills to work repairing farm equipment. Their admiration for him deepens after Helmut is severely burned while rescuing two farmers trapped in a burning barn. One of the farmers, a recluse, dies, giving rise to a plot to swap Helmut’s identity for the deceased farmer. His chance for a new life is threatened by an escaping POW who knows Helmut’s true identity.
TBBS borrowers can request “Becker’s Farm,” DBC01999, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
2023 One Book One Nebraska Selection available on BARD!
“The Mystery of Hunting’s End” by Mignon G. Eberhart has been recorded by our Talking Book and Braille Service!
Smack in the middle of the Nebraska Sand Hills is Hunting’s End, a weekend lodge owned by the rich Kingery family. Socialite Matil Kingery invites a strange collection of guests — the same people who were at the lodge when her father died of “heart failure” exactly five years ago. She intends to find out which one of them murdered him.
This title has been selected as the 2023 One Book One Nebraska. This dynamic program cultivates a culture of reading and discussion in our state by bringing our diverse state together around one great book by a Nebraska author.
TBBS borrowers can request “The Mystery of Hunting’s End,” DBC02012, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Book Available on BARD!
“Haven’s Wake” by Ladette Randolph is now available on cartridge and download on BARD!
When Haven Grebel dies following a tractor accident on his Nebraska farm, his Mennonite family gathers for the funeral service. Widow Elsa, estranged son Jonathan, and the rest of the family must navigate love, loyalty, and long-buried secrets.
“Haven’s Wake is about memory and silence, and about secrets and the fear of them. But above all, it’s a tale of love and loyalty. At the very heart of this deeply heartfelt novel is the story of the restorative power of family and tradition.”
Timothy Schaffert
This novel is part of the Flyover Fiction series and is listed on the 150 Greatest Nebraska Books list — a list that represents the best literature produced from Nebraska during the past 150 years.
TBBS borrowers can request “Haven’s Wake,” DBC01896, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
William Kloefkorn Book Available on BARD!
“This Death by Drowning” by Nebraska author William Kloefkorn has been recorded by our Talking Book and Braille Service!
“Is there any human corner left to illuminate? To surprise? Absolutely, as these wondrous recollections by poet Kloefkorn prove. This slim volume is filled with provocative perceptions garnered from daily life. . . . After the last line, readers will turn back to page one and start again, slowly.”
Publisher’s Weekly
“This Death by Drowning” serves as Kloefkorn’s personal memoir. It is an artfully assembled collection of reminiscences having to do with water and is listed on the 150 Greatest Nebraska Books list — a list that represent the best literature produced from Nebraska during the past 150 years.
TBBS borrowers can request “This Death by Drowning,” DBC02002, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Nebraska Book on BARD!
“Welcome to Pallywonkersville: My Irreverent, but Humorous, Memories of Growing up in Rural Nebraska” by Nebraska author David Hunt is available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
Hunt shares humorous stories about growing up in Palisade, Nebraska, (population 350), which he refers to as Pallywonkersville. Family, friends, and pranks fill these vignettes of small-town life.
TBBS borrowers can request “Welcome to Pallywonkersville,” DBC01990, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
New Book available on BARD!
“Not by the Sword: How a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman“ by Kathryn Watterson is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD!
“Watterson has written one of the most powerful, painful, yet healing stories about our most explosive issue: race. Her book [Not by the Sword] is not only literally true but also symbolically true for us as people — if we acknowledge and transform who and what we are.”
Cornel West, author of “Race Matters”
Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Nebraska, Larry Trapp was a wheelchair-bound amputee who led a campaign of fear against Jews and other minorities from his cramped apartment in Lincoln. After receiving death threats from Larry, Cantor Michael Weisser and his wife Julie extended friendship to him and later offered to take him into their home. Larry renounced all ties to the Klan, began working with youth groups to educate them about the danger of racist ideology, and, before dying from kidney disease, even converted to Judaism.
TBBS borrowers can request “Not by the Sword,” DBC01995, or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.
