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Teen Blog

Reading, Wellington, and whatever else – teenblog@wcl.govt.nz

Tag: audiobooks

From Broadway to Bookshelf

We all know how it is. One minute you’re idly searching Spotify for your next musical theatre fix. The next minute it’s 3am and you’re four months deep into a dangerous obsession with Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill musical soundtrack and you can’t stop singing the alto part to “You Learn” over and over again even though you’ve been kicked out of home because no one wants to listen to that much alto. It’s fine, you tell yourself. All I need is Alanis. The world of jukebox musicals will keep me warm at night.

Dear reader, it is true that we all need Alanis. But we also need a balanced cultural diet that includes reading material and audiobooks to keep us off the streets. That’s where the library’s OverDrive collection comes into play again. Read on for a juicy selection of some of our musical theatre-related reads to keep you on the straight and narrow when all seems lost to the world of the musical soundtrack album.

Overdrive cover The Movie Musical!, Jeanine Basinger (ebook)
This book is an in-depth look at the singing, dancing, happy-making world of Hollywood musicals, beautifully illustrated in color and black-and-white—an essential text for anyone who’s ever laughed, cried, or sung along at the movies. Leading film historian Jeanine Basinger reveals, with her trademark wit and zest, the whole story of the Hollywood musical, from Fred Astaire, whom she adores, to La La Land, which she deplores. Whether analyzing a classic Gene Kelly routine, relishing a Nelson-Jeanette operetta, or touting a dynamic hip hop number (in the underrated Idlewild), Basinger is a canny and charismatic guide to the many ways that song and dance have been seen—and heard—on film. (adapted from OverDrive description)

Overdrive cover Dear Evan Hansen, Val Emmich (Audiobook)
A simple lie leads to complicated truths in this big-hearted coming-of-age story of grief, authenticity and the struggle to belong in an age of instant connectivity and profound isolation. This audiobook version of the novel based on the incredible 2015 musical by Pasek, Paul and Levenson is beautifully narrated by Ben Levi Ross (Evan Hansen, US Tour), Mike Faist (Connor Murphy, original cast), and Mallory Bechtel (Zoe Murphy, original cast) in this incredibly personal and human reading. Listen now — you won’t regret it.

Overdrive cover Writing Better Lyrics, Pat Pattison (ebook)
Have you ever fancied yourself a Broadway lyricist? This book is the book for you. This revised and updated 2nd Edition of the classic must-have guide for budding songwriters provides effective tools for everything from generating ideas, to understanding the form and function of a song, to fine-tuning lyrics.

Overdrive cover Les Misérables, Victor Hugo (ebook)
Look, I hear you. This book is long. But just listen for a moment — it wasn’t adapted into one of the most popular and enduring musicals of all time for nothing. This book has it all — love, death, revolution, defeat, victory, class struggles — and its rambling delightfully labyrinthine plot will keep you occupied for hours. If that all sounds like too much, we also have the eAudio version. Don’t say we aren’t kind to you. But be kind to yourself and pick this up while the Duke Classics edition is always available!

Now, get out there and read!

Libraries in the Time of COVID

Peeps, it’s a weird time for all of us, librarians included, as we attempt to navigate the apocalypse with nary an open library in sight from which to retrieve the objects of our solace — books. But fear not! The library, in its wisdom, has foreseen such a calamity and from the depths of its vast reserves of online material has produced a bounteous temple of all things YA — the OverDrive Teen Reading Room. All you need is a library card (click here to grab one if you haven’t already) and all the reading material you could ever need is at your fingertips from the comfort of whichever anti-viral fortress you’re currently holed up in. Check the list below for some of my faves:

Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe / Sáenz, Benjamin Alire
Guys, I don’t want to freak you out but READ THIS BOOK NOW. This is the OverDrive eAudiobook version, so you don’t even have to read words, just zone out and let Saenz’s perfectly spare, searing prose transport you. This is a gorgeous story of family, friendship, love, pain, illness, recovery, and discovery that paints in poignant, pointillistic detail the agony and anticipation of leaving childhood behind and moving somewhere new. Waste no more time, and while you’re at it read everything else Saenz has ever written. You won’t regret it.

Feed / Anderson, M. T
It may seem a little on the nose to be recommending dystopian fiction right now, but hear me out. This modern classic is absolutely worth a read — it takes a peek beneath the veil and examines human nature with a kind of clarity seldom seen in any fiction. Unsettling? Yes. Frightening? Probably. Un-put-downable? Absolutely.

An unofficial encyclopedia of strategy for Fortniters / Rich, Jason
We understand it’s not entirely impossible that there may be some people out there who are choosing to spend their isolation period not reading, but gaming. We have you nerds covered as well! The Unofficial Encyclopedia of Strategy for Fortniters is just one part of a gaming eBook collection that includes titles on Fortnite, Minecraft, Terraria, and more. Can’t go outside? Make your own outside, inside!

Finally, I wanted to do a special plug for our wonderful OverDrive LGBTIQ+ Reading Room. We’ve pulled together our favourite titles from across the rainbow spectrum and curated the ultimate collection of LGBTIQ+ reads for you to enjoy. There’s heaps to choose from across fiction and nonfiction, eBook and eAudio — biographies, romance, YA fiction, the arts, crime and mysteries, social comment and social issues, personal essays, poetry, and much much more. Feel free to send through a request if we’re missing a title you think we should have!

Even though our physical sites are closed, we’re here for you still. Follow us on social media or comment on one of these posts if you want to stay in touch. We’ll be keeping you up to date with books, websites, resources and other cool stuff and general distraction during these spooky, spooky times. Stay safe and stay indoors!

The new and improved Overdrive

Overdrive – the home of many of WCL’s e-audiobooks and all the e-books – has had a makeover. The new site features are explained in this news post here. Included is an introductory tutorial, hosted by a polite and competent Overdrive librarian.

New Digital Audiobooks

If you like listening to books then you’ll be keen to see what’s new in the digital audiobook collection: a couple of princesses, some vampires, a high school student who can travel through spacetime to distant territories, and something for Glee fans.

The Looking Glass Wars, Frank Beddor – “Princess Alyss Heart is brutally cast out of Wonderland by her vicious Aunt Redd, who beheads Alyss’ mother (Off with her head, she cries!) and begins to rule over Wonderland with an iron fist.” (Overdrive catalogue)

Princess Ben, Catherine Gilbert Murdock – “With her parents lost to assassins, Princess Ben ends up under the thumb of the conniving Queen Sophia. Starved and miserable, locked in the castle’s highest tower, Ben stumbles upon a mysterious enchanted room. So begins her secret education in the magical arts: mastering an obstinate flying broomstick, furtively emptying the castle pantries, setting her hair on fire…” (Overdrive catalogue)

Also new to Overdrive are: The Strange Power and The Possessed, L J Smith, books one and two of the Dark Visions series, and also all eight books in the Pendragon series by D J McHale. Finally for Glee fans you can listen to the first spin-off book, Glee: The Beginning by Sophia Lowell.

You can browse the Overdrive collection: have a look at the young adult collection, and also the children’s fiction collection: start here.

What’s Overdrive? It’s a collection of digital audiobooks that’s available to you for free if you have a WCL library card. It’s easy to use: just download the Overdrive media console (kind of like an iTunes equivalent), browse for books and start downloading (each catalogue record will tell you about format and compatibility).

Overdrive: Newish Digital Audiobooks

What’s newish for young adults in Overdrive (WCL’s digital audiobook collection)? Well, there’s Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (to go with The Hunger Games), and also The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer.

There are some (new) classics too: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, 1984 by George Orwell, and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (and much more), all of which feature on our semifamous classic novels in haiku booklist here.

Haven’t used Overdrive before? Have a look at the Quick Start Guide which tells you what you need to do to get going. There’s also a Guided Tour.

So, browse Overdrive for Young Adult titles here, download them onto your MP3 player and go running, or something.

In fact, here’s the QR code for the YA on the Overdrive catalogue, so if you have one of those fancy phones this will save you a few seconds: just take its picture and hey presto you’re searching through the titles just like that.

QR Code for Overdrive YA Fiction