2014 SYNC Audio – Cindy's Love Of Books

Free Audio Books Week 9 July 10th to 16th

Posted on July 10, 2014July 14, 2014 by Cindy

I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind you about SYNC its a free summer audiobook program for young adults. From May 15th to August 13th, SYNC gives away two complete audiobook downloads a week – a current young adult title along with a thematically paired classic or required summer reading title. Sign up for email and text alerts and be first to know when new titles are available to download at www.audiobooksync.com.

I have always wanted to give audio books another chance and what better way then through SYNC Audio Books. These are actually both books I have never read so I am excited to give them a try.

Do you like audio books?

This week I downloaded:

“When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’” – Claudette ColvinOn March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.

Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

Claudette Colvin is the 2009 National Book Award Winner for Young People’s Literature and a 2010 Newbery Honor Book.

On September 15, 1963, a Klan-planted bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Fourteen-year-old Carolyn Maull was just a few feet away when the bomb exploded, killing four of her friends in the girl’s restroom she had just exited. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history . . . and the turning point in a young girl’s life.

While the World Watched is a poignant and gripping eyewitness account of life in the Jim Crow South: from the bombings, riots, and assassinations to the historic marches and triumphs that characterized the Civil Rights movement.

A uniquely moving exploration of how racial relations have evolved over the past 5 decades,While the World Watched is an incredible testament to how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.

Both books sound really good so I am looking forward to listening to these very soon.

Next week’s selection will be available from July 17th to 23rd and it will be:

THE CASE OF THE CRYPTIC CRINOLINE by Nancy Springer, Narrated by Katherine Kellgren (Recorded Books)
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES II by Arthur Conan Doyle, Narrated by David Timson (Naxos AudioBooks)

Just a reminder there is only a month left to get your free audio books from www.audiobooksync.com

Free Audio Books Week 8 (July 3rd – 9th)

Posted on July 3, 2014July 14, 2014 by Cindy

I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind you about SYNC its a free summer audiobook program for young adults. From May 15th to August 13th, SYNC gives away two complete audiobook downloads a week – a current young adult title along with a thematically paired classic or required summer reading title. Sign up for email and text alerts and be first to know when new titles are available to download at www.audiobooksync.com.

I have always wanted to give audio books another chance and what better way then through SYNC Audio Books. These are actually both books I have never read so I am excited to give them a try.

Do you like audio books?

This week I downloaded:

Description:

Two-and-a half millennia after it was created, Homer’s Odyssey remains one of humanity’s most memorable adventure stories. In this re-creation of Homer’s classic as a young adult novel, we see the aftermath of the Trojan War through the eyes of Alexi, a fifteen-year-old Trojan boy. Orphaned by the war and enslaved by Odysseus himself, Alexi has a very different view of the conquering heroes of legend. Despite a simmering anger towards his captors, Alexi gradually develops a grudging respect for them. As the Greeks fight off the angry Cicones, weather a storm that pushes them far beyond charted waters, and nearly succumb to the blandishments of the bewitching Lotus-eaters, he realizes that they are not the demons they were said to be, but people like himself.

Description:

In an evocative and fast-paced adventure on the high seas and on a faraway island an orphan boy named Peter and his mysterious new friend, Molly, overcome bands of pirates and thieves in their quest to keep a fantastical secret safe and save the world from evil. Bestselling authors Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson have turned back the clock and revealed a wonderful story that precedes J.M. Barrie’s beloved Peter Pan. Peter and the Starcatchers is brimming with richly developed characters from the scary but somehow familiar Black Stache and the ferocious Mister Grin to the sweet but sophisticated Molly and the fearless Peter. Riveting adventure takes listeners on a journey from a harsh orphanage in old England to a treacherous sea in a decrepit old tub. Aboard the Never Land is a trunk that holds a magical substance with the power to change the fate of the world – just a sprinkle and wounds heal and just a dusting and people can fly.

Towering seas and a violent storm are the backdrop for battles at sea. Bone-crushing waves eventually land our characters on Mollusk Island–where the action really heats up.

I was thinking since these are 10+ that I would download these two books and play them during our vacation as we will be in the car for a bit. We will be going to Ottawa for one weekend, then Quebec City for another weekend and finally we will be going to the US for a weekend. Not quite sure where in the US but it will be fairly close nothing big planned.

Next week’s selection will be available July 10th to 16th and the audio books that will be available will be:

July 10 – July 16
CLAUDETTE COLVIN: Twice Toward Justice by Philip Hoose, Narrated by Channie Waites (Brilliance Audio)

WHILE THE WORLD WATCHED by Carolyn Maull McKinstry with Denise George, Narrated by Felicia Bullock (Oasis Audio)

Free Audio Books Week of June 26th to July 2nd

Posted on June 27, 2014July 3, 2014 by Cindy

I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind you about SYNC its a free summer audiobook program for young adults. From May 15th to August 13th, SYNC gives away two complete audiobook downloads a week – a current young adult title along with a thematically paired classic or required summer reading title. Sign up for email and text alerts and be first to know when new titles are available to download at www.audiobooksync.com.

I have always wanted to give audio books another chance and what better way then through SYNC Audio Books. These are actually both books I have never read so I am excited to give them a try.

Do you like audio books?

Description:
In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I’m sorry I couldn’t be more than I was–that I couldn’t stick around–and that what’s going to happen today isn’t their fault.

Today is Leonard Peacock’s birthday. It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. Because today is the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather’s P-38 pistol.

But first he must say good-bye to the four people who matter most to him: his Humphrey Bogart-obsessed next-door neighbor, Walt; his classmate Baback, a violin virtuoso; Lauren, the Christian homeschooler he has a crush on; and Herr Silverman, who teaches the high school’s class on the Holocaust. Speaking to each in turn, Leonard slowly reveals his secrets as the hours tick by and the moment of truth approaches.

In this riveting book, acclaimed author Matthew Quick unflinchingly examines the impossible choices that must be made–and the light in us all that never goes out.

Description:

On the night of October 6, 1998, a gay twenty-one-year-old University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard was lured from a bar by two young men, then savagely beaten, tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, and left to die. Five days later, Lesléa Newman arrived on campus to give the keynote speech for the University of Wyoming’s Gay Awareness Week. October Mourning is Lesléa Newman’s deeply personal response to the events of that tragic day and its brutal aftermath. This work of poetic imagination explores the impact of the vicious crime through fictitious monologues from various points of view, including the fence to which Matthew was tied, the deer that kept watch beside him, and even Matthew himself. This stunning cycle of sixty-eight poems serves as an illumination for readers too young to remember and as a powerful, enduring tribute to Matthew Shepard’s life and legacy.

Will you be downloading these titles this week?

Next week’s selection is available July 3rd to July 9th are:

TORN FROM TROY by Patrick Bowman, Narrated by Gerard Doyle (Post Hypnotic Press)
PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Narrated by Jim Dale (Brilliance Audio)