Radio Talking Book Newsletter
May 2013 Issue
New Phone Number for Custom Audio Transcriptions
The Communication Center and the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library in Faribault are making changes to serve you better. Ultimately, there will be only one phone number for you to call. While we aren’t there yet, we have taken the first step of changing part of our Communication Center phone system. For the time being, the equipment number remains the same: 651-642-0885. If you want to request custom audio transcriptions, we have a new number for you to call: 651-539-1422. As more changes take place, we will continue to keep you informed.
Weekend Program Books
Your Personal World (Saturday at 1 p.m.) is airing You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap), by Tammy Strobel; For the Younger Set (Sunday at 11 a.m.) is airing Touched, by Cyn Balog; Poetic Reflections (Sunday at noon) is airing Everyday People, by Albert Goldbarth; The U.S. and Us (Sunday at 4 p.m.) is airing Prairie Silence, by Melanie Hoffert, and Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, by Anton Treuer.
Books Available Through Faribault
Books broadcast on the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network are available through the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library in Faribault, MN. Hours are weekdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Phone: 800-722-0550. Access the library's catalog online.
If you live outside of Minnesota, you may obtain copies of our books via an inter-library loan by contacting your own state’s Network Library for the National Library Service.
Listen Online
Listen to the Minnesota Radio Talking Book, either live or archived programs from the last week, on the Internet at www.mnssb.org/rtb. Call the staff at the Radio for your password to the site.
Join Us on Facebook
Read about RTB events on our Facebook page. Register for Facebook at www.facebook.com.
Chautauqua
Tuesday – Saturday 4 a.m.
What Are You Looking At?
Nonfiction by Will Gompertz, 2012.
16 broadcasts. Began April 17. Art historian Will Gompertz is the BBC Arts editor. His goal is to change the way people look at modern art. Gompertz wants to give people the knowledge to decide for themselves if a work is good art.
Read by Leila Poullada.
The Grey Album
Nonfiction by Kevin Young, 2012.
20 Br. Begins May 9. Using essay and cultural criticism, Ken Young illustrates the African-American tradition of lying – telling tales, fibbing, improvising, jazzing up, “storying.” It is an argument that African-American culture is American culture. L Read by Jeanne Burns.
Past is Prologue
Monday – Friday 9 a.m.
Rise to Greatness
Nonfiction by David Von Drehle, 2012.
18 Br. Began April 15. When 1862 began, it seemed likely that the Confederacy was going to win the Civil War. By the end of 1862, Abraham Lincoln had changed that. Read by Art Nyhus.
Death in the City of Light
Nonfiction by David King, 2012.
14 Br. Begins May 9. Dr. Petiot was a handsome, charming, charismatic physician by day. By night, he preyed upon the most vulnerable in society with unspeakable deviousness and unleashed a reign of terror in Nazi-occupied Paris. V,L - Read by Holly Sylvester.
The Blood of Heroes
Nonfiction by James Donovan, 2012.
13 Br. Begins May 29. The last stand at the Alamo is recognized as a defining moment in American history. But it was only one part in the history of the formation of Texas. Read by John Potts.
Bookworm
Monday – Friday 11 a.m.
The Book of Summers
Fiction by Emylia Hall, 2012.
12 Br. Began April 29. As a teen, Beth joined her mother for summers in Hungary. That ended with the discovery of a secret. As an adult, Beth gets a scrapbook of her summers with her mother when she was a teen. Read by Kristi Sullivan.
Peaches for Father Francis
Fiction by Joanne Harris, 2012.
14 Br. When Vianne receives a letter from the dead, she has no choice but to go back to Lansquenet, the village where she opened her chocolate shop eight years before. Her old nemesis, Francis Reynaud, needs her help. L
Read by Sue McDonald.
The Writer’s Voice
Monday – Friday 2 p.m.
Opium Fiend
Nonfiction by Steven Martin, 2012.
13 Br. Began April 18. Martin’s interest in opium began while researching an article on the subject. He began collecting paraphernalia, then he started using the equipment to smoke the drug, and soon he was addicted. Read by Don Lee.
Just a Daughter
Nonfiction by Sarita Skagnes, 2012.
6 Br. Begins May 7. The third daughter to a Punjabi family that valued only males, Sarita was destined for death or life as a slave. Even after the family moved to Norway, she was a prisoner of her family and culture. V,L
Read by Esmé Evans.
The Convert
Nonfiction by Deborah Baker, 2012.
8 Br. Begins May 15. Margaret Marcus was raised in the postwar New York City area, left and converted to Islam, abandoned her country and Jewish faith, and permanently embraced a life of exile in Pakistan. Read by June Prange.
The Dog Lived (and So Will I)
Nonfiction by Teresa J. Rhyne, 2012.
11 Br. Begins May 27. Shortly after Teresa got her beagle, she was told of his tumor and the prognosis of one year of life. But she fought it not knowing she would soon have her own cancer diagnosis Read by Jan Anderson.
Choice Reading
Monday – Friday 4 p.m.
The Stranger’s Child
Fiction by Alan Hollinghurst, 2011.
23 Br. Begins May 1. In 1913, George brings Cecil to his family’s home for the weekend. George and his sister are enthralled by him. What Cecil writes in her autograph album will change their lives forever. Read by Jack Rossman.
PM Report
Monday – Friday 8 p.m.
The Passage of Power
Nonfiction by Robert A. Caro, 2012.
36 Br. Began March 20. By 1958, Lyndon Johnson had become the greatest Senate Leader in our history. He exchanged that to be the powerless vice-president under Kennedy in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. L
Read by Leila Poullada.
Breakout Nations
Nonfiction by Ruchir Sharma, 2012.
12 Br. Begins May 9. Sharma gives a clear picture of the shifting balance of global economic power and how it plays out for emerging nations and the West. Read by Art Nyhus.
The Presidents Club
Nonfiction by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, 2012. 22 Br. Begins May 27. Formed by Eisenhower, the Presidents Club is complicated; its members are bound by Oval Office experience yet are rivals for history’s favor. Read by Charlie Boone.
Night Journey
Monday – Friday 9 p.m.
The Boyfriend
Fiction by Thomas Perry, 2013.
10 Br. Begins May 1. Retired LAPD homicide detective Jack Till is on the trail of the murderer of a high-class female escort. Till finds she is one of several similar victims killed in different cities, killed in the same way. L - Read by Don Gerlach.
The Malice of Fortune
Fiction by Michael Ennis, 2012.
18 Br. Begins May 15. Pope Alexander sends courtesan, Damiata, to Imola to learn the truth about his son’s murder and he holds her own son hostage. Once there, she becomes a pawn in political intrigues of the pope’s surviving son, the Duke Valentino. V - Read by Neil Bright.
Off the Shelf
Monday – Friday 10 p.m.
Sutton
Fiction by J.R. Moehringer, 2012.
15 Br. Began April 22. Willie Sutton felt trapped in a cycle of panics, depressions, and unemployment. He saw only one way out that would also win the girl of his dreams: becoming America’s most successful bank robber. L - Read by John Beal.
Penelope
Fiction by Rebecca Harrington, 2012.
10 Br. Begins May 13. When Penelope O’Shaunessy sets off for Harvard, her mother has lots of advice. But no amount of advice or coaching will prepare Penelope for the people she meets at school. L - Read by Licia Swanson.
The Deep Zone
Fiction by James M. Tabor, 2012.
15 Br. Begins May 27. A disease outbreak sends a team of scientists on a desperate hunt for a cure –from a top-secret federal agency to a violence-prone area of Mexico to the bottom of earth’s deepest cave. L - Read by Dave Schliep.
Potpourri
Monday – Friday 11 p.m.
The Unconquered
Nonfiction by Scott Wallace, 2011. 19 Br. Began April 11. There are tribes in the Amazon rainforest that have avoided contact with modern civilization. Hiding from the outside world, they are survivors predating Columbus in the New World. Read by Andrea Bell.
Farther Away
Nonfiction by Jonathan Franzen, 2012.
9 Br. Begins May 8. Fiction writer Franzen presents essays and speeches from the last five years dealing with themes that have long preoccupied him, from a violent encounter with bird poachers to examining his mixed feelings about suicide. Read by John Hagman.
Show Dog
Nonfiction by Dean Josh, 2012.
15 Br. Begins May 21. The United States has over two million pedigreed dogs who participate in more than two-thousand dog shows annually. Jack is one of those dogs. Read by Audray Rees.
Good Night Owl
Monday – Friday midnight
What Comes Next
Fiction by John Katzenbach, 2012.
18 Br. Began April 15. A retired professor is diagnosed with a disease leading him to lose his memory and die in a few years. On the way home from the doctor’s, he sees a girl kidnapped and he realizes if he doesn’t act, she may never be found alive. V,L,S - Read by Dan Sadoff.
City of Bohane
Fiction by Kevin Barry, 2012.
9 Br. Begins May 9. Forty years in the future, the city of Bohane is infested with vice. There are posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets that the city really lives. Now the godfather of the leading gang may give it all up. V,L
Read by Trish Barry.
The Last Warner Woman
Fiction by Kei Miller, 2012. 8 Br. Begins May 22. Adamine was sent from Jamaica to live in England after she discovered she had the gift of “warning.” There, she was met with fear and locked in an institution. As an older woman, she wants to tell her story. L – Read by Ann Reed.
After Midnight
Tuesday – Saturday 1 a.m.
Illusion
Fiction by Frank Peretti, 2012.
17 Br. Began April 17. Mandy, supposedly dead from a crash, awakens as the girl she was in 1970 and finds she can pass through time and space. She uses this power to eke out a living performing magic. Dane sees her and is transfixed by the magic he sees and by this woman identical to the one he married forty years earlier. L
Read by Steve Hebert.
The Singles
Fiction by Meredith Goldstein, 2012.
8 Br. Begins May 10. Bee’s first vow as a bride is that everyone is invited to bring a guest to the wedding. When five decline the offer, Bee dubs them “The Singles,” adrift on her seating chart and in life. L - Read by Mary Hall.
Drain You
Fiction by Beth Bloom, 2012.
10 Br. Begins May 22. Quinlan’s life is a predictable mix of fashion, parties, and boring job. Then she meets James and finds out that the Los Angeles canyons are crawling with gangs of the undead. Now her goal is to stay sane, cool, in love, and alive. L - Read by Mitzi Lewellen.
Abbreviations: V - violence, L – offensive language, S - sexual situations.