Hi Blog. It’s Me, Maris.

Wow, it feels a little bizarre (in a good way) to be posting on a blog that I’ve been reading for so long. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind — getting settled in my new job as Audiobooks Store Manager, learning new eMusic lingo, finding the coffee machine, preparing for launch. The normal stuff everyone has to go through at a new gig, but there’s the added anticipation/intimidation of it being something a bit more public than what I’m used to. And speaking of public… Um, hi. I’m writing on the blog. Hi everyone.

Awkwardness (temporarily) aside, let’s talk about books. Clearly not everyone has (or will) signed up for audiobooks, but I have something in common with those of you who have: we have similar taste in books — we like the good ones! (Click here for the book chart.) As a proud book snob, I can’t stand to shill for the latest diet guru or shallow Da Vinci Code knockoff. You’re too smart for that and so am I. To that end, check out some of eMusic’s more satisfying offerings like Lolita read by Humbert Humbert himself, Jeremy Irons. Or, let Paul Giamatti erase all thoughts of Keanu from your mind with his reading of A Scanner Darkly.

We also have some great new arrivals from Penguin, including Shalom Auslander’s funny and angry memoir, Foreskin’s Lament (unabridged, ironically). Auslander is a refugee from an insular Orthodox Jewish family who struggles to make sense of the religious strictures of his childhood even as fatherhood looms. Maybe it’s the self-loathing Jew in me rearing her ugly head, but I can’t resist how Auslander calls God out. Famines, plagues, floods, even your run-of-the-mill car wreck: if God loves us all so much then why must he constantly mess with us? Be warned that the author’s reading is disconcertingly deadpan—no shtick here. The lack of inflection may feel off-putting at first, but it totally works when Auslander’s tone is serious but his words are hilarious. Like when he dispassionately recounts a childhood summer when he became perilously addicted to non-kosher junk food, even as he feared God’s wrath. “I rode my bike to the nearby convenience mart, bought a couple of moon pies and rode back, terrified the whole way that I would get hit by a car, die, and my mother would find them in my pocket. That would be so God.”

Lots more good stuff is still to come, and hopefully you can point me towards some of it and I can gladly reciprocate. I’ve been lurking on the message boards and 17 Dots comments lately, admiring how honest and intense your exchanges are with Yancey, Joe and Todd. I really want to be a part of that. To that end, in the next couple of weeks I’m going to nominate some potential titles for the first eMusic Book Club and your feedback would be much appreciated. If you want to suggest some potential titles, drop them in the comments below. Also, does a Book Club need a name? Maybe we should come up with that, too. I leave it up to you, future friends.