View and listen to the Top 10 Author Event Podcasts Downloaded in November 2013.

There were more than 28,500 podcast downloads from our website for the month of November.

Don't forget to view our schedule for upcoming Winter and Spring 2014 author events!

	Donna Tartt | The Goldfinch Recorded 10/30/2013 Listen to MP3 audio Donna Tarrt burst onto the literary scene with her “gorgeously written, relentlessly erudite, and persistently (and quite anachronistically) high-minded” (Vanity Fair) debut novel, The Secret History. The book, packed with literary references from both classical Greek and contemporary literature, follows a group of classics students at a small Vermont liberal arts college who slay a stranger and then one of their own. Her second novel The Little Friend, set in 1970s Mississippi, begins with the shocking Mother’s Day discovery of the hanging body of a 9-year-old boy. The book received the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. The Goldfinch is her long-awaited third novel.
	Ross King | The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism Recorded 4/20/2006 Listen to MP3 audio Ross King is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michaelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, as well as the novels Ex-Libris and Domino. The Judgment of Paris chronicles the dramatic decade between two famous exhibitions: the scandalous Salon des Refusés in 1863 and the first Impressionist showing in 1874, where the artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment.
	Pat Conroy | The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son Recorded 11/5/2013 Listen to MP3 audio “A magician of the page” (New York Times), Pat Conroy weaves inspiration from life in his beloved low country with richly drawn characters who alternately rail against and romanticize the American South. His nine books include The Great Santini, which explored Conroy’s ambivalent love for his abusive father; The Lords of Discipline; Beach Music; and The Prince of Tides, which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. Inducted into both the Georgia and South Carolina Halls of Fame, Conroy received a humanitarian award from the National Education Association for exposing the racism and appalling conditions in a tiny island school in his memoir, The Water is Wide. In The Death of Santini, Conroy recounts the tender final days of a man who finally achieved peace with his children.
	Deepak Chopra | What Are You Hungry For?: The Chopra Solution to Permanent Weight Loss, Well-Being, and Lightness of Soul Recorded 11/18/2013 Listen to MP3 audio “The poet-prophet of alternative medicine” (Time), Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 70 books on mind-body health, spirituality, and peace, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. One of Time’s top 100 heroes and icons of this century, he is the founder of the Chopra Foundation and the Chopra Center for Well Being. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, a Distinguished Executive Scholar at Columbia Business School, and a Senior Scientist at the Gallup organization. In his new book What Are You Hungry For?, Chopra reveals how overeating is often a symptom of hunger for love and happiness, and outlines an approach to eating that will lead to permanent weight loss and spiritual well-being.
	Julius Erving | Dr. J: The Autobiography Recorded 11/14/2013 Listen to MP3 audio Julius Erving, the legendary “Dr. J,” enthralled basketball fans for 11 seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers, leading the team to the NBA crown in 1983. The dominant player of his era, Erving was one of the first players to make individual expression a vital part of the game, with his graceful midair spins and twirls punctuated by powerful slam dunks. Elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993, Erving was an 11-time All Star. He received the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award in 1983 and in 1996 was named one of Sports Illustrated’s 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. In his new memoir, the Philadelphia legend reflects on his life on and off the court.  In conversation with Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Joe Juliano.
	Ann Patchett | This is a Story of a Happy Marriage Recorded 11/13/2013 Listen to MP3 audio Ann Patchett’s six novels and two nonfiction works have earned her numerous awards, including the Orange Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award for Bel Canto, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Taft, and the New York Times Notable Book of the Year for The Patron Saint of Liars. She is also the author of the suspenseful novel State of Wonder, set amid a forgotten tribe along the banks of the Amazon river, and two works of nonfiction: the New York Times bestselling Truth & Beauty and What Now?. Named one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People, Patchett opened Parnassus Books when her hometown of Nashville was left without a bookstore. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a collection of the large experiences and small moments that have shaped her life.   Natalie Cohn Memorial Lecture
	Katrina van Grouw | The Unfeathered Bird Recorded 11/7/2013 Listen to MP3 audio With more than 300 detailed drawings representing 200 species, Katrina van Grouw’s The Unfeathered Bird bridges art, science, and history in showing birds artistically arranged and engaged in behavior typical of the species—from a fish’s-eye view of a swimming loon skeleton to an un-feathered sparrowhawk plucking its prey. Artist Katrina van Grouw graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1992 where she gained an M.A. in Natural History Illustration for an illustrated thesis on bird anatomy for artists. A former curator in the bird skin collections at London’s Natural History Museum, van Grouw is also a qualified bird bander and has travelled on bird banding expeditions in Africa and South America. Read the glowing review in the The New York Times and view some of the extraordinary artwork in advance of the presentation.
	Joe Sacco | The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme Recorded 11/21/2013 Listen to MP3 audio “The heir to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman” (Economist), cartoon journalist Joe Sacco exposes the bloody reality of war. His books include the American Book Award recipient Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, and the bestselling book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, coauthored with Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges. A two-time Eisner Award winner and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, Sacco has served as a graphic reporter for magazines such as American Splendor, The Guardian, and Harper’s. In The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme, he time-travels to the blackened French countryside and finds a high promontory from which he illustrates a 24-foot-long, single-panel elegy for the thousands of dying and maimed.  In conversation with Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer Music Critic and Pop Culture writer.
	Malcolm Gladwell | David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants Recorded 10/18/2013 Listen to MP3 audio “One of the brightest stars in the media firmament” (Time), Malcolm Gladwell synthesizes academic research with critical analysis and delightfully fascinating writing to fashion astonishing and useful insights about our world and our place in it. His bestselling books travel avenues of science, reason, and anecdote, and include The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink, and What the Dog Saw. A former business and science writer for the Washington Post, Gladwell has been a staff columnist at The New Yorker since 1996. In his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Gladwell challenges conventional notions of obstacles and apparent setbacks, demonstrating that beauty and progress often arise from what looks like suffering and adversity.
	John Heilemann and Mark Halperin | Double Down: Game Change 2012 Recorded 11/26/2013 Listen to MP3 audio Veteran political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin set the national conversation with their no. 1 New York Times bestselling account of the 2008 presidential campaign, Game Change. Halperin, editor-at-large and senior political analyst for TIME and senior political analyst for MSNBC, and Heilemann, national affairs editor for New York Magazine and political analyst for MSNBC, provide a colorful portrait of the candidates and spouses who aimed to occupy the White House, leaving the reader with a “vivid, visceral sense of the campaign and a keen understanding of the paradoxes and contingencies of history” (New York Times). The HBO adaptation of the book received five Emmy Awards. Double Down: Game Change 2012 is a compelling account of the 2012 presidential election. In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY's Newsworks.org.

If you like what you hear, you can browse, listen to, and download more than 1,000 Author Event podcasts from our extensive archive!

You can always keep up to date on future Free Library Author Events by siging up for our email list, following us on Facebook and Twitter, and by subscrbing to Author Event Podcasts via iTunes or RSS Feed.

And feel free to share and like this blog post via our social media buttons below!