For more music mashups, check out DJ Earworm’s YouTube channel.

While Rihanna’s Talk That Talk isn’t a record that you’re going to want to listen to with the kiddies in the room (at least not sans EARMUFFS!), it’s far and away the most cohesive album that she’s recorded to date. It’s not a concept record, per se, but the thematic consistency of this album’s lyrical content [...] from start to finish, the most aurally satisfying record of the six full-length albums she has released.

Pre-order Rihanna’s album Talk That Talk (Deluxe Edition), available on iTunes on November 21.

Our yard is plainfully small. Most of the area is taken up by the wooden porch. To the right of the yard, there is my boyfriend’s small koi pond, a few small fruit trees, and some potted plants. That’s about all the foliage that exists in our yard. I hardly look outside because frankly, there isn’t much to see. But today, there was a slight breeze that rattled the little branches of the trees which made me realize how much the season’s changed. With the wacky weather around here, I could hardly remember spring. Felt like the season jumped from winter straight into the middle of summer! Now, everything is so green outside. It reminds me of a book I once saw, Gertrude Jekyll & The Country House Garden by Judith B. Tankard. Gosh, how I wish I could have an ounce of that talent to plant my own little piece of heaven.

Photographs: © Country Life Picture Library, from Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden by Judith B. Tankard, Rizzoli New York, 2011.

In a nutshell, The Help is about Skeeter, a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi, who becomes interested in the plight of African American maids that every white family has working for them. Skeeter, with the help of Aibileen and Minny, writes about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreaks of black maids working in white families’ homes, all just before the Civil Rights revolution.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women–mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends–view one another.

A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

I’m only on my third disc (out of 14) but I can’t recommend it highly enough. Newcomers should definitely give Kathryn Stockett’s The Help a try if they want to get a great audiobook experience. I took my sister’s recommendation and now (wouldn’t ya just know it) I’m hooked on audiobooks.

To learn more about the author or for more information about her work, visit KathrynStockett.com.

To buy an audiobook copy of The Help, visit Audible.com.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is a love story, told in flashback by Jacob Jankowski, a 90-something-year-old that is now in a retirement home. He recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression.

When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show’s star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena’s husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for.

Gruen spent a lot of time researching about the circus life during the Great Depression before writing her novel, even using some of her own real life experiences she uncovered during her research. As a result, Gruen skillfully humanized all the memorable characters who populate her book.

To learn more about the author or for more information about her work, visit SaraGruen.com.