Home for a Lifetime

Andrea wrote a great review of the Kindle, and I wholeheartedly agree that e-books are a great solution for many people. Unfortunately I’m finding that the waters get murkier when you start looking for audio books.

First off let me say, that my vision is not so bad that I can’t see a book to read it. I started researching audio books as a way to catch up on my reading by listening to books in the car or at the gym. For people who are legally blind or who have reading disabilities BookShare.org is a great resource for books in the DAISY or BRF formats. There is also a National Library Service for people with disabilities.

When I started researching audio book options, there seemed to be a number of resources online so I figured I would find at least one that would work for me. Unfortunately, I have had to cobble together a system of multiple websites and gadgets and I still find my selection fairly limited.

Any book that is still under copyright is generally only available in a digitally protected file format to prevent you from sharing it illegally. This would be fine with me, except that files with digital protection cannot be read by ALL gadgets or software. Often you can only listen to the file using “approved players. For instance, an audio book I downloaded from my public library will not play on my Android smart phone, even using the library’s official application. When I looked at the permission data on the file I discovered it can ONLY be transferred to devices made by Apple – so my Motorola Droid and Sony MP3 Player are both out.

I also learned that there are multiple audio book formats and audio books aren’t always made available in every format. At this point I doubt you will be surprised to learn that audio book formats aren’t universally compatible either. So even if the book has permissions to be transferred to your device you still may not be able to open it with your gadget of choice.

There are a few audio book websites, but they charge monthly fees around $15 that you can use to buy books. I don’t know about you, but if I haven’t read the book yet, I might just want to borrow it from the library. This is preferable to wasting money to discover I don’t like it and will never read it (or in this case listen to it) again. I should also note that audio books generally cost twice as much as e-books. For $15 on Audible I can get two books for an e-reader.

Needless to say I am frustrated, but at least I can still sit down and look at pages of a book as a way to read it. I can’t imagine how much more frustrated I would be if all my friends were reading the next volume of our favorite series, but I had to wait until it was available in a universally accessible audio format. Right now my plan is to get caught up on the classics. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Alice in Wonderland are both loaded into my smart phone as emergency reading material. I’m hoping this will help me become the first person ever to enjoy being stuck in traffic.