MD 23 Things: Thing 22

[your neighborhood librarian]

Online recorded books. Ohhh, I have what you might call a hate-hate relationship with Overdrive and NetLibrary. Last year, when I got all nutso and decided to work out regularly, I figured the only way I could enjoy it would be to listen to a book while I was on the Elliptical.

But I have an iPod, which doesn't do Windows Media, which is the only format the books come in. Sooo, when it got to be time to upgrade my phone, I got a Smartphone, which could play Windows Media. I got a Bluetooth headset, so I wouldn't be whipping the cord around as I trudged away on the exercise machine. When all this stuff came, I sat down at the computer to explore the riches of the downloadable audio book world.

Aaaand... I found Grisham, I found Patterson, I found chick lit, I found precious little that I could stand listening to. I settled on Stephen King. I went through the unnecessarily complicated rigamarole that is selecting and downloading a book, and I discovered that the file was too big for my phone, even with the teeny little 1 gigabyte memory card I had bought with the phone.

Are you with me? $200 for a phone, $50 for a headset, about $40 for the card? Ok, good.

So my second choice was Simon Winchester's book about the remains of the British Empire, I think it was called Outposts. I took it to the gym, finally. It skipped. The volume went up and down on its own.

Now I listen to the All Mighty Senators and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists on my damn iPod, and they sound great, and the Bluetooth headset sits in a drawer.

So that's what I have to say about Overdrive and NetLibrary.

Project Gutenberg, on the other hand, I use all the time. Especially when our copy of Rights of Man by Thomas Paine is checked out, or someone comes looking for Macchiavelli's Mandragora, which we don't have at all. The Project Gutenberg people have been doing us all a service for a long long time.