The Library’s Amazing Audio Book Options
I love books. They occupy every shelf in my house, and line the wall next to my nightstand in stacks three feet high. I love the heft, feel, smell, usability and yes, romance, of a book in print.
But what are entrancing me now are the wonderful audiobook options available at the Mercer County Library System. The library has four rich resources: Playaways, books-on-CD, and downloadable audiobooks on eLibraryNJ and hoopla.
Playaways
A Playaway is a device about the size of a small pack of cards that is pre-loaded with an entire book. Each requires a AAA battery and a set of headphones, earbuds or cable link to some kind of speaker. Each is packaged in a plastic case. There is a diagram of the device and instructions on the inside cover, telling the user how to turn on, play, stop, fast forward, rewind, and increase or decrease the audio. It also shows where to plug in a listening or playing device.
One advantage of the Playaway over a book-on-CD is that playing it is much simpler than dealing with changing out several CD’s for each book. This makes it a favorite device of our elderly patrons, especially those who are bed-bound. It is very light weight and can easily fit in a shirt pocket on a cell phone lariat or lanyard. It is completely mobile and the only cost to the person using it is the price of the battery and the ear buds. This makes it a bit more democratic than audiobooks requiring a costlier CD player.
My friends who like to walk use Playaways as motivational devices. They only allow themselves to listen when they are walking. The more riveting the plot, the stronger the motivation to get out there, exercise and listen! They can also be good aids to sleep and meditation.
The reason that I am enamored with Playaways is that I bought a new Toyota with no CD player. According to Jay Ramey of Autoweek, I am not alone. He writes: “If you haven't bought a new car in the last 10 years, you probably aren't familiar with the slightly unsettling fact that CD players are not exactly common anymore."
In order to get my audiobooks back in my car, I purchased a 3 foot 3.5 mm Male to Male AUX Audio Cable for Hi-Fi Stereo Sound for Car and Home Stereos (priced under $5.00), and I was set. One end goes into the Playaway, the other into the car jack. Not to brag, but now I have audiobooks in my car in surround sound on JBL speakers. Life is good again!
And I can even unplug the Playaway, take it into the gym, plug in my earbuds, pedal my stationary bike and listen without losing my place.
hoopla and eLibraryNJ
Even more miraculous is the way audiobooks, available through the hoopla Digital and Libby apps (eLibraryNJ), pair with my car.
To understand how this works, I contacted our internal tech guru Laura Nawrocik. This is how it went.
Me: When I am at my desk and I click on the Libby app, and click an audio book called Taste: My Life in Food by Stanley Tucci (highly recommended), the recording plays from my hearing aids. When I am in the car, and put my sound system on Wi-Fi, it plays on my car sound system and bypasses my hearing devices. How does it know?
Laura: This is an excellent question! Your hearing aids use Bluetooth and are probably paired to your phone and computers. Much like a wireless headset, the hearing aids come up as the default audio device.
A car also uses Bluetooth to pair to your phone. Most cars and phones are now programmed to override all other Bluetooth devices and engage the hands-free option automatically to help you prevent an accident.
This is kind of cool when you think of it, the car releases your hearing aids so you can hear sirens or horns.
How clever is that? Just download the apps to your phone, choose your library, type in your card number, select your book, choose the Bluetooth option on your car and Voila!, the sound pours out of your audio system. The books are available for 21 days and then poof! disappear, so you never have fines.
See this Libby tutorial to get started. meet.libbyapp.com
I’m not going to discuss books-on-CD, because those of you who use CDs, know how to use them and, as fast as technology is changing, if you don’t use CDs now, you may never have to. Let’s turn instead to how to select the right books for you.
Choosing Audiobooks
Please realize that not all print books are produced in audio and large print editions. A publishing house, especially one of the big five - Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster - has to believe in the profitability of such an investment, which means their books have been vetted and have a good chance of being popular.
I also want to mention how good the sound quality has become on all our audiobooks. Back in my days at graduate school, I tried to listen to George Elliot’s Middlemarch on CD. Between the white noise and the noisome voice of the reader, it was torture and impossible.
Now most of the fiction writers on the New York Times Bestseller’s List - like James Patterson, John Grisham, Louise Penny or Lisa Scottoline, to name some of my favorites - have very slick sound and refined productions. Some employ several actors for each production. The narration is varied and interesting. On any road trip, give me a gripping mystery or thriller with good production quality, and I can drive for hours. But beware of fiction authors who think they can perform their own works. Stick to those who use professionals or are both professional authors and actors.
That does not apply to autobiographies. For autobiographies, I would much rather hear authors like Jamie Foxx, Ron and Clint Howard, David Sedaris, Patti Smith, Rob Lowe or Barack and Michelle Obama tell me their stories than read them. I still cringe thinking about Robert Lowe’s talking about his embarrassment when he faked playing the saxophone on TV and famous musicians and politicians came out of the woodwork offering to play with him. He had to confess that the real artist was hidden behind the curtains. Or the Obamas’ tense moment when the president was in the Senate and had to choose between flying to Washington, D.C. for a key vote or staying by his daughter’s bedside in a hospital in Hawaii. You have to hear Michelle tell it to understand that it was one of those make or break moments in a relationship. (I realize I am using Mrs. Obama’s first name. It feels appropriate because of the intimacy that comes from hearing a story told from the author in first person.)
Another fascinating audio autobiographical comparison is between Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir (read by Julia Whelan) and J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (narrated by the author). Westover was raised off the grid in Idaho and went on to earn a PHD from Cambridge. Vance was raised in the rust belt Appalachian region of eastern Ohio and went on to earn a law degree from Yale. Violence was no stranger to either of them while growing up. Westover had to re-make herself to get away from it. Vance had to re-create himself in order to not resort to anger and abuse in his marriage. They are intimate looks at domestic violence from both a male and a female perspective.
For listening in my car while doing errands and shopping, I like nonfiction books about history, psychology or biology, like Henry Wiencek’s Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, Daniel Amen’s Your Brain is Always Listening: Tame the Hidden Dragons That Control Your Happiness, Habits and Hang-Ups, Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus: a Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness or Frans de Waal’s Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? They are interesting enough to keep me entertained, but don’t make me sit breathless in the parking lot for ten minutes anticipating the plot reveal like I did with Scottoline’s Exposed.
hoopla also offers summaries and analysis for some of their more popular books.
Audie Awards
Another resource for finding an audiobook is the Audie Awards. The Audie Awards are like the Oscars for audible books. This year there are 25 categories, including for genres like humor, fiction, fantasy; best female and best male narrator; and audio book of the year.
For example, in the best male narrator category, John Lithgow, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Edoardo Ballerini, John Bathurst (from Downton Abbey), and William DeMeritt are nominated. Some listeners find a favorite performer, and listen to their entire catalog. You can search for individual narrators by entering the narrator’s name in the library catalog, then restricting the results on the left by only including “audio discs” and/or “eAudiobooks.”
NextReads Audiobooks
The way to keep up with the latest audiobooks in the collection is to sign up to be notified through NextReads. The library’s NextReads page includes lots of e-newsletters besides those compiling lists of books, including one just for audiobooks. You can check out the most recent newsletter or click on the sign-up box in red to have newsletters sent to your inbox. Once a month you will get a list of the latest audiobooks.
If you look at the January 2022 NextReads audiobook list, you will see Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Clicking on a title takes you to the catalog so you can read a description and place a hold on it, easy peasy.
Some other memorable audio books, where the reader and text attain near perfection, are the five books in Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series beginning with Genghis: Birth of an Empire read by Richard Ferrone, and Robert Parker’s Spenser series read by Joe Mantegna, from TV’s Criminal Minds. Also, if you are a fan of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series and are able to find the first two One for the Money and Two for the Dough narrated by Lori Petty, you are in for a treat. Lori Petty is the quintessential Stephanie Plum.
Or you can ignore all these suggestions and call me or your favorite reference librarian. We will help find the best audiobook for you!
- Donna Wolfe, Lawrence Headquarters Branch.
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