I enjoy audio books. A lot. Don't get me wrong, sitting down with an tantalizing page turner is awesome but in reality, when working a 9 to 5 and trying not to totally ignore your family when you at home, there's not a whole lot of time to spend engulfed in a great novel. My solution has been audio books. My commute to and from work is 35 to 45 minutes each way and if I dedicate that driving time to a particular book I can be done with it usually in a week or so. Also, a good portion of my day has to do with coding and support for a system our collectors use. During this time I can easily listen to an audio book, but I find when I have to create requirements for new projects I can't concentrate on both the book and my work at the same time.
There are many places to find audio books, both for sale and for free. If you are interested in audio books for purchase Audible has the best selection with, in my opinion, the iTunes store a very close second. If you are looking for free audio books there are plenty of sites out there but personally, and I'm sure I'll get flack for this, I like to go the torrent route. Personally I like MyAnonaMouse.net. It is invite only but you can request an invite from their site and after answering a few questions you're well on your way to expanding your digital library. If you're not a torrent fan LibriVox is another incredible alternative.
If you like to listen to audio books on your iPod then you will want to have the book in MPEG-4 (M4B) format rather than MP3. In M4B format you can utilize the bookmark functionality of the Ipod, with MP3 you will lose your place in you leave the track you are on. If I download a book in MP3 format I use MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter (catchy name) to change the file(s) to M4B. It takes a little time to convert the file, about 30 to 40 minutes depending on the book, but is well worth it. The program is free to use and does just this one function great. Another great function is that you can combine individual files to make one huge file. Perfect if your audio book has a ton of tracks.
And I know I mentioned DropBox before but this is another great way to always have a book everywhere. Drop an audio book you'd like to sometime read into your drop box and the next time you forget to take your iPod with you to work you'll have a book waiting for you.
Disclaimer; I just want to make it known that anything I ever download is either creative common or public domain. I fully recognize that pirated material is illegal and would not recommend downloading pirated material to anyone.
My next post will be about eBooks and eReaders, which there is a huge amount of information to share so I'd like to dedicate a whole post or two it.
One last thing, I forgot to mention in my last post DailyLit. This is an awesome site where you subscribe to a book and each day another chapter is emailed to you. You can increase the frequency and skip ahead if you want as well. Definitely check this site out.
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