Books and iPods: a marriage made in heaven

Senior technology correspondent and reading partner Michael officially joins the Erin's Library team with a report on yet another way in which technology is changing reading.

I've been listening to an audio recording of P.G. Wodehouse's Psmith in the City, which is very enjoyable. More about the book below, but in this case, the medium is the message. I downloaded the book from the LibriVox in the form of mp3 files that I listen to through my iPod on the way to work. Actually, I've only downloaded the first 24 chapters (they come in one to three-chapter files). LibriVox is a nonprofit, community run website where amateurs can post readings of public-domain books. Many of the books, including Psmith are collective projects, in which many different readers submit chapters. I was a bit surprised that the changing voices and reading styles didn't bother me very much, although some are certainly better than others. The biggest difficulty I've had so far was when one of the files started stopped midway through. I'm not sure if the problem was with the LibriVox file or iTunes. In the event, I followed the link at the top to the text of the book and read the two missing chapters there, then picked up again with the book.

Besides their price (free), a benefit of listening to books from LibriVox is that the files are plain mp3 files that can be played on any computer or mp3 player. Most, if not all of the audio book companies that sell books for use on mp3 players use a form of digital rights management (DRM) that restricts their use to certain kinds of players and a limited number of computers/mp3 players.

Currently, the LibriVox catalog is limited. There are 16 complete books, 12 short works (or story collections), and 13 works of poetry (there are also two works in languages other than English). There are significantly more projects underway. Only works in the public domain--basically books published before 1923--are allowed.

Psmith is about a couple of young men in England who, for different reasons, go to work for a bank in London instead of university. The premise is thinly drawn, but the scenes at the bank are great and show that office life has not changed very much in a century. Psmith--I'm not sure what the P is for, maybe it is just supposed to be funny--is a lazy and spoiled rich kid who believes he can entertain enyone by talking to them. Psmith's friend Mike, who's father has gone bankrupt, is Psmith's straight man, a harder worker who is along for the ride as Psmith schemes ways to make their life at the bank easier. Psmith succeeds in winning over the notoriously strict head of the stamps department by discussing Manchester United with him; he is less successful, so far, at winning over the higher ups.

I'm intrigued. I love the idea of having books in the commons, available to listen to as well as to read. One day, if we ever have the equipment, we'd like to add a couple items to the LibriVox library. I am thinking of stories by Ivan Bunin. If you have any ideas, send them along.