Ed's Tech Tips

 

 

I was turned on to audiobooks by Leo Laporte who is a technology personality that hosts a variety of podcasts on his TWIT Network (TWIT stands for This Week In Technology). I listen to his weekly TWIT and Mac Break Weekly shows which are (or were) sponsored by Audible.com. To spotlight Audible, halfway through each show he gives them a plug and recommends an audiobook along with each of his co-hosts.

I was also inspired by my co-worker Emily Weir who started a new blog reviewing movies. I am listening to an audiobook that is a movie and I thought it deserved to be reviewed, because it is better than the movie. I am talking about A Scanner Darkly written by Philip K. Dick and read by Paul Giamatti of Sideways fame.

Dick died in 1982, but his fame continues to grow especially by his works that were adapted into film, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, Paycheck, Screamers and Minority Report. A Scanner Darkly stars Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey, Jr. It was created using rotoscoping. It is animation created overtop actual film footage. You have probably seen the effect used most recently in several Charles Schwab commercials. I've included a trailer from the movie below, but this is not a review of the movie but of the book.

I am listening to the book because I watched the movie and while I enjoyed the movie I felt I was missing something, the story felt incomplete. I often try to read a book before I see the movie because I like to compare the two and I do not want the ending of the book spoiled by the movie. Unfortunately, some movies deviate from the books upon which they are based and the results are usually less than satisfying. What were they thinking when they wrote the screen play for the Da Vinci Code?!? The book's ending was so much better. 

With A Scanner Darkly, the book has the advantage of being 9.5 hours long while the movie is only 100 minutes long. I agree 100% with Publishers Weekly review of the audio book:

This dark but devilishly entertaining audio—read by the terrific Giamatti (American Splendor, Sideways)—offers Dick fans the complete book...Giamatti is an inspired choice, managing to capture both the touching charm and the irritating obsessiveness of Dick's leading characters in a slightly futuristic version of Los Angeles: a drug addict named Bob and a narcotics cop called Fred—who might just be the same person, especially since they're both addicted to a drug called Substance D, which gradually splits the user's brain into two warring entities. Dick's book is not for the squeamish or those offended by strong language, but he and Giamatti make the degradation and despair of addiction poignant and often hilarious.

Giamatti does a great job of reading this story which tackles the drug culture, paranoia, self identity, addiction and betrayal. It is a rather complex story to capture on film, but reveals itself very well in written or audio form. 

In this instance I would recommend seeing the movie first before reading or listening to the book. It is very well cast and helps to visualize the various characters and the technology used in the not too far distant futuristic society (it was the 90's for Dick who wrote it in th early 70's).

I say "almost free" because as the old adage goes "time is money" and spending a little cash up front can save you a lot of time, at least in the case of converting audiobook CDs to a format that works on an iPod. As for the "free" audiobooks CDs I am talking about the ones you can borrow from your local library. There are other ways to borrow audiobooks on CD, such as Kitabe.com and SimplyAudiobooks.com, services that are similar to Netflix, but for audiobooks, however, they are not entirely free.

A note for the benefit of RIAA lawyers, and those looking to avoid same: These instructions will allow you to copy borrowed audio books from CD to your iPod, so you can listen to books you’ve checked out from the public library. That’s a fair use of the copying capability that is built into iTunes. When you’ve listened to the book, delete it. Keeping the book, or sharing it with others, would be illegal.

You may be asking yourself, "Can't I just import an audiobook CD just like a music CD?" The short answer is yes you could, but iTunes is optimized for importing music CDs and not audiobooks. The audio book CDs will be treated like music tracks and not like chapters in a book. iTunes and iPod treat audiobooks differently from other audio files in these ways:

• Audiobooks are automatically bookmarked: if you stop an audiobook in the middle and play something else, then go back to the audiobook, it will start playing where you left off — even after resynchronizing your iPod.
• There’s a special Audiobooks entry in the main menu.
• You can play audiobooks faster or slower than normal speed.
• Audiobooks can have chapter stops within them.
• Audiobooks are automatically skipped during shuffle.

Another advantage is that audiobooks can encoded at a lower bit rate because the spoken voice has a narrower range. Most music files are encoded at 128 kbps or greater. Audio books can be encoded at 32-64 kbps. The six CD set of State of Fear by Michael Crichton was reduced to a 192 MB audiobook file and sounded fine. So, as you see it is beneficial to treat audiobooks differently than audio CDs.

Now when you purchase audiobooks from iTunes or Audible.com you get all of these benefits, but I was talking about almost "free" audiobooks.  

You can import audio CDs without special software, but it is a tedious multi-step process which a couple web sites have painstakingly detailed. See them here and here. However, this takes a lot of time and time is something many us of find in short supply. Sometimes I barely have time to change the CDs in and out of the computer, much less follow 12 additional steps.

Fortunately, there is a simple inexpensive effective software solution. Take a look at Audiobook Builder, a universal Mac OS X application that takes the hassle out of converting audiobook CDs or MP3 files that do not fit the iTunes audiobook format. Just type the title, author and find a cover image from Amazon or Google. Then insert the CDs one by one and let the program import the CDs. Then specify if you want to join or separate the chapter tracks. Then the book is transferred to iTunes ready to be sent to your iPod. 

The software only costs $9.95 for a single license and $14.95 for a family license. It works as advertised. I successfully imported the Michael Chrichton book from CD's. That is over six hours of audio. I also converted A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, a 9 hour audio book that I had downloaded from the web in MP3 format. I could put numerous audio books on my little 2 GB iPod Nano.

So if you like audiobooks, check out the Audiobook Builder. The iPod is a great audiobook reader just as it is a great music player. Auidobooks are a great way to enjoy a book while doing other things, such as driving, walking, doing dishes or other mundane tasks. It really helps to pass the time. I just finished listening to my first full audiobook, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins which I highly recommend. It goes a long way in explaining how America has come to find itself in it's current negative global economic and political circumstances.