Audiobooks

I know a lot of people listen to these in their cars. But I commute to work on the bus, and when I am in my car, I almost always have kids with me, so the car isn't the place for me to listen. Instead, I listen while doing housework, especially laundry and kitchen cleaning. I also listen while walking for exercise. For years I had a Sony Walkman cassette player, and would check out books on cassette from the library. I recently started to notice that everyone else had these little MP3 players, and there I was hiking along with this big clunky Walkman. I wanted one of those cute little things too, but I wasn't sure how it would work with audiobooks.

But then I figured out that you can rip an audiobook CD the same way you can rip a music CD (well, duh). From there I reasoned that I could use an MP3 player to play those files. So I bought a Creative Zen Nano (it's pink!) and tried it. It works really well. Once you've ripped the CD, you just drag the folder onto the Nano, which works just like a little flash drive. You don't even need to install the software that comes with the Nano. Another good thing is that it holds a lot, so I can load it up with all the files for the whole book. I don't have to carry cassettes around with me, so it's really compact.

This leads me to a consideration of the ethics of ripping library CDs. I reason that I'm just converting them for my own use, and not keeping the files, or giving them to anyone else. As soon as I finish a book, I delete it from my Nano and from my computer hard drive. It's like returning it to the library.