BigBlueToe

My wife likes book on CD when she's driving. Last summer she had The Secret Life of Bees, which I had read once, but really liked. I thought it would be fun to listen to it during the long, lonely hours on tour.

When I ripped it to Windows Media Player, I discovered that each of the CD's had a title, which seemed randomly chosen. That meant they wouldn't play in order on my MP3 player. I changed the titles and thought I was good. But when I got out on the road, I discovered the original titles were embedded, and the MP3 player followed them. So I had section after section out of order, and no way to tell which was which. They didn't even have a narrator announcing what they were at the start of each section. It was impossible.

When I got home I fixed the problem in about 5 minutes by creating a playlist on Rhapsody and putting the sections in the correct order. It was easy to do because the new names I had given the sections still showed up on my computer (just not on the MP3 player.) Unfortunately, I've had no desire to listen to the book since I got home. I don't have long stretches of lonely time here. Maybe next summer.

Anyway, if you should rip books on CD onto your MP3 player, check before you leave home that the tracks are in the right order. If not, create a playlist, put them in the correct order, and check that before you leave home.

The Kindle looks like a good product to me, but expensive. I'm trying to figure out if I can justify the purchase of one.