Audiobook on My iPod: Quick Reviews

During our vacation in Australia and New Zealand and since we got home, I listened to several audiobooks on my iPod. Here are some quick reviews, five stars being the best.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - five stars

Gaiman is a great reader and the story is very inventive. I loved all the ghosts and enjoyed the dramatic tension. It made me wish I could walk around unseen. This book, which deserves all its awards, is great in audio, too.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - three stars

Perhaps I expected too much after all the praise that I've heard. I had to listen to the first couple of chapters a second time to understand what was happening. Once I got into it, I listened faithfully, but when it was over, I started seeing problems with the story and its characters. I feel that despite her humanizing faults, the Lisbeth Salander character is just a superhero, the ultimate hacker who can get any bit of data from any computer without fail. All the women fall for Mikail Blomkvist too easily. In the end, the all powerful bad guy seems pretty clueless. I don't buy it.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - four stars, maybe four and a half

I can see why there is still a long list of reserves at our library. This is a charming story. I liked the many characters and enjoyed learning all the history about the Channel Isles during World War II. It ended just like I wanted. Perhaps I am starting to want gentle reads. If they are as good as this, that's fine with me. Having five readers for the various characters was a nice touch.

Program "How to Manage Your iPod" Big Hit at Thomas Ford

Last night seventeen people attended my presentation "How to Manage Your iPod," which we held in our community room at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. I had asked attendees to bring their iPods and most did. One gentleman also brought his laptop and repeated for himself everything that I demonstrated about iTunes software. The discussion was lively and and, because of questions, we spent nearly two hours connecting iPods to laptops, downloading podcasts, making playlists, and discussing the merits and limitations of various iPod models.

Most of the people who came had Nanos. There were a couple of Shuffle owners and one man had a second generation Classic working on the original battery. One woman opened her iPod for the first time at the program. I believe that she had gotten it as an incentive from a bank. Several had gotten iPods as Christmas gifts. A few had iPod hand-me-downs from their children who had upgraded to newer or big models. A couple of the attendees may have been in their forties. Everyone else was fifty or older. Two or three were thinking of getting an iPod. The level of experience varied but tended toward little. Everyone was quite interested, and almost everyone contributed to the discussion. Half the group were people I did not recognize as regular library users.

I had several surprises:

• I expected audiobooks to be a primary interest with the group because we promote iPod books that we circulate from the reference desk. Music, however, was the primary interest of this group. Only a couple had borrowed our iPods for the audiobooks. Several did express interest in the audiobooks once they had heard of them.
• No one had listened to a podcast. Most had seen the folder on the iTunes software but did not know what it meant. The group was surprised to learn that podcasts are free to download.
• I had a slideshow to use as an introduction but I hardly used it, as questions and discussions started right away. We spent most of the time actively involved with iPods and iTunes.

Everyone reported that they learned something, whether it be why they should use the lock on their iPod or how to load an audiobook from CDs so that the files stay in order. Because we had queries from people who could not attend this evening, we will probably run the program again next fall or next year. I recommend the topic for other libraries to try as a community program. You might be surprised by the strong interest.