"Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me."
While that fragment of Robert Frost was not included, it springs to mind after spending an hour and a half listening to a reading of his poems on my computer. There's much to be said for listening to all sorts of readings, and especially poetry. An audio book cassette can turn a long, boring drive into a bearable experience. I find spy novels, business books and language tapes especially diverting in bumper to bumper traffic.
I never thought of the PC as a vehicle for listening to literature until I stumbled across www.audible.com. There one can download audio books from the Internet and listen at leisure. The software is free, and simple to install, set up and operate. You can try sample audio programs free, and there is a large selection available for sale (more than 10,000 hours worth, Audible says). I downloaded only the part of their catalog consisting of unabridged works, which runs to 16 pages, single-spaced.
Unlike bookstores, Audible's books are never out of stock, and you need go no further than your computer to get them. They also carry much more than current bestsellers.
There is a great variety, including Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; six hours of Sherlock Holmes; Henry James' Daisy Miller; Common Sense by Tom Paine; Cleland's Fanny Hill; science fiction, detective novels, Shakespeare, business books, biographies, and almost any category one could wish. Prices are typically $ 7 - $ 10 for longer works, $ 3 - $ 4 for shorter ones, considerably better than the retail prices for audio books. The freebies include Dave Barry's Greatest Hits, Harvard Business Review, Car Talk, Entropy Gradient Reversals, "This Week in History," and Frost's poetry.
The PC player software would be more useful with random access, especially for collections of articles, stories or poetry. It can only fast-forward/reverse, or jump to the next or previous program (or sections of a program in paid programs, a feature not enabled in the free stuff). In the Frost program there were some dropouts, so I missed some lines; and one whole poem skipped after the 1st words, probably a download glitch. There also doesn't seem to be a volume control.
Audible says that "you can listen wherever you go." In practice, you can listen on your PC, but not in your car -- unless you buy Audible's $ 199 MobilePlayer, which can play books through a car radio via FM transmission. The player weighs 3.5 oz., fits in your hand, and comes with headphones. It has garnered a good deal of acclaim for its design, including a permanent place in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. It also has a special bookmarking facility, lacking in the PC-only software. But it plays only 2 hours of audio. That's fine for commuting or at the beach, but useless on a long trip, unless you have a laptop along to refresh the content.
The MobilePlayer could be a pleasant companion though, should you find yourself, Frost-like, where two roads diverge in a yellow wood.
E-mail: jerry@maizell.com
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