Books 2.0

I recently listened to When Markets Collide by Mohamed El-Erian. Great book. I think. At least someone thought so. Anyway, delighted as I was to get it on audio, because there was little chance I’d tackle it in print, I wasn’t surprised to find that there was a PDF file on the last disc containing charts and tables referred to in the text. This I saved to my desktop and opened after pausing the narrator at “see figure 4.1 in the included PDF”.

Now I listened to it on standard compact discs, 8 in all, through wireless headphones. I was restricted to consuming the book strictly as audio through my stereo and required my computer to call up the visual elements. Often as not, this meant dashing from the laundry room or kitchen to my desk, where I’d left the PDF open, but I digress. But suppose I had downloaded the audiobook from the iTunes store and was listening on my iPod, which can easily display images and text. How nice it would be to have my iPod chime like one of those book & tape sets I used to enjoy as a pre-schooler: when we got to “see figure 5.2″ the image would come up on the screen, I’d glance at my iPod as the narration carries on, then go back to listening.

But wait a second. If can look at my iPod for book content while listening to an audiobook, what about listening to an eBook? Not possible, I’m afraid. Ebooks are eBooks and audiobooks are audiobooks and digital though they both might be, never the twain shall meet. Though the second generation of Amazon’s Kindle can apparently read to you, I doubt it’s a very pleasant experience over long durations. At this point, invoking Sklar with the flip of a switch remains just a dream.

When I buy a book, I’d like to think I bought the privilege of reading it in any way I choose. If I buy a book as an electronic file containing text and images, why should I have to buy it all over again if I’d like to use my ears instead of my eyes as my primary organs for consuming it? Ultimately, I don’t want a Kindle with audio capabilities or an eBook app for an iPhone as much as I want a new kind of necessarily electronic book format that takes full advantage of the device through which it’s consumed.

Publishers need to stop seeing eBooks as a substitute for printed pages and start thinking about them as a means for transmitting content — any content.

I want to be able to read with my eyes while seated on the subway, then switch to audio when I have to get off and walk down the street to meet a friend for lunch. If there’s an element I need to see, sound a chime to get my eyes on the screen, then fade out to conserve battery life and keep the narration rolling. Google’s already got the technology to sync the printed page to audio narration and plenty of podcasts feature images that change at different points during playback. So near, yet so far…

HarperStudio has made a gesture in the direction of selling books in multiple media by offering ebooks and audiobooks for a small fee on top of the cost of the printed book. It’s still very early days, but I believe that at the heart of this move is the acknowledgement that publishers aren’t manfucturers: their product isn’t paper and glue. But whether HarperStudio’s model a) works financially and b) pushes anyone to develop an integrated audio/text standard remainds to be seen. Or heard. Or whatever.

Audiobooks, or how I learned to love housework

You’re going to read about audiobooks quite a bit in this blog. (E-books, too, but you’re already reading this on a screen so you don’t need to hear how great they are; you just need someone to figure out how to sell them to you.) There are a few reasons we like audiobooks. The first is a matter of circumstance: through my job I have access to a huge supply of them. Three of us work at the same place, so when we want to share something we love, here come the discs.

Reason #2 is the one that counts for Datachondria.

Reading isn’t primarily a visual activity. It’s actually quite physical. Think about it. What can you do with your hands when you’re reading? How fast can you walk when you’re reading? Can you run? In what kind of weather can you read outdoors? At what time of day? Can you read with gloves on? Mittens? Can you watch your kid playing at the park while reading? Can you walk your dog? Fold laundry?

Reading requires a huge number of physical conditions to be met in order to be done effectively. But I’ve found that comprehending language only requires that no other language be input at the same time. I can carry on a conversation while eating as long as I can hear my companions distinctly. If there are several conversations going on at the table at once I can really only participate in one at a time, though if I concentrate only on listening I might be able to keep up with up to three threads of light discussion, but this has no bearing at all on the enjoyment I take from my meal.

Audiobooks let me employ that part of my brain that processes language while the rest of me is doing something else. I can’t write an email while listening to an audiobook, not in the sense that I can be said to be doing both at exactly the same moment, but I can usually format a spreadsheet, do some light banking, eat a salad, dust the living room, etc. The only thing I can’t do while listening to an audiobook is read, speak, or listen to speech.

The first thing I noticed after listening to a few audiobooks is that I spend a hell of a lot of time at home doing none of the things that would prevent me from listening to an audiobook. This revelation came a few weeks after my wife began photographing weddings on the weekends, leaving me to figure out what to do with myself at home. The first few Saturdays didn’t go so well. I watched a few DVDs I didn’t really want to watch again. I read a couple chapters of a book or two I wasn’t really into. I spent an incredible amount of time on the internet doing absolutely nothing of value. There was laundry that could have been done, groceries I could have gotten, letters to mail, empties to return, random errands to run, and there really wasn’t a good reason for me to be in the middle of washing dishes when she came home at midnight except that only by about 11:30 did the shame of accomplishing absolutely nothing with my day turn unbearable. Why did I put off housework? Probably for the same reasons that everyone does: because it’s boring. Even if I don’t want to watch Apocalypse Now: Redux for the 16th time, I’d rather tell myself I spent 4 hours of my day doing that than having handed over my weekend to chores.

Then one Friday afternoon a copy of Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music arrived in my mailbox at work and I took it home with me for the weekend. Earlier in the week wifey had specifically asked me to do the laundry (or I offered and she called my bluff; either way I’d be elbow-deep in undies) so I knew I had two things I wanted to do with my Saturday: “read” this audiobook and get through at least 3 or 4 loads of laundry, including folding and ironing. 5 discs/ 6 hours, and about as many loads later I knew I’d been witness to a breakthrough. I can indulge my intellectual curiosity (or appetite for narrative, though my at-home audiobook diet is 3:1 non-fiction to fiction) while getting things done around the house. In these early days I was still limited by proximity to the stereo, as iTunes hadn’t yet released version 8 with all its audiobook-friendly enhancements (more on that in a future post), and I hadn’t yet acquired a pair of wireless headphones. But wheeling the hamper into the living room, folding on the coffee table, and setting up the ironing board behind the couch all worked just fine for a while.

These days I always have one audiobook on the go at home and one or two in queue just in case I find myself with an extra heavy load of dishes ahead of me. I’ve learned that reading is addictive in all its forms. When we moved and I didn’t have my gear set up to listen to audiobooks wirelessly in our new home I became unproductive and irritable: I was in withdrawal. A few days into it I got a good fix when left alone to paint the room where my computer had been temporarily stationed — fortunately with the speakers hooked up. I still had to pause when I went to the kitchen for a beer (this was serious painting, after all) which made me pine for the adapter to get my wireless headphones back in the game. But at least the shakes were gone.

This week we bought a dishwasher and I had a thought, not expressed until now: will I still get to listen to audiobooks for the two hours per week I used to spend washing dishes? I haven’t discussed this with Wifey yet. Maybe her delicates need hand-washing? Could I learn to bake? Perhaps the dog could use a brushing? I could vacuum — but that’s loud. This place could use a good sweeping! And dusting. Maybe some paint touch-ups…