The Easy Reader

If you're a fan of audio books, you know the major downside. An unabridged audio book can run seven hours long—if it isn't an epic.

If you want to load up Pat Conroy's The Great Santini on your iPod Nano or your car CD changer, good luck: it runs 20 hours.  That would fill about 20 CDs, and is the equivalent of downloading 300 songs from the iTunes store—unless you took the 20 CDs out from the library and ripped them.

Now there's a way to get high-definition audio books in a digital form without running up your iTunes Store charges or testing the boundaries of copyright law. My wife the librarian recently introduced me to the Playaway, a pocket-sized pre-loaded digital audio player now carried by many public libraries.

The Playaway, manufactured by Findaway World LLC, runs on a single AAA battery. The sound output is through a standard headphone jack, so you can plug it into your own earbuds or into your car stereo's auxiliary input jack. 

There's no more fumbling for the next CD (or iPod track) while you're flying down the Interstate.  The Playaway's controls allow you to fast-forward both within a particular part of the book, or skip ahead and back by chapter with the same simple set of buttons.  And if you pause the book, it picks back up where you left off—there's no hunting for the right part of the right track.

The Playaway, like the Nano, is extremely lightweight. It's also well-made for listening to on the treadmill or on a jog—it doesn't skip, and it's built to survive (moderate) dropping.

However, unless you're really committed to listening to the same book over and over, it's best to get the Playaway from the library.  Current releases sell for between $60 and $70.