Word One: Audiobooks and the Libby App

Why do I love buying books but hate buying an electronic books? I’m sure it involves some outdated romance with the object of a book itself and the prospect of assembling a library. An audio book is just code—you don’t find a forgotten concert ticket between the pages when you open it. Regardless, I’ve been very enthralled with the Libby app, which allows you to check out audio books from your local library for free. It’s a delight.

Just download it and enter your library card number. If you don’t have one then you will have to visit a library, which is morally improving, and a surprising source of DVDs on the off chance you still have a player. After that you’re logged in for good and can check out any book that’s available or get on a wait list for popular titles. It’s not a perfect system, you can’t get everything exactly when you want to. But there are plenty of options while you’re in the queue for whatever Michael Lewis book you dying to hear.

There’s a terrific version of Michael Herr’s Vietnam masterpiece Dispatches read with gonzo inspiration by Ray Porter. There are the incredible letters of Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in America—including some to L.L. Bean which praise or critique their products (parka: good, canvas tent: not good, used it for his dog). His justification of his expenses to his editors is wild—he would not suffer the indignity of driving up to a Las Vegas hotel in anything other than a Cadillac. He claimed he needed the self-assurance the Cadillac bestowed upon him if he was going to write the story with the requisite confidence. The letters are read by Michael Hillgartner who makes the most of them. He also reads E.B. White’s Essays, which are wonderful, especially anything he wrote when he lived in Maine.

Any George Smiley book by John Le Carré read by Michael Jayston will keep you riveted, even if you’re like me and are still trying to figure out exactly what happened in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. There’s also Time Pieces, the terrific Dublin memoir by John Banville and his splendid novel Ancient Light. That should keep you busy for a while. Some books you end up buying anyway because you want to refer to them, revisit the best passages or just because you like the feel of them. Your library always wins in the end.