Booktracks

This is my first attempt to post via the new Blogger iPod app, so forgive me any issues...the keyboard doesn't rotate, so my typing is more awkward than usual.

So- just downloaded my first Booktrack!! It's an app (also just online I believe, not only app) that is essentially an ebook that has a soundtrack. I got Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band, it's the only story available on the iPod at the moment that isn't a kids fairy tale. However, they said more titles are forthcoming... Including Pride and Prejudice - excited for that, of course!

It's not an audiobook-- in the sense of someone reading the story to you. It plays a soundtrack of musical underscoring and light sound effects appropriate to the narrative - for example, a crackling fire during a scene in Baker Street where Holmes refers to the fire being lit, footsteps at the top of a page where characters make an entrance, etc. So far it hasn't been distracting. The app uses a fairly simple way for you to adjust playback speed -- I read much faster than the default pace -- and learns your speed pretty quickly.

This is essentially what I have been wanting for years, trying to do myself with carefully chosen Pandora stations (note: it rarely works, except occasionally for Jane Austen), and which certain audiobooks like The Golden Compass and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell alllllmost have for bits of their audible files. But not the whole way through - and not as a soundtrack to something you read yourself.

In general I prefer to read books myself rather than listen to an audio (though the narrator of the Jonathan Strange audio is one of the few that I prefer to my own mental voice), so having this Booktrack option is amazing. There are some little glitchy things in the app, but hey, it's new; and I wish they had more titles available. But I think it's a fantastic start and I am so excited to downloading more as they become available!