There is a great new toy on the market for people who listen to audio books. It's called the Playaway and it is essentially a stylised MP3 player with a book pre-loaded onto it.
We all know how annoying it is to have to change CDs during an audio book. Lets face it some books are huge. I was looking through a catalogue for audio books the other day and found you can buy War and peace as an audio book. It's two volumes long totaling 51 CDs and retails for around $300 NZ. Unfortunately as much as I like Tolstoy I just couldn't splash out on that for the collection.
Well with a Playaway they can often put the whole book on one wee machine. It's simple to use as well. There are only 8 buttons; A power button, play/pause, volume up, volume down, reverse, forward, a graphic equalizer and narrator speed. The graphic equalizer button cycles through 6 different settings while the narrator speed has three voice settings. So if you have trouble following the story just slow the narrator down.
At the moment we are just trialling Playaways in the library. We have a small selection of children's titles already and I have just ordered 10 adult's titles.
We will be treating them just like spoken word items. This means you can borrow them for four weeks free of charge. They come with 2 batteries (to be returned with the item) and you can either use your own ear phones or buy a pair off us for $2.
So next time you're in the library check out our new toys. You might just find a book you'll love.
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