Alas, my flip phone’s inner screen is broken. I decided to cut my losses and buy a refurbished iPhone 13 Mini. This means I needed to figure out which iOS audiobook app I want to use. I scoured the internet to come up with a list of potential audiobook apps and then made a spreadsheet to compare features. All these apps were tested on my iPhone 13 Mini which is currently running iOS 18.1.1. Carplay was tested on a 2018 Subaru Impreza. Below are my thoughts on the apps.

Audience

iPhone users who

• Want to read a long post about iOS audiobook apps
• Want to use something other than Apple’s native iBooks app
• Own non-DRM audiobooks from places like Libro.fm (i.e. not Audible) ¹
• Want the audiobooks locally on their phone, not in the cloud, for situations when internet access is spotty
• Don’t want to run their own media server².

Audiobook Apps

I downloaded 10 audiobook apps but had to exclude two because they were no longer functional. I’ve listed the remaining eight audiobooks below in order of preference. However, we all have slightly different audiobook needs so my favorite may not be yours. In my view, the two best audiobook apps are BookPlayer and MP3 Books. Both can be downloaded for free to compare functionality. If you like the functionality of MP3 Books best, I recommend paying the small one-time fee to upgrade to the Pro version. If you plan to use BookPlayer, you can contribute to the optional tip jar.

Important: To my knowledge, none of these apps work with DRM content. This includes audiobooks bought through Audible and Apple.

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BookPlayer

Price

• Free for most features
• Optional Tip Jar to show appreciation
• A subscription is required for some beta features including Cloud sync

Pros

• Regularly updated
• Good UI
• Very configurable
• Multiple ways to import books
• Easy to batch-add M4B and zipped MP3 audiobooks
• Ability to search audiobook collection
• Great organization options for large collections
• Can retrieve the embedded audiobook cover or replace with a custom cover
• Optional Auto Sleep Timer
• Excellent Carplay features
• Voiceover support (not tested)

Cons

• No Wi-Fi upload
• Sleep timer doesn’t pause when the book is paused and movement doesn’t restart the sleep timer
• Not easy to batch add audiobooks made up of multiple MP3 files

BookPlayer is an excellent audiobook app. The organization options are one of its biggest strengths. While multiple apps, including this one, have the ability to search for audiobooks, this is the only app that offers the option of nested folders. It allows me to group my books by authors and then by series. So, if I want to easily browse all my Bujold books, I go to my Bujold folder, and then choose either the Vorkosigan Saga or the World of the Five Gods folder. In addition, within the folders I can drag the books to the order I want them to appear. This is particularly useful when you have BookPlayer’s AutoPlay toggle turned on which automatically goes to the next book in the list. If I finish all the books in the Vorksigan saga, it’ll start playing the first book I have in my World of the Five God’s folder. In addition, BookPlayer has a select feature that lets me organize multiple audiobooks at once rather than one-by-one.

For me, one of the most exciting features BookPlayer has is its optional Auto Sleep Timer feature. This restarts the sleep timer whenever playback is started again until you explicitly turn the sleep timer off. This means that if I don’t fall asleep before the first sleep timer expires, I can simply tap my earbud to start the audiobook again, without needing to open my eyes, and it will remember I want the sleep timer to engage again. It looks like this is a new feature as of 2024 and I am very excited the developer added it. The sleep timer does work a little differently than in the Android Smart Audiobook Player. In BookPlayer, it doesn’t pause when the book is paused and it seems to be a global setting. That is, the timer continues to count down even if I switch to another book. This works fine for me but may be a problem for others. One other really nice feature of the sleep timer is it fades before stopping completely. It’s a shorter fade than I had for Smart Audiobook Player. However, it’s smooth enough that I don’t wake up from the sound suddenly stopping.

BookPlayer’s CarPlay experience is also excellent. Most of the apps I tested had some basic CarPlay functionality if I started the audiobook playing from my phone. However, very few of the apps let me open them from the car’s screen. On long drives I might want to easily switch from my podcast player, or Libby app, to my personal audiobook collection without stopping the car and BookPlayer makes this very easy. In addition, there are an amazing number of options while playing audiobooks. Besides the basic pause and skip buttons (both short skips and chapter skips), you can also choose tracks from a menu, add bookmarks with one touch (there is no annotation option in CarPlay mode), boost volume, and change playback speed.

For me, the biggest downside to BookPlayer is how it handles multiple MP3 files for the same book. To be fair, this is something that most audiobook apps seem to struggle with. If you try importing multiple individual MP3 files for multiple books at the same time, you either have the choice to leave them all ungrouped or to group them as one audiobook. Either option could require significant cleanup after the import. Copying a folder, zipped or unzipped, does work but unlike Smart Audiobook Player you can’t choose which folder it ends up in ahead of time³. When batch importing, it’s best to either stick to M4B or organize MP3 files into individual audiobook folders before importing.

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MP3 Audiobook Player

(also called MP3 Books)

Price

• Free with ads for books under 12 hours
• $1.99 to remove ads
• $3.99 for audiobooks over 12 hours
• $5.99 one-time for everything above and more (Pro)

Pros

• Regularly updated
• Decent UI
• Many advanced features
• Many supported file-formats
• Multiple ways to import books
• Easy to batch-add M4B and zipped MP3 audiobooks
• Ability to search audiobook collection
• Can retrieve the embedded audiobook cover or replace with a custom cover
• Graphical overview of listening statistics
• Optional always on sleep timer

Cons

• No organization options⁴
• Couldn’t play from CarPlay screen
• Cannot manually reorder individual MP3 files within a book
• Minor things don’t always work as expected
• Free limitations are annoying, but cheap to remove

Both MP3 Audiobook Player⁵ and ListenBook, its sibling app, are the most configurable of any of the apps I tested. They’re created by the same developer and have similar functionality so unless I say otherwise, all features I mention are relevant for both. The developer mentions they listen to audiobooks all the time and it shows in both of these apps. Almost every setting can be customized. For example, the auto-rewind customization has different settings for very short pause, short pause, and long pause.

As you can tell, sleep timers are near and dear to my heart and this sleep timer can be extensively customized. In addition to the typical duration options, like BookPlayer the sleep timer has an optional setting to be “Always Enabled”. It also has a setting for automatic volume control which can reduce the volume as the sleep timer runs out. Unfortunately, this reduced volume is persistent so if you start the audiobook again, it starts at the reduced volume. One really nice set of sleep features this app has is several “restart timer on” options. For example, you can have it restart the sleep timer when the phone moves and even set the shake sensitivity. The timer also pauses when you pause the audiobook. Like BookPlayer, the sleep timer is persistent regardless of which book you’re listening to.

This app has a number of advanced features that BookPlayer doesn’t. It has a nice graphical statistics page that displays how long you’ve been listening in the app and includes a separate page with detailed info on your listening history. MP3 Player also has advanced sound quality settings. When choosing the universal audio engine you also get an equalizer option. This app also works with the widest range of audiobook file types: MP3 (tested), MP4, AWB, OPUS, OGG, FLAC, AWB, AAC, WMA, M4B (tested), and M4A.

For me, the biggest downside of MP3 Audiobook Player is that it doesn’t have robust organization options. In addition, the Always Enabled sleep timer didn’t consistently work for me. The other bug I noticed is when I tried to select the app on my Carplay screen, it would open but the audiobook wouldn’t play. When I started the book directly from the phone, it worked fine and in addition to basic functionality, did allow bookmarking. In the reviews, several people noted that sometimes the app would revert to the “free” version and it was sometimes difficult to restore to the paid version. This was not a problem I had while testing.

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ListenBook and ListenBook Pro

Price

• $0.99 monthly subscription
• $7.99 annual subscription
• 17.99 one-time

Pros

• Same features as MP3 Player
• Additional UI customization options
• Has a music mode
• More sound customization options

Cons

• Same as MP3 Books
• Expensive compared to most book apps

Listenbook and ListenBook Pro is from the same developer as MP3 Books and the main difference between the two is the user interface and additional customization options. This app has two subscription options: monthly and annually via ListenBook. You can also pay a higher one-time fee by going to ListenBook Pro instead. As far as I can tell, they’re the same app, just different payment options. I bought ListenBook Pro back in 2022 for $4.99 and had no problem installing it on my new iPhone. ListenBook is more expensive than the other options on the list but if you want a long-term option with a nice interface, this may still be a good choice.

As I mentioned above, the look of the user interface is a fair amount different than MP3 Books. ListenBook allows you to view books three different ways: 2 covers per row, 3 covers per row, or a more detailed list. When playing the audiobook you also have more view options. There’s the condensed play view, the expanded play view, and the music mode. The expanded play view allows you to change a number of settings without having to leave the play area. This includes book marks, sleep timer, book/music mode changer, airplay, and sound options. The sound options are where ListenBook has more customization than MP3 Books. It also has the ability to change pitch, enable noise cancellation, convert to mono or change your channel mix, or enable Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural.

Overall, this is a really nice audiobook app and if I didn’t like the organization of BookPlayer more, I would probably use this one.

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Bound

Price

• $4.99 one-time

Pros

• Simple but well-designed
• Regularly updated
• Handles individual MP3 files well

Cons

• No search
• Cannot boost volume
• Can’t transfer directly from computer via USB
• Only available in English

This is a relatively simple audiobook that still includes essential audiobook features such as changing playback speed, bookmarks, and a basic sleep timer. It even has a couple of moderately advanced features such as being able to reorder individual MP3 files. In fact, unlike the other apps above, it easily handles importing multiple MP3 files at a time and correctly groups by the audiobooks they belong to based on the file metadata.

However, the app does not have as many advanced features as the other apps above. The lack of a search may be a deal breaker for people with large audiobook collections. In addition, the Web Uploader did not work when I tried it⁶.

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Little Ape Audio Books

Price

• Free

Pros

• Simple but nice interface
• Can organize by collections
• Handles individual MP3 files well
• Regularly updated

Cons

• Fewer features than many apps
• No search
• Can’t transfer directly from computer via USB
• Only available in English

This is a good app if you want something really simple that’s free. Like Bound, it reads the file metadata and correctly groups individual MP3 books together. You can also rearrange tracks if it gets the order wrong. One unique feature is you can add audiobooks to collections and color code the collections. When you look at the audiobook list you can see the collection color to the right of the book. Or you can click the top drop down menu to limit by collection. This app is currently very simple but it’s being actively updated and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets new features in the future.

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CloudBeats: Audio Book Player

Price

• Free for streaming and basic features
• $9.99 one-time for more features
• $8.99/year subscription to sync across devices

Pros

• Designed to directly connect with cloud storage
• Search
• Can handle playlists

Cons

• Fewer features than many apps
• Carplay seek buttons didn’t work correctly
• Can’t import files already on the iPhone

This app is only worth considering if you want to directly connect to Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Mediafire, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, ownCloud, pCloud, webDAV, or My Cloud Home (I only tested Google Drive). In some ways it feels more like a music player than an audiobook player. For example, it supports m3U playlist, you can set tracks to repeat, and remembering playback position is an optional setting.

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Audiobook Player SmartBook

Price

• 2 Books Free
• $9.99 for unlimited books

Pros

• Can boost volume 3x

Cons

• Fewer features than many apps
• Was last updated in 2020
• Some features were buggy
• Does not display embedded cover from file
• Free version includes ads

This app hasn’t been updated since 2020. There are better options available.

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Audo

Price

• Basic features free
• $1.99 one-time

Pros

• When playing audiobook can see bookmarks and chapter tracks on the same screen

Cons

• Fewer features than many apps
• Was last updated in 2020
• Some features were buggy

This app hasn’t been updated since 2020. There are better options available.

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Audiobook Apps That Didn’t Work

I already had Book Mower and Bookmobile from prior years. However, I didn’t include them because the free versions are limited, they were last updated more than four years ago, and trying to upgrade to the full-featured option now returns an error for both apps.

Footnotes

In January 2024 I took a reading vacation. It was amazing and I want to do it again. 2025 is already fully booked, among other things I’m going to Worldcon in Seattle, but maybe I’ll be able to squeeze another one into 2026. Because of the reading vacation, I finished 18 books (5,491 pages) in January. I read the fewest books in May (4 books/1,356 pages). Even though I started January off strong, I read 14 fewer books in 2024 compared to 2023 but only 283 fewer pages¹.

Half of my books were science fiction and/or fantasy but mystery was my second highest genre. I had trouble finding science fiction I wanted to read this past year. I like reading escapist science fiction and, understandably, a lot of the science fiction right now is pretty depressing. The opposite of the depressing fiction is cozy SFF but it often falls flat for me. After some thought, I believe my very favorite plot is cranky (or angry) person goes on a rampage² and ends up making the world a slightly better place.

Here are my StoryGraph stats for 2024. Speaking of StoryGraph, this year I started logging when I started a book in addition to when I finished the book. In addition, just last month StoryGraph added a “paused” feature that I like because if a book isn’t immediately working for me I can set it aside and try again a bit later. This year, I have a goal of rating the books I read. I expect most of my ratings will be pretty high, because I rarely pick up a book unless I think I’m going to enjoy it, but I think it may be interesting to see the distribution.

As far as reading goals for 2025, I don’t think I have any major new ones. 2025 does not seem like a good year to do any stretch goals. However, like normal I am going to try to read the Hugo Award Nominees. In addition, I’ve joined a local book club. They’re picking books that I normally wouldn’t read myself so it’ll provide some interesting diversity to my list. February they’ll be discussing Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, March There There, and April will be Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. Of those three, Ruch Reichl is the only author I’ve read before. I enjoyed Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise but just recently gave up on The Paris Novel.

Favorite 2024 Reads

• I re-read A Deadly Education in January and The Golden Enclaves in October. Remember how I said I like cranky people who make the world a little bit better? That’s describes this series’ protagonist in a nutshell.
• Book of Night – Holly Black is a very good writer and I thought the premise interesting.
• Iris Kelly doesn’t Date – A delightful sapphic romance.
• The Housekeepers – A fun historical heist.
• Loki’s Ring – Space Opera!
• Designing History: The Extraordinary Art & Style of the Obama White House – This was a bit different than the normal interior design books I read but it was really interesting. There were all sorts of tidbits I learned such as that the oval office has three sofas in rotation because nervous visiting guests tend to leave sweat marks on the sofas and they have to be cleaned often. Also, this book definitely invoked a bit of nostalgia because I miss having a president who has a yearly recommended reading list.
• Paladin’s Faith – The fourth in a the Saint of Steel fantasy series. I was particularly fascinated by how depictions of demons in this universe changed.
• Pride and Prejudice – I got the 2021 edition illustrated by Marjolein Bastin and it’s beautiful. I read a little bit every night right before bed.
• Soul Taken (February) and Winter Lost (September) – Patricia Briggs writes very engrossing stories. However, I think half the fun of these books is it being set in the Tri-Cities, close to Walla Walla. In fact, in this universe Walla Walla is a fey reservation.
• Encore in Death (February) and Payback in Death (June) – These days I get a little cranky with the woman marries rich man trope (honestly, I’m a little cranky with rich men in general). Also, Roarke’s help in Eve’s cases is often illegal which bothers me. However, the relationships in this series are wonder to watch.
• The Deep Sky – Another space opera. I particularly liked the scenes in the ship itself but the flashbacks were interesting.
• Starling House – I love houses. I can spend hours browsing Zillow house listings so having mystery that revolved so much around the house was a great combination for me³.
• The Tainted Cup – This had a definite Sherlock Holmes feel to me. It was a good mystery in a very unique world.
• The Late Mrs. Willoughby (read in March) and The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh (read in August). – Jane Austen inspired mysteries. Both of these I listened to the audiobook versions.
• The Husbands – This book has a delightfully bizarre premise. The ending didn’t quite work for me but I really enjoyed everything else about the book.
• Unraveller – This is a YA book but it manages to avoid some of the relationship drama a lot of YA can have. This was a really good story with a lot of depth.
• The Bezzle – A short book with a lot to think about.
• Some Desperate Glory – This book took me two tries to read. The first time I put it down after one chapter because I just couldn’t deal with the opening scenario. However, it was a Hugo nominee so I managed to push through and really enjoyed it by the end.
• Diving the Deep – This series is a bit hit or miss for me. I enjoyed the first and couldn’t get through the third book. This is the second book and it is my favorite of the three I’ve read.
• The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate & Live Well – I didn’t read as many interior design books this year as last which I suspect means I’m feeling a bit more emotionally stable. However, I read and enjoyed this one. It’s published in 2011, which is a bit old for an interior design book, but using drawings instead of photos made it feel fresher.
• The Wings Upon Her Back – Somewhat similar to Some Desperate Glory, this is the story of a woman who discovers she’s helping the wrong people.
• How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying – There’s been a spate of books recently about evil people who aren’t really evil, they’re just flawed people. This one worked better for me than several of the others I read⁴.
• The Unwedding – A multi-layered mystery set in Big Sur. I was reading this in early November when it was still way too hot so the rain in the book was very theraputic.
• The Luck Runs Out – This mystery series is about the same age as me and is sometimes a bit dated. However, I like Peter Shandy’s personality. I listened to the first book in the series but sadly it appears it’s the only one available as an audiobook so this one I read as an eBook.
• We Solve Murders – A nice murder mystery.
• The Dead Cat Tail Assassins – Well written and an interesting fantasy universe.
• Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me – Always great to hear someone talking about books.

As I mentioned in the Reading in 2023 post, I decided to take a reading vacation just a few days after getting back from our winter vacation.

What I Read

• Young Adult: Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker
• Romance: Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake
• Mystery (it was really a heist novel): The Housekeepers by Alex Hay
• Memoir or Non-fiction: Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage by Helen Ellis
• Science Fiction or Fantasy: Loki’s Ring by Stina Leicht

What Went Well

• I got really lucky and enjoyed all the books I read. My favorite was probably Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date followed by Loki’s Ring.
• I really liked having a goal of reading a different genre each day.
• On the first day I got a massage in the early afternoon. This was a great way to emphasize the vacation was suppose to be relaxing and fun. The early afternoon time was also good because it gave me plenty of time to do some reading in the morning and drop by the library to pick up even more books before going to the appointment.
• It was really nice to schedule this when the kids didn’t have school so I could just sleep in as long as I wanted.
• It was fantastic having supper options made ahead of time. I basically didn’t have to spend any time on supper at all, just grabbed things from the freezer and heated them up.
• During the day I read in the purple chair in the sunroom. Jaeger got this chair off Craigslist when he first moved to San Francisco and it is the perfect reading chair. You can lean back and put your legs up on an ottoman or lounge sideways equally well. In one of our moves it lost a rear leg but we propped it up on a short plastic stool and it works fine.
• I ordered a winter tea sample pack from Friday Afternoon and started each reading session with a pot of tea. The whole setup was very cozy.

Lessons Learned

• I think having one of the genres being Science Fiction or Fantasy was a mistake, at least with the goal of only reading new authors. It was a little stressful to try to find a new author that I was fairly certain I would enjoy. Instead, it might have been nice to set aside the last day of the reading vacation for a re-read of something comforting.
• I tried to do too many things on Saturday. In addition to reading a book, I also tried to play a long board game with the family and then go out to dinner with Jaeger. Next time I should probably try to do no more than one non-reading thing a day.
• Because I knew Saturday would be full, I stared Saturday’s book on Friday. That was necessary to finish the book by Saturday evening but I didn’t find it as satisfying.
• I was planning to do a little bit of exercise first thing in the morning, before reading, and then going on a short afternoon walk. I felt it would be good for my body to get at least some movement each day. I did well the first two days but less well once I hit the weekend. Though, I didn’t get any weird aches from sitting too long each day so maybe it turned out ok regardless.
• I do not know why but I kept wanting to snack. This was not something I had anticipated. Next time, I think I should spend a bit more time thinking about reasonable but fun snack options.
• I didn’t have a plan for what to do when I was done with my book of the day. I purposely picked relatively short books but that meant I was done reading them in 4-6 hours. Because I allowed myself such leisurely mornings this was a pretty good length to finish before supper. However, I usually read in the evening too and wasn’t sure if I should start a new book or do something else.

Other Ideas

• One of my initial thoughts was to also watch TV/Movie book adaptations. I was thinking things like Jane Austen movies, Agatha Christie episodes, maybe some Shakespeare adaptations. However, we don’t have a great setup for that right now. We have one TV in the living room, which I didn’t feel like monopolizing, and I find it hard to lounge when watching on an iPad or computer. I still like the idea but don’t really know how to make it work.

Ideas for Next Time
Overall, this was an ideal vacation for me and something I would like to repeat. I really liked the one-genre-a-day format. However, some other things I might consider for the future (or not):

• Book with movie pairings
• Books I keep meaning to read but haven’t — slightly worried this might make it less fun but maybe not
• One long book
• Reading books around a theme, perhaps in different genres.
• Potentially schedule around an author event
• Just read books I’ve read before
• Just read classics

This year I read 97 books which is slightly more than last year. My reading still ended up on the fluffy end of things. However, I did manage to read most of the Hugo nominees this year and I even have a head start on books to nominate for next year.

I continue to read a mix of physical, ebook, and audiobooks. However, I read fewer ebooks this year than last. Last year, I thought that I wasn’t able to find physical books I wanted to read because of the library’s smaller size, relative to the other systems I’ve borrowed from. However, they might have been buying less than usual due to pandemic reasons. I’ve had a lot more success in 2022 requesting books I want to read from the library. I’ve also been more proactive about requesting they buy specific books I want to read and the library has, for the most part, bought the books I request¹. I have also been spending a lot of money at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Enough, apparently, that when I went to pick up one of my recent purchases and told the staff member my name she said, “Oh, you’re the one that orders a lot of books.².”

This year, only 32% of the books I read were in audio format. I’ve slowly started listening to podcasts again, including Marketplace, which is taking up some of my potential audiobook time.

I read a lot of books and most of them were good. However, these were my favorites:

• Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
• Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
• The Hidden Legacy books by Ilona Andrews
• The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
• The Penric and Desdemona Books, by Lois McMaster Bujold – I was a little behind but caught up this year.
• The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir – This one I feel pretty conflicted about. I disliked some of the off-hand references to women, or lack thereof, but I found the actual story to be delightful.
• Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
• The Original by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal with Julia Whelan (Narrator)
• Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson
• Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse
• The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
• The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

Next year I’m not going to aim for more than 97 books. However, I think I’m going to try a reading goal, though I haven’t decided on the specifics yet. Whatever I decide, I’ll probably look for a relatively short goal of 5-10 books. I want something that can gently push me to try new books without stalling my reading.

Overall, I read 94 books this year.

I started this year with a goal of finally finishing a Sirens Reading Challenge but I didn’t finish. I was doing reasonably well till late spring and then I was getting bogged down and not reading because I wasn’t in the mood to read the books in my TBR pile. So, I threw any sort of reading goal out for the rest of the year and just read books. I didn’t even attempt to read the Hugo Award nominations¹ or purposely read Hugo-eligible works for next year. However, that’s ok. I needed fluffier books and I appreciate that these books existed when I needed them.

Probably one of the biggest shifts, both this year and last compared to previous years, is the number of ebooks I’ve read. If you give me an ideal reading environment, I still prefer physical books. However, I found it easier to browse for new books via Overdrive instead of first finding books that sounded interesting and then hoping that the library had it. My current public library is the smallest of my adult life² and so the selection is smaller than I’m use to. Mind you, if I run across a book that sounds particularly interesting that the library doesn’t own, I do request the library buy it and, so far, they have approved every purchase request I have submitted. They’re a good library. It’s just obvious they have finite resources and need to prioritize books they know will check out.

This was a pretty good audio book year for me. 41% of the books I read were in audio format. This is the first year that I’ve been driving with Julian daily, during which we listen to audiobooks, and it looks like that increased my audio reading a little bit. Though, probably the biggest change is that Jaeger and I swapped evening duties back in 2020. I now do the dishes, while he puts Julian to bed, which allows quite a bit more listening time than in the past. I’ve also reduced the number of podcasts I listen to. I use to be a faithful Marketplace listener but I’ve had less energy recently to deal with the news³.

Favorites Books read in 2021:

• The Kate Daniels Series by Ilona Andrews – I haven’t finished this series yet. So far, I’ve read novels 1-9.
• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman – After I read this book, I felt like everything would be ok after all.
• The Last Watch by J. S. Dewes
• Brilliant by Marne Davis Kellogg – I have no idea why but I find this book weirdly calming and bought the audio version for my night time listing.
• Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher – I love Kingfisher and own this book as a physical book, an ebook, and an audio book.
• Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher – I own both the physical and ebook versions of this book, the audio version isn’t available yet.
• Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
• Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia

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Books from the Sirens Reading Challenge:

• Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee
• We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
• Lumberjanes: Beware the Kitten Holy by Brooke A Allen, Grace Ellis, Noelle Steveson, and Shannon Watters
• Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi
• Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper
• The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison – I’ve owned this book for years and finally the reading challenge made me start it. It’s a very good book but since it features a pandemic, I think it was more surreal to read now than when it first came out.
• The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley
• Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
• Whipping Girl by Julia Serano — this one I did not finish before we moved. However, the sections I read gave me a lot to think about.
• A Feast of Sorrows by Angela Slatter
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

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In a completely different vein, I’ve also been thumbing through a lot of interior design/home books to get ideas for our house. I didn’t include all of these in my reading count because I didn’t read some of them cover to cover. However, my favorite house-related books were:

• House Lessons by Erica Bauermeister (really more a memoir)
• Jungalow: Decorate Wild: The Life and Style Guide by Justina Blakeney — I am so happy design books aren’t just full of gray these days. I was getting so tired of the colorless look. This probably verges on too colorful for my own home but it was still very refreshing to see.
• Elle decor : the height of style : inspiring ideas from the world’s chicest rooms by Michael Boodro and Infrid Abramovitch
• Elements of Family Style by Erin Gates
• The Interior Design Handbook by Frida Ramstedt
• Sarah Style by Sarah Richardson
• Cozy Minimalist Home by Myquillyn Smith

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I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to try any reading challenges this year. For now, I’ll just take it one day at a time.

Our family owns a bit over 2000 books. The majority of these are physical books. However, my digital editions are increasing rapidly¹.

Many years ago . . .
My first memory of reading a digital book was when I was in high school². My father had bought several educational CD-ROMs. One of these CD-ROMs contained a bunch of public domain books, probably related to Project Gutenberg, but I can’t remember for sure. This was how I discovered the Sherlock Holmes stories which I read on one of those old CRT monitors. However, while I enjoyed the novelty, it was a lot more comfortable to read physical books.

Toward the end of college I got a Handspring Visor. I read some Baen ebooks on it but that was mostly it.

When I started at High Plains Library District, at that time Weld Library District, I remember opening a drawer at the reference desk and finding two very clunky ereaders that had a selection of books loaded on them. I can’t remember what brand they were but I remember they had enormous wall wart adapters. I don’t remember anyone asking to check them out.

In 2006 I got my first iPod which was when I first started listening to downloadable audiobooks. At the time, it took me around 45 minutes to get to work so I had a lot of time to listen to audiobooks. Downloadable audiobooks were easier to use than CDs and didn’t involve trying to change CDs while driving down the freeway. All my audiobooks came frome the library. As such, there was no organization problem since the books disappeared when I was done listening to them.

Our family got our first Kindle at the end of 2011. Jaeger was the one that wanted it but the library subsidized it because they wanted staff to be more familiar with these new-fangled devices³. After about a year we realized that organizing books on the Kindle was a problem, particularly if you were reading books within a series. I researched how other people were dealing with the problem and came up with a file naming scheme to try to eliminate at least some of the problem. At a high level, it boiled down to renaming each book title to be series name, series number, a dash, and finally the title.

Once I started buying audiobooks, I stored them in iTunes on Anna, my old kitchen computer. I used Calibre for my ebooks. However, Anna is quite old and running out of space⁴. I also no longer listen to my audiobooks on an iPod that requires being synced to a physical computer.

Current Organization
In modern times, I haven’t fully embraced ebooks⁵ but still own around 240. I also own around 150 audiobooks, many of them duplicates of the ebooks since, as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes that’s a cheaper way to buy them.

Last year I finally decided to store my “digital library” on Google Drive. I already used Google Drive and knew it worked with all my devices. Once I had the basic concept sketched out, I upgraded from the free 15 GB to 200 GB⁶ and started my migration in earnest.

Google Drive’s search is fantastic. However, I still wanted to be able to browse my books so I created a hierarchical folder structure. At the base is my Digital Library folder. Next are folders for Fiction, Information, Music, Personal (mainly photos and small videos), Picture Books, Recipes, Temp, and Video. Within the fiction folder are folders for each author. Within the information folder I’ve roughly organized by subjects (such as biography cooking, travel, etc).

In both the fiction and information folders I have a folder for each book title and then, if they exist, a folder for M4B, MP3, and eBook. It’s probably a little over the top to have so many sub folders but it helps keep related files together, particularly in the case of MP3 when there’s often many files.

Preparing Books for Uploading
For eBooks, I open them up in Calbrie. If needed, I convert the book to both MOBI and EPUB. I probably don’t need the MOBI format anymore but at this point it’s habit. Once converted, I upload the MOBI, EPUB, and original eBook file to Google Drive.

It currently isn’t convenient to use Anna so I now use Myfanwy, my Linux laptop, for audiobooks. It took me a while but I finally discovered OpenAudible which works great with my Audible and non-Audible audiobooks. The books I get from Libro.fm are divided into multiple MP3 files (one per chapter, I think) which I find annoying. I use OpenAudible to convert them to a single file and then often also convert them to M4B. Once all the conversations are done I upload the MP3 and M4B versions to Google Drive.

Using the Digital Library
During the day, I read/listen to my digital books on either my iPhone or iPad. Because of this, I usually use the original vendor app to read/listen (i.e. Audible, Kindle, Libro.fm, Downpour, etc). However, some of my content I didn’t get from one of the main vendors. In those cases, on the iOS devices, I usually read in iBooks and listen using Bound because it has direct integration with Google Drive.

At night, I listen to audiobooks to help me fall asleep and go back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night. I only listen to a subsection of my audiobooks that are interesting but I already know what will happen next so I don’t stay awake to find out. Unfortunately, I need an audiobook app that has a sticky sleep timer. That is, if the sleep timer stops a book but I start it again with my earbud, the sleep timer automatically restarts and will once again turn off the book at the 20 min mark. As far as I can tell, there are no iOS apps that will do this. I have spent countless hours looking. As a result, I use the Smart Audiobook Player app on my old Android phone at night. There’s certainly a better way to transfer the audiobooks onto my Android device. However, for now I download them to Myfanwy and then from there transfer to my phone’s SD Card⁷.

There are many ways to organize books. Each house I live in I organize them slightly differently. However, usually there’s at least one “featured” shelf, a general fiction shelf, a non-fiction shelf, and a kid’s shelf. This time we have a built-in bookcase in the living room which I put all our Hugo award nominees and winners (as well as the “not-a-Hugo” awards given out in the same ceremony)¹.

Also in the living room are our three very cheap bookshelves which have survived being moved five times so far. You can see the shelves are starting to bend and we daren’t put our computer science books on it anymore. I have kid books on the bottom three shelves, so Julian can reach them, and some of our adult non-fiction (mainly travel and history) on the top two shelves.

In our entry way we have most of our fiction books. I don’t want to buy more bookcases until we find a permanent house and I know what will fit. However, space is getting really tight so I’m having to get creative with how I can fit all the books while also allowing (some) room for growth. That’s while some of the series are stacked vertically. I’ve also started interfiling the few DVDs we have, mainly because I don’t have a better place to put them.

In our Wallingford house I had a bookshelf in Julian’s room that contained his favorite books. The downstairs “playroom” had a lot of built-in shelves that I used for overflow picture books, juvenile books, YA, and travel. Without those built-ins, I don’t have enough space for all of Julian’s books in the house. I have one large shelf in his room that contains the read-aloud chapter books he likes, old board books he still enjoys looking at, easy readers, library books, and about half of his picture books.

The house we’re renting comes with a detached garage that has a second unfinished level. I thought it’d make a good play area so I set up our smaller tent with a rug, blankets, pillows, and a bin with the other half of Julian’s picture books. Julian enjoys reading in the tent, it makes things feel more adventurous.

(In case you’re wondering why the rain fly is on the tent, it’s to protect the books and blankets. The garage has bats and isn’t 100% weather-proof.)

Most of our technical non-fiction books are in our bedroom in Jaeger’s sturdy double oak bookshelf. Calvin has some books in his room but not a lot. He’s currently more an audiobook listener than a physical book reader. I have a couple of shelves of cookbooks in the kitchen and then various other books scattered around the house.