Great Reads for Your Ears!

If you like to listen to your books, here's an incredible FREE opportunity over the summer. Audiofile magazine, which reviews and promotes all kinds of audiobooks, is sponsoring free downloads of some very awesome Young Adult and classic books, two a week, during July and August. You can go to the Sync page for more information, and to download when the time comes.

Here's what you can hear for FREE from the Sync giveway. The links go to reviews on the Audiofile magazine website.

Available July 1 - July 7
The Angel Experiment by James Patterson
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Available July 8 - July 14
Over the End Line by Alfred C. Martino
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

Available July 15 - July 21
Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Available July 22 - July 28
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Available July 29 - August 4
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Available August 5 - August 11
Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Available August 12 - August 18
Coming Soon...

Available August 19 - August 25
Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Available August 26 - September 1
Handbook for Boys by Walter Dean Myers
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

The downloads are managed by Overdrive, a company that manages audiobook borrowing for many public libraries, including our local DeKalb County Public Library system. The thing that makes Overdrive interesting to me is that they swear their audiobook loans will work on Apple players (iPods & iTouch -- there may be some conversion download program to download, though). Sync says their giveaways are definitely all Apple friendly -- they're a Mac-based office! I'll be testing the downloads from the DeKalb Library on my MacBook and iTouch and will report back before the Sync giveaway.

UPDATE: I've been playing around with "borrowing" audiobook downloads from the DeKalb Library. Many of them are "iPod compatible" -- this means they can be downloaded on a Windows computer and transferred to iPod (these are called WMA audiobooks). If you have a Mac computer, you have to look for audiobooks in mp3 format ONLY. The folks at Sync are making sure that the titles they're offering for free this summer are mp3s, so mark your calendar and start listening!