Anyone who knows me knows I listen to books these days since my time is at a premium and I just do have the luxury of curling up to read a good book. If I did, I'd probably fall asleep anyway.  But long work days and lots of traveling mean I can leverage my time and still get in some good reads. Listening to my books means I get a lot of "reading" done even with my hectic schedule. I put them on my iPhone and am never without some good listening. Toss in all the podcasts I subscribe to and there is never a dull moment.

I picked up a couple of audiobooks on CD from a yard sale recently and wanted to add them to my playlist. The cool thing about the iPhone is that it bookmarks my listening so I can stop and start and pick up where I left off. If I just add my CDs to my iTunes, they are added in just like any other mp3, don't have the bookmarking and when music is shuffled I sometimes am served a chapter from Janet Evanovich.

But, you can add your audiobook CDs to iTunes and have them converted to audiobook format with bookmarking ability and everything. Basically, the steps are :

Import your audio tunes into iTunes

"Get Info" on your files and change options Media Kind to Audiobook,also skip them from shuffling, Remember position.

Change any label info you want (hint: if you have several CDs make a notation in the label which CD it is. The CD number doesn't always come up and you may listen to them out of order. GASP!)

Essentially, this takes the files out of your playlist as an MP3 and plops them into your audiobooks folder (make sure you have that folder displayed via the edit/settings options). Go to the Audiobooks section, look for your book and make sure the files are in the right order.

Sync your iPhone or iPod. Viola! Get step by step directions and photos from CNET, like I did.

Happy reading!

PS - Some of the great books I've listened in the past year are:

• Outlander
• Voyager
• Dragonfly in Amber
• Drums of Autumn
• Stargirl
• Love, Stargirl
• Into Thin Air
• Showdown
• The Next Thing On My List
• Black Beauty
• Flowers for Algernon
• A Dirty Job
• The Ruby in the Smoke
• The Thirteenth Tale
• Ten Big Ones
• Dairy Queen
• The Off Season
• Stranded
• Watchers
• Twilight
• Relentless
• Tribes
• A Prisoner of Birth
• The Knack
• Rules of Thumb
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• The Snows of kilimanjaro
• Hard Eight
• The Discipline of Innovation
• What Makes An Executive
• Click
• Groundswell
• Tuned In
• The New Psycho-Cybernetics
• Three To Get Deadly
• The American Experience
• Telling Christina Goodbye
• The Art of Racing In The Rain
• Eat That Frog!
• The Art of Woo
• PIllars of the Earth
• World Without End
• Gift of Fear
• and more!