Here’s a brilliant idea; NPR’s “All Things Considered” is beginning a series of audio reviews by truckers, called “Roadside Reviews.”

Truckers, who spend more time on the road than almost anyone, are also major consumers of audiobooks. The summer series will present truckers’ “recommendations of the best and worst books for listening.”

For the first in the series, Montana trucker Steve Brosnan recommends murder mysteries. He likes Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, with the exception of Break No Bones (he felt a description of the main character’s dinner was overlong; “I’m not interested in her key lime pie for dinner. That’s not why I got the book.”)

The online piece has a link to Overdrive. No, not THAT OverDrive. This one is a magazine and website for truckers. Brosnan was their “Trucker of the Month” in March.

I just heard, via a note on Recorded Books web site, that beloved audio book narrator Frank Muller died earlier this month at the age of 57. There was a memorial service this past weekend in North Carolina.

Recorded Books links to Frank’s Web site, which gives more information. The site also has a list of all of Frank’s recordings — a good source for a memorial display — and this great tribute from a fan:

(When Frank reads) the blind will
see, the lame will walk, and the deaf
will hear.” - Stephen King

The hot news of the day is Overdrive’s press release, “OverDrive to Distribute MP3 Audiobooks to Booksellers and Libraries.”

So, finally, libraries will be able to offer audio titles for download to iPods. But, booksellers (Borders stores, through the Digital Centers in the new concept stores and Borders Digital Audiobooks site) will be able to offer more titles to their customers than libraries will. Random House, for instance, is not part of the library program. This was made clear in the February 21st letter to agents about RH going DRM free:

We are not making any changes at all to our library digital download program. That marketplace operates under very different conditions than retail. In the library environment, DRM is used not just to prevent copying, but also to control the limited borrowing privileges attached to the digital library edition. To be clear: all titles distributed in download form from our Books on Tape and Listening Library lists through our two existing library distribution partners, OverDrive and NetLibrary, will continue to have DRM.

Overdrive names “Blackstone Audio, Books In Motion, CSA Word, and Audio Evolution, among others” as the publishers whose titles will be available for library lending. The Borders program begins in May and the library program sometime after that.

Library Journal covered the story earlier today.

I’m currently reading Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution, which explores how the five Academy Award nominees for 1967 reflected that pivotal time, how a couple of them changed movie making, while also giving great insider anecdotes along the way. I like it so much, I keep wanting to read passages aloud to someone (which makes strangers on the F train a bit nervous). So, I was happy to see the audio version get an enthusiastic review (”the kind of satisfying audio that makes listeners positively joyful to find themselves snarled in traffic”) in USA Today’s audio column.

Unfortunately, I can’t get it from my library. Like most libraries I checked, they have the book (with holds building), but not the audio.

• Audio CD: Unabridged, $79.99 (Tantor’s Web site shows a discounted price of $63.99 for buying direct from them. The price listed by USA Today is the retail price. The library edition is packaged in a library binder and provies lifetime free replacements. Tantor was recently covered in an LJ article).
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Library ed. edition (March 10, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1400136253
• ISBN-13: 978-1400136254

The reviewer also liked the audios of An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear (Macmillan Audio; unabridged, $39.95) which is owned widely, and Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me, which is not (perhaps because it’s abridged, but come on, this is not a sacred classic. And, aren’t you dying to hear Stephen Colbert read his entry?)

• Audio CD: $24.98, Abridged edition
• Publisher: Hachette Audio; (February 4, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1594838828
• ISBN-13: 978-1594838828

The reviewer is not a fan of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, David Shields, read by Don Leslie (Random House Audio; unabridged, 6 hours, 41 minutes; $29.95).

Can libraries look forward to offering downloadable audiobooks for iPods now that Random House will no longer encrypt their audios with digital rights management software? In a word, no.

In the Wall Street Journal on Monday [full article available only to WSJ subscribers], RH Audio publisher Madeline McIntosh explained why they’ve decided to abandon DRM, “If we insist on using DRM, our audiobooks can’t be sold to consumers who have iPods, unless they buy them from Audible or iTunes.”

The Journal article did not address the situation for libraries, but in a letter (posted on Corey Doctorow’s site, craphound.com) sent to agents on Thursday, RH Audio publisher McIntosh emphatically states (bold-faced items are in the original) that nothing will change in that area:

We are not making any changes at all to our library digital download program. That marketplace operates under very different conditions than retail. In the library environment, DRM is used not just to prevent copying, but also to control the limited borrowing privileges attached to the digital library edition. To be clear: all titles distributed in download form from our Books on Tape and Listening Library lists through our two existing library distribution partners, OverDrive and NetLibrary, will continue to have DRM.

Our friends over at Shelf Awareness report (under “Childrens Book News”) that Tim Ditlow, who just recently left Listening Library (founded by his father and purchased by Random House in 1999), is now joining Brilliance Audio (another family company, recently bought by Amazon}.