Ok, so recently I’ve wanted to start reading again – well, decided to try to get back into some fiction.  Most of the things that I have read in the past 5 – 10 years have been all non-fiction or text books.  Since I don’t have much time to read I decided to start listening to audiobooks.

This has also helped because I now have in car entertainment and was able to cancel my xm subscription.  I love listening to music, but when I’m driving I prefer to listen to talk.  Talk is dynamic and changes frequently.  Your favorite song, as great as it may be will never change.

Since there aren’t many talk shows worth listening to on FM and I get a horrible AM signal, audiobooks have been a great substitute….. until recently.

See, the ipod doesn’t like audiobooks that are over 12 hours long.  I recently accidentally lost my place in a book that I was listening to at almost 15 hours in!

So I looked around on the internets and found a solution that seemed much better then holding down the fast forward button (that would kill my thumb).  Essentially the solution is to hit the center button once you have selected your audiobook.  This will change the time scroll bar at the bottom to show a diamond.  Once this happens you can use the circle pad to scroll forward rather quickly, right?  Well, almost.

It seems that if you fast forward to anything after 12 hours, the ipod seems to think that you want to start this book all over again and switch to a different book.  Not only that, but it confuses the hell outta my lil nano because when I go back to select the original book I was listening to it can’t seem to get the right book (sometimes the right artwork though… weird).

So currently I have had to fast forward my ipod using the method described all of the way up to just under 12 hours and then hold the fast forward button to get to where I was…. sounds good right?  Wrong!

After about the 13th hour of holding down the fast forward button the ‘lil fella gets all confused again and starts over from the beginning.

My final solution:

• Restore the ipod to the original factory settings using itunes
• Remove all audiobooks, but the one that I’ve been listening to from the playlist that is set to sync
• Fast forward using the scrolling method to just under 12 hours
• Fast forward using the thumb hurting method to just under 13 hours
• Let it play and pray that I don’t let it run over the time that I left it at because I will more then likely have to start all over again.

If anyone else knows a better way, please for the love of god – let me know…. this has been driving me absolutely nuts!