"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” – Charles Dickens

Hello again, dear readers. For good or ill, the holidays are always an interesting time of year. Whether you look to the coming season with unbridled enthusiasm, unmitigated dread or anything in between, one thing remains constant: It’s a great time to listen to some audiobooks. If you’re already an audiobook adept or just getting into them for the first time, these tips and tricks will help you listen to some great books even during the busiest of times.

Planes, trains and automobiles

One of the things I like most about audiobooks in the Libby app is that they give me time to experience books even when I’m rushing around doing other things. To make it easier to listen to your loans no matter where you are, Libby automatically downloads any titles you borrow for offline listening when your device has a WiFi connection. For additional customization, you can also change your download rules or manually download any of your loans.

Once a title is downloaded, you can listen to it in Libby even if your device is offline or in airplane mode. Using libbyapp.com in your browser is an exception to this; an internet connection is always required to use libbyapp.com.

When listening in your car, Libby works with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. You can also listen through your car speakers via Bluetooth, USB, auxiliary cable, those things that plug into your tape deck or any other means of playing audio from your mobile device.

No place like home

Few things are as relaxing as lounging at home with a good audiobook. You can connect your mobile device to a speaker and listen to audiobooks in Libby as you would any other audio.

You can also listen to audiobooks with Libby on Sonos, Google Home and Amazon Echo.

More great reads, less getting lost

When you listen to audiobooks in Libby, there are several handy options for navigating a title.

The largest buttons are the ones I use the most. Next to the play/pause button are buttons to skip forwards or backwards 15 seconds. I use this all the time for moving around within a small section of a book.

You can also skip forward or backward by tapping the book's cover image and dragging your finger to the right or left. The further you drag, the larger the skip.

To go to a specific spot in the title, you can slide the timeline at the bottom of the screen.

To navigate a title on a larger scale, you can jump to specific chapters. You can tap the chapter name to view the table of contents; from there you can tap a chapter to jump to that location. You can also tap the numbers to the right or left of the chapter name to skip to the next chapter or the beginning of a chapter, respectively.

If you tend to move around to different spots in a book, jumping to a recent place can be incredibly useful. By tapping the button in the bottom left corner, you can return to your most recent location. The button in the bottom right corner will pop up a list of your recent places that you can tap to jump to.

Making some notes, checking them twice, doesn’t have to be on the same device…

Did you know you can add bookmarks, notes and highlights to an audiobook? Bookmarks and highlights make it easy to identify important sections you want to return to later. The main difference between a bookmark and a highlight is a bookmark calls out a single spot in the book (e.g., Part 1 - Chapter 2, at 15:00) while a highlight covers a span of time (e.g., Part 1 – Chapter 2, from 15:00 to 16:30). The functionality is very similar, so I’d recommend using whichever makes the most sense to you.

You can add a bookmark by tapping the bookmark icon at the top of the audiobook player, or tap and hold the bookmark icon to add a highlight (release the button to finish highlighting). Tap a bookmark or highlight to jump to that location. After tapping a bookmark or highlight, you can optionally tap the bookmark icon again to add a note to the bookmark or highlight or delete it.

Your bookmarks, notes, highlights and reading progress will sync between devices where you use Libby. If you return an audiobook and check it out again later, your bookmarks, notes and highlights will be preserved.

That’s a wrap

Libby offers a lot of great tools to help you personalize your audiobook listening. I hope this has given you the inspiration to try out some of Libby’s features you may not have used before, and that your winter season is filled with the spirit of reading.