Fitness - Get Motivated and Get Moving!

"Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners." ~William Shakespeare

Lately it seems like every day that I work at the Readers' Services desk, a patron asks me about exercise DVDs. Could it be that I am more aware of these requests because of my own recent fitness efforts, or are there really more of us reaching out to exercise regularly and improve our health? That I don't know, but I do know that the library can be as great a resource for your fitness plans as it has been for mine.

Using the library as my source for fitness materials has given me the opportunity to create a truly personalized plan because I can try out different recipes and workout styles, without spending a fortune on stuff that doesn't work for me. What does work? For me, workouts that make me feel good afterward and recipes that are both healthy and yummy are great motivators. And they are right here, ready to check out. Having all of the library's knowledge and inspiration at my fingertips has gone a long way toward helping me to create measurable results.









Books on nutrition and wellness, along with cookbooks that emphasize healthy foods, can be found on the fourth floor (look under the call numbers 612, 613, and 641.5) And on the third floor, we have workout DVDs (look under DVD 613.7), fitness and health magazines, and even Playaways - small digital audiobooks - geared toward walking and yoga. The shelves here are chock full of information, strategies and aids that can motivate anyone, at any level of fitness, to get up and go for it!

Click here for a list of my top 10 favorites. If you are so inspired, give some of them a try. Or come and check out our collections and find some favorites of your own. What motivates you to move?

Listen While You...

...move.

Here at the library, there are a few ways to enjoy a good book even when you are on the move.

Choose an audiobook and your eyes and hands are free to move while someone else reads to you. Choose an ultra-portable audiobook format, like the 2 ounce Playaway or a downloadable audiobook, put onto your own MP3 player or iPod, and the rest of you is free to wander, too.

You can listen while you...

...walk.
Stroll through your neighborhood with a favorite title, or step it up with Leslie Sansone's Walk Away the Pounds.

...run.
A fast-paced thriller can speed you through the miles.



Smaller than a deck of cards, a Playaway digital audiobook is a great way to listen to a book when you're on the go. Each Playaway unit already has a specific title pre-loaded onto it. You can pause your listening, change narration speeds, move back and forth through the chapters, and bookmark where you left off. It runs on one AAA battery, so it doesn't need to be charged. To see how easy it is to operate, run your cursor over the buttons on the picture of the Playaway above.


You can listen while you...

...fly.
Travel in the company of a good book, without using up extra space in your carry-on. With French: The Complete Language Course, you can brush up on your francais on your flight to Paris.

...drive.
Turn your commute into an opportunity for a relaxing read. Playaways feature a universal headphone jack -- simply plug in your MP3 or iPod adapter to listen through your car's speakers.

Just enter "playaway" as a keyword to browse our selection of Playaway titles.

If you are one of more than twenty million Americans who own an iPod or MP3 player, you can enjoy an audiobook on the go by downloading it from our virtual library: My Media Mall. Browse the online catalog, download some software, then download the title you want, and transfer it to your media player. Get started with a guided tour or visit us at the library for one of our My Media Mall Open Lab sessions to answer any questions you have about downloadable audiobooks.

You can listen while you...

...garden.
Plant your perennial bulbs this fall to Nora Robert's Bed of Roses.

...clean.
I love a good audiobook while I do dishes and laundry. It helps turn chore time into leisure time!

Listening to a great book can be enjoyable, educational, even inspirational -- and here at the library it's free and fully portable...

So you can listen while you...

...play,

...or sit back and relax in your favorite spot!

Where would you like to listen?

Reading Without Looking

You may or may not have heard this one: "When is a door not a door? When it is ajar." Well, my question for you today is this: when is a book not a book? When it's an audiobook!

The true beauty of listening to a story as opposed to just reading it is two-fold: a richer experience and mobility. The sound of a human voice injects a sense of pathos into the whole book-reading situation that allows me to dig deeper into what is occurring in the book. When I hear a book being read by a professional, the passages come alive in the timbre of the reader's voice. I don't know about you, but each character has their own unique voice that I hear in my head when I'm reading what they are saying. What makes me enjoy a book-listening experience is when the reader's voice for a character matches the one that I would have picked out for it. This allows me to focus my imagination more on the entire scene, like I would listen to a radio show.

What got me started on audiobooks was the desire to read more in the same amount of time. I was able to double up on my reading as I read a regular book before I drifted off to sleep at night or was eating my lunch, and an audiobook while I was commuting in my car. Nowadays, with hours of sleep being few and far between while taking care of a 2 month-old child, audiobooks have become critical to my reading life as I don't read before going to bed anymore (I tend to crash at that point), but I do still have time to listen to books as I travel in my vehicle, whether it be on my way to work or out to run errands.

Audiobooks have even evolved into new formats from their original ones of cassette tapes and CDs. MP3's are audio data files that are much smaller than normal, allowing a lot of information to be stored in pretty small spaces. The library has a collection of devices named Playaways that are actually self-contained audiobooks that can fit in the palm of your hand. As a relatively new collection ,they are not currently able to be reserved, but are certainly available to be checked out for four weeks. The playaways are shelved together at the beginning of the audiobook section and are simply powered by a AAA battery, allowing you to listen to it while walking a dog or relaxing at the beach.

Another way of listening to books is by downloading them through mymediamall.net. Des Plaines Library card holders can download titles through this website via WMA files, that are able to be played on your computer, and MP3 files, that are able to be downloaded to MP3 players, including iPods. While there are not as many MP3 titles as WMA files, the number of MP3 files is steadily growing. Currently there are now over 700 MP3 titles to select from. For questions on how to download audiobooks to your computer through MyMediaMall, please visit this page on our website. If you'd like to talk to a live person about this, the phone number for Readers Services is towards the bottom of that page: we'd be happy to help you!

Now, an inherent danger in listening to audiobooks is that the reader and the listener won't sync together very easily, and if that happens, you can proceed in a similar manner to reading a book you don't care for (please see Cheryl's post on this blog from 5/14). There are a great multitude of books out there in many audio formats. Try one out today! Need a suggestion? Click here!