“Once books become available and people have the ability as well as their right to distinguish among ideas, to develop sympathies for and antipathies toward ideas, cultures, histories … and just simply have a community of readers like them or a community of readers who don’t share their opinions. … Now, that is true empowerment.
That’s truly enabling a citizenry.”

— Toni Morrison in an interview: “The Power of Public Libraries”

In my daily life, I am perhaps too eager to share my product recommendations: my Italian restaurant, backpack, non-alcoholic beer, hot tea or running shoes. Nevertheless, I have avoided any such product promotion over my first 184 columns for Kansas Reflector — although my writings did start as a weekly digest of podcasts. 

On the theme of audio, today I recommend to you Libby, an app that for many Kansans brings their public libraries’ books and audiobooks to their phones. Since September when I installed Libby on my phone, I have blazed through audiobooks at a pace that would have cost me a small fortune if I purchased each title.

All that was required? My public library card.

Using Libby, my Johnson County Library card allows me to access 53,000 books and 32,000 audiobooks. While some popular titles might be checked out, most of those are listed as being available now. The app pairs with my Kindle reader, or I can read directly through my iPhone.

For many Kansans with library cards, Libby accesses books held by the Sunflower eLibrary, a consortium of 177 public libraries. Readers can directly log in to that website and snag what they need.

However, as a way to electronically enjoy a library’s holdings, Libby is the better way — by far.

Even the Sunflower eLibrary’s homepage acknowledges that you are better off using Libby to access available titles. A banner extends across the page: “Try Libby, our new app for enjoying ebooks and audiobooks!”

In addition to the virtue of being free, Libby has a smart interface. After logging in, you can filter for books that are “currently available” as you search. You can also tag books however you like, so that you can return to a promising title later and create customized lists.

For audiobooks in particular, anywhere you play music — in your car, in your earbuds, through your laptop — you can listen to audiobooks easily with Libby. That simplicity has pushed me to finish at least 12 audiobooks during the past six months on the platform.

The most surprising thing about my reading list since using Libby is how much more diverse it is than my previous listening. My family has groaned about my recent obsession with shipwreck books. From our landlocked state, I have bored them with antiquated tales of scurvy, icebergs and mutinies on the high seas. Over and over, my listening (and dinner table chatter) was shipwrecks and sea voyages.

Sorry, kids.

Perhaps that narrow listening habit wasn’t about me but the algorithm on Audible, the Amazon app I was using before Libby. I found it difficult to climb out of the shipwreck whirlpool.

With Libby, I have tackled longer titles, returned to long-lost favorite authors and … well, yes, there was one shipwreck book.

Here are three recommendations, both because of their connections to current events and because of the quality of each audiobook’s narration. (I’m not including links through Libby, since your library card’s access will likely differ from mine.)

“The Topeka School”: Although it was released in 2019, this book by Kansas native son Ben Lerner interrogates today. Specifically, it asks questions about middle-age men from the Heartland and how our teenage years — in Lerner’s writing, a boozy, trippy stew of gangster rap, rampant competition and charged family life — led to our precarious lives as flawed modern guys. At once poetic and dramatic, no other book I have read in the past five years has resurfaced as often in my daily thoughts.

“Clear and Present Danger”: I downloaded this as pure pulp: 30 hours of cinematic Tom Clancy and guerrilla warfare. What blindsided me was how contemporary the book reads. See if this political question seems familiar: Should a U.S. president stage a covert operation in South America to disrupt “bad actors” without consulting Congress and instead relying on executive prerogative? Clancy’s moral and political questions, echoing behind the firefights, remain relevant with President Donald Trump’s recent, adventurous and vindictive foreign policy.

“Harlem Shuffle” and “Crook Manifesto”: Two escapes from Kansas in both time and place, Colson Whitehead’s New York City tales of crime, race and revenge feature Dion Graham as narrator. His voice conjures Harlem bass notes, a jazz riff blended with Whitehead’s brilliant writing. Hearing the books surpasses reading them, in this case. Brace for the third volume in the series this year.

There’s a clever solution for watching library video content online as well. The same company that provides Libby offers Kanopy, a streaming video platform. The selection is proudly fringe and erudite, leaning toward independent cinema and documentaries. Call it an antidote to the same old Netflix drool.

In fact, I am able to stream a fantastic documentary, “War Photographer,” in my classroom at the University of Kansas. Showing the harrowing work of James Nachtwey by perching a miniature video camera on his film camera, the film shows how Nachtwey works and survives.

It’s a film that I literally couldn’t stream anywhere else, regardless of how much I was willing to pay. On Kanopy, it’s free.

The physical library still provides a charming and vibrant community that can’t be replaced by an app. This week, our family has been in and out of the local libraries — going to tutoring, teaching a class and providing tours of the photography collection. Online files can’t replace in-person community.

What these apps can do is provide a seawall against social media and thoughtless chatty podcasts that don’t deliver much. Libby and Kanopy are a substitute for YouTube’s algorithmic auto-play and Instagram’s endless spammy ads. 

My ears are hungry, and this is the best meal they’ve ever had.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate.