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Booktrack adds a soundtrack to your reading

Through the program, authors and readers make a playlist of music and sound effects for a novel.

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Polk Audio/PR Newswire
Booktrack syncs up audio to an e-book.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Would you want to hear a horse’s neigh at the precise point it occurs in your novel or listen to the same song an author turned on when he or she was writing a particular passage?

Booktrack lets readers or authors create a playlist of sound effects or songs to accompany e-books. Those making a playlist can choose from 30,000 songs and noises.

“Reading really hasn't changed since it started,” Booktrack vice-president Jason Hovey told CBS. “We bring music to something that needs a reinvention.”

Music and sound effects stay in sync on Booktrack through a cursor that keeps the audio on track with a reader’s pace.

So far soundtracks for titles such as Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventures of the Speckled Band,” and Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” have been posted on the Booktrack site.

According to CBS, Booktrack will be releasing a program for schools in March.

However, not everyone feels that reading needs bells and whistles attached.

"How much farther away can you get from the quiet act of reading a book to yourself than having a soundtrack provided to you?" Kevin Ryan, owner of San Francisco's Green Apple Books, asked CBS.

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