http://www.picpocketbooks.com

I hate searching for things in the iTunes Store, but you can find it by searching for “EnhancedAudio” or for “Folium”. (That’s the app publisher.)

I’m glad I decided to reacquaint myself with Mr. Twain because this is an unusually excellent recording. The narrator does the accents just perfectly, and it doesn’t feel as though he’s reading so much as sitting on the back porch spinning a yarn. And the audio quality is better than most companies put out, I think.

What’s unusual about the app portion is that (for an audiobook, of all things) it’s ridiculously marvelous. The main player functions include one of my favorite buttons from my TIVO box: the skip button! There is both a back and a forward skip, so whenever I get distracted for a few seconds, I can just tap the back skip and it hops back about 5 seconds. Perfect touch.

The audio portion is from Blackstone Audio (big audiobook publisher) and apparently is the same as what they sell on Audible. I looked it up there and it was $15. On iTunes as an app it’s only $7, but it has all these extra bells and whistles, too. Plus the skip back button! I love it!

The chapter index is nicely done. For the first time in an audiobook app, they’ve got the entire chapter title visible for each and every chapter! If you’re like me, you hate seeing chapter names in apps like “The Bad Ones Fin…”.

They also put a sleep detector into the app. It has come in very handy a couple of times as I tend to listen in bed while doing crosswords at night.

And they’ve done something unique when they made what they call the Content section. There are background articles on Twain (some interesting material) and on the book (quite the ongoing controversy it seems). Quite a few photos. There is a section of quotes, and some multiple choice trivia games that I flunked. I’d love it if other books would also include more than just the audio track. I like having more to do with a book than just listen to it.

Which reminds me, there’s also something like a slideshow that plays while the audio plays. I think it’s showing illustrations from the original book. It’s a nice touch.

Things I don’t like: the interface is nice, but the content area doesn’t feel quite like the rest of the app. Compared to other book apps, this one is nicely designed, but they used a lot of bright green, which isn’t my favorite. And I wouldn’t complain if there was even more content in the Content section. I got to wondering if Google had a Huck Finn map, for instance, and ended up reading about the Mark Twain House and a Twain festival. I think they could really go all out and make the Content even more special. And I’d like to be able to browse related web content while I’m listening to the book, but maybe that’s too much to ask.

But they’ve got a skip back button, so maybe I’m happy enough.