iTunes almost handles audiobooks

Since I started listening to some audiobooks on my iPod, I have been frustrated with how they are handled. (And it seems to be a common complaint, check the interweb.) If your audiobooks aren't in the iTunes recognized format (.m4b, I think) then they just appear as music files and don't show up under the Audiobook menu. That is, until iTunes 8. Last night, I discovered that the Get Info - Options screen for files now has an option for Media Kind. If you choose Audiobook there, the files now show up under the Audiobook menu and go away from the Music view. When viewing audiobooks, you can rate the entire book (which then puts the rating on each file.) This is nice, but can lead to other issues. I had to go back to my smart playlists for My 5 Stars, etc, and exclude files with the genre of Audiobook. I do have some issues with how the Audiobooks are being handled:

1. You can't sync the books individually. Once I chose to View Audiobooks, an Audiobooks option showed up under the Select Playlists view when my iPod was synced. If checked, then all the audiobooks load. If unchecked, none of them do. I would like to have it work like TV shows or Movies, where I can choose to only sync selected audiobooks. I just don't have enough space on my 16Gig Touch. I do have a work around for now. I already had my audiobooks in playlists. If I uncheck Audiobooks and then check the specific playlist, only that book loads. And it is still listed under the Audiobooks menu on the iPod.
2. When you listen to a file that you selected under the Audiobooks menu, it doesn't show which specific file is playing. Not the end of the world, but...
3. The iPod seems to have a mind of its own when labeling files. At least a little bit. I am quite picky and I like to have my audiobooks set up with one file per chapter, named after the chapter. None seem to come like this, so I have spent plenty of time editing mp3 files to get them saved like I like them. I just don't understand why they come in so many different formats, each named something cryptic like 01-Part 1. When I stop listening to an audiobook, I am much more likely to remember that I am in Chapter 4 than that I am in 01-Part12. This could be because I am not used to listening in the "real" audiobook format that remembers where you are. Anyway. I discovered that if the file has a track number, then the iPod shows that file as Part 1 of 28 instead of the chapter name. If I remove the track number, then it shows up as the chapter name. Not a big deal to work around, but a little weird. Still, I like having it by chapter name. I tend to relisten to my favorite chapters over and over, instead of relistening to an entire book.

All in all, this seems to be a step in the right direction.