I tried XML::RSS too found it to be over kill for what I wanted so I tried XML::RSS::Parser::Lite and was happy with it until I hit "CDATA" as many other monks have pointed out RSS feeds are not always "well formed" so I just ended up doing something like this ...

...
use WWW::Mechanize;
my $url = shift; # any .xml RSS feed url

my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
$mech->get( $url );
my @content = split /\n/, $mech->content;
my $title_pattern = "<title>(.*?)</title>";
my $description_pattern = "<description>(.*?)</description>";
my @titletags = grep s/$title_pattern/$1/i, @content;
my @descriptiontags = grep s/$description_pattern/$1/i, @content;

my $thetitle=$titletags[0];
if ( $thetitle !~ s/<\!\[CDATA\[//g ) {}
if ( $thetitle !~ s/Librivox\://g ) {}
if ( $thetitle !~ s/]]>//g ) {}
print "$thetitle\n";

my $thedescription=$descriptiontags[0];
if ($thedescription !~ s/<\!\[CDATA\[//g ) {}
if ($thedescription !~ s/]]>//g ) {}
print "$thedescription\n";
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Not the best general solution but it worked for me in my particular case.