Comments on: Ebooks and the coronavirus—and a related free classic by Mary Shelley https://teleread.org/2020/03/13/ebooks-and-the-coronavirus-and-a-related-free-classic-by-mary-shelley/ Blog on ebooks, publishing, libraries, tech, and related topics Sun, 15 Mar 2020 01:36:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: David Rothman https://teleread.org/2020/03/13/ebooks-and-the-coronavirus-and-a-related-free-classic-by-mary-shelley/#comment-125069 Sat, 14 Mar 2020 14:54:38 +0000 http://teleread.org/?p=168087#comment-125069 In reply to Michael W. Perry, medical writer.

Great suggestions, Michael. Thank you. David

Like

]]> By: Michael W. Perry, medical writer https://teleread.org/2020/03/13/ebooks-and-the-coronavirus-and-a-related-free-classic-by-mary-shelley/#comment-125068 Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:52:51 +0000 http://teleread.org/?p=168087#comment-125068 I might share what I learned when I had a few days of sciatica, probably due to a skiing accident. It proved so painful, even reading was an ordeal, so I listened to audiobooks. In that case, I used the now-discontinued text-to-speech feature on my Kindle 3, but the same applies to actual audiobooks.

If your need to stay home extends to several days, buying audiobooks could get get pricey. I joined and then quit Audible because I considered their prices too high. That said, if you are sick and need entertaining, you might look for a free one month’s membership in Audible.

If you need to be budget conscious, there are a couple of sources of free, public domain audiobooks. The source of most are the volunteer-produced books at LibriVox.

https://librivox.org

But the organization of their audiobooks comes up a bit lacking. For finding a good read without knowing a specific author or title, you might check out Loyal Books, which repackages Librivox books.

http://www.loyalbooks.com

Also, some of the material on YouTube is worth listening to even if you’re not up to watching. On my Mac I use and app called Downie 4 that does a marvelous job of downloading video or audio-only material from Youtube. And on my iPhone I use an app called Overcast to listen to that audio. It has a marvelous feature that makes listening better by leveling the sound, eliminating silent spaces, and allowing me to set the precise playback speed I want. A lot of audiobooks become more interesting played at 1.25 X.

Whatever approach you take, don’t be afraid to look for ways to find that forced confinement less boring.

Like

]]>