A few days ago , a conversation got going about various means of "reading" today... besides the classic paper book. I know there are some people who are attached to physical pages, and it's good that modern publishing is so efficient that there's almost not risk of paper books disappearing.
But let's look at some other options.
The first is "ebooks". These are files that are opened in devices called (surprisingly) "ereaders". These are usually very small files - a few hundred kB - so you can have hundreds with you at any time.
The best known ereader is undoubtedly the Kindle Paperwhite, from Amazon. (How many people remember that Amazon started as a bookseller?) The Kindle isn't too expensive, and is lightweight and easy to use. It charges fast, and a charge last weeks. It has WiFi, so you can load ebooks directly from the 'Net, as well as by USB cable from your computer. You can change size and format of fonts, how much backlighting you want, and so on. But! Amazon uses a particular file-format (AZW3) which is illegible on all other devices. If you buy a Kindle, you're pretty much locking yourself into the Amazon ecosystem. That said, Amazon has a immense library, so maybe it's not a big deal.
Roughly equivalent, technically, the Nook GlowLight Plus, from Barnes & Noble, uses a much more open format, EPUB... but sometimes with DRM - Digital Rights Management - which is just as big a pain as Amazon's proprietary format.
The advantage of having an EPUB library - mine is now 5614 books - is that they can be read on any ereader... except a Kindle. They can also be read quite comfortably on today's big-screen phones, which is my own option. There are lote of ereader apps, for both Android and iOS. They all manage a library, manage fonts, background color and brightness, yada yada... A Kindle has a 6-inch screen, so a phone that big does just fine... except in bright sunlight... Some ereader applications can read aloud... but the result is not as good as I'd like.
Listening to books is another option. My Dad had books for the 8-track in his car, seveenty years ago... The 300-lb gorilla, here is Audible, which belongs to... you guessed it: Amazon! Depending on how many you buy, they cost anywhere from ten to thirty bucks a pop.Not cheap. The quality is... variable... Some readers make a book come alive. And some kill it. The thing with expressive readers is that they impose their vision of the book. If the reader is good, the experience is good. OTOH, I have occasionally abandoned because the over-acting reader was unbearable.
My own solution is listening... to ebooks...
TextAloud is a text-to-speech program for Windows. I've used it for fifteen years. It's not very expensive ($30?), but it's not free. It works with voices from Windows (free) or from specialized companies (not free). You can find male and female, in just about any language you cabn think of. Speed, pitch and MP3 bit-rate (quality) are configurable. You can create a single sound file, but I prefer to break the book into five to ten minute blocks. This is not a human reader, so there are mistakes. I've gotten used to them, and in a way I prefer Microsoft Hazel to an Audible reader: Hazel is constant. She cannot overact. It's up to me to visualize the scene... kinda like one must do when... reading.
I've recently begun experimenting with another TTS application, called Balabolka. (It's Russian.) It appears to be a bit less sophisticated than TextAloud... but it's free!
That's not exhaustive... but I figure that if there are questions, I can answer them along the way...
I'm one that enjoys the old fashioned real paper books. I still have the first book that was given to me by my grandmother. Jack London's ''Call of the Wild''....
My wife has her kindle and loves it...
The listening option is great and I have used it when driving on a long trip.
Although in Chinese bookstores there are many English language books (English is taught in Chinese schools as the second language, having taken over from Russian many years ago), and the bookstores sell many English language classics, a limited number of more recent novels, and some English translations of Chinese classics, like the Ming Dynasty most popular Chinese classic with which virtually every Chinese person is familiar, Journey to the West - 2600 pages in the version I read and enjoyed. However, there are no bookstores in the newer developed area in which I live, because I assume most people have gone electronic.
Being somewhat starved for reading materials, a very good old friend of mine sent me a KOBO ereader loaded with 244 books of every kind, mostly recently written, fiction and non-fiction, biographies, and especially since I asked for them, all of the John Grisham novels available at the time. Even though he sent it a few years ago, just before his unfortunate death from lung cancer, I'm still reading the books for the first time (can we still call them books if they're on an ereader?) posted on it. Perhaps I spend too much time on the computer and not enough reading books. On longer trips on the subway or in a car the time goes by so much faster when reading the books on my ereader.
It is also possible to read novels on the computer. DailyLIt is an example, Project Gutenberg is another. It is even possible to listen to books being read. This is an example of Pride and Prejudice being read aloud, while the text is shown on the screen.
I use this as a teaching method for Chinese students to practise their English pronunciation - read and listen to a phrase or sentence, click the mouse to stop the reading, and repeat the words heard by the student, then click the mouse again to continue.
Check out LibreVox .
Requires access to archive.org, which is not available here.
I think I grew up not being concerned about wasting paper. Canada has such a surplus of trees that are used to produce paper that there was never any concern about it. Recycling did not start until much later. However, in China, my very first experience, having landed in Beijing and having to use the washroom in the airport, I did not determine until it was too late that there was no tissue dispenser in the cubicle and had to use and throw out a perfectly good handkerchief. There are restaurants here that do not provide serviettes, and you actually have to purchase a packet containing a 'wet one' and a few tissues. Those examples are not universal - many washrooms have just inside the entrance a dispenser for a very large toilet paper roll to take what you need before entering the cubicle, and most restaurants do provide tissues at the table, or free if you ask for one.
I'm not really trying to save paper, but real books, even paperbacks, feel cumbersome, now.
Since Barnes and Noble shuttered their brick and mortar stores, can one still buy books on-line?
And I do remember when Amazon sold books, paper books. Amazon is why I was considering a second job (spent a lot of money on books)
There are still a lot of B&N stores. That's an advantage for Nook readers: the stores handle SAV.
Scribd blows Audible away. Audible charges 10 dollars a month for one or two audiobooks and that is your limit.
Scrib charges 8.99 per month and you have unlimited access to their library of audiobooks. You also have unlimited access to their e-books library, and a very large collection of PDF's. You also get access to a selection of national magazines.(You are viewing or listening to these materials so you do not own them and cannot download them, but there is no time limit on how long you have to read them and can create your own virtual library on the site. )
Perhaps their catalogue is smaller than Audible's , I don't know, but they do have books and audiobooks on virtually any subject you could want. Michelle Obama's book was available on Scribd as soon as it came out , as was Bob Woodward's book about Trump, "Fear."
If you don't want to pay 8.99 a month, you can get access to e books and audiobooks through most large municipal or county libraries. The selection will likely not be as great as the pay sites and you may have to wait for various titles, but it will be free.
Here is a free text to speech converter
You can save the finished product as an mp3 to listen to later on a device. It has multiple voices that are pretty good. The only drawback is that any one file is limited to 50,000 characters, or about 50 minutes of speaking time.
Here is an example of the quality of the FromTextToSpeech site
The problem, John, is converting an entire book. If the result is a single file, the risk of losing one's place is roughly 100%. The splitting function is really essential.
There's lots of free material, both ebooks and audiobooks, at LibriVox .
My problem is that, usually, I know what books I want... I go get it, as an ebook... and only then need the TTS.
ok
with text to speech you can convert anything that is in print on your computer to voice. It certainly doesnt have to be just a book.
And Scribd is far more preferable than Audible, unless you like wasting money or must have the book downloaded to your own files.
I can choose an audiobook and listen to only one chapter of it if I so choose and havent lost or wasted a dime. It is probably the best 9 dollars I spend every month.
I agree that Audible is too expensive. Hey! It's Amazon...
There are lots of means for "reading" small bits of text. For that, an app like TextAloud is probably overkill.
But for an entire book, it's nice to be able to adjust the voice's speed and pitch, and to split the MP3s into manageable blocks.