Ways to Read More Books
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Ways to Read More Books
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Re: Ways to Read More Books
#2How to read more books: Speed listen to your books with adobe reader 9.5 plugin called texthelp PDFaloud 3.0 and high quality SAPI5 voices from acapela infovox, nuance realspeak, or neospeech.
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#3There seems to something of a cargo-cult mentality underlined in this article. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Stephen King and Mark Zuckerberg all read loads of books (that's how they made their money!)
Unless you have some set goal to know a certain body of knowledge (as I presume the four above have), reading should be done leisurely -- not a race to read, and half-understand, as many books as possible.
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#4There seems to something of a cargo-cult mentality underlined in this article. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Stephen King and Mark Zuckerberg all read loads of books (that's how they made their money!) Unless you have some set goal to know a certain body of knowledge (as I presume the four above have), reading should be done leisurely -- not a race to read, and half-understand, as many books as possible.
I'd rather re-read books that I've loved, and still have a lot to gain from, this year
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#5How to read more books: Speed listen to your books with adobe reader 9.5 plugin called texthelp PDFaloud 3.0 and high quality SAPI5 voices from acapela infovox, nuance realspeak, or neospeech.
Is this satire?
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#6How to read more books: Speed listen to your books with adobe reader 9.5 plugin called texthelp PDFaloud 3.0 and high quality SAPI5 voices from acapela infovox, nuance realspeak, or neospeech.
Is this satire?
Upgrading to creators update Windows 10 got me started with text -to-speech.
Edge browser has a button to read eBooks (EPUB files) aloud. The voices resemble human speech but that's not why I use it.
Edge does something that make me prefer speech-to-text over audio books. I've got many unread Audio books because it's a passive activity. My body just itches to do something.
On Edge, the words are highlighted as they are being read. Thus I actively read as I listen. And most importantly, distraction is no biggie - just spot the flashing words. Also, it's easy to spot and make up when the voice mispronounces words.
*
I upgraded my phone to the Creators update hoping to use Edge to read on the go. However, the result was disappointing. They are definitely different browsers sharing the same name.
Luckily an eBook reader called Freda+ reads aloud pretty well. It only highlights paragraphs rather word-by-word like edge - better than no highlight.
Summary.
My eyes tire easily when reading on computer - eye issues, glare, sleep deprivation... Without speech recognition, I'll read far less books.
Note: Edge works only on EPUB files which is pretty disappointing as EPUB files are html docs.
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#7There seems to something of a cargo-cult mentality underlined in this article. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Stephen King and Mark Zuckerberg all read loads of books (that's how they made their money!) Unless you have some set goal to know a certain body of knowledge (as I presume the four above have), reading should be done leisurely -- not a race to read, and half-understand, as many books as possible.
I'd rather re-read books that I've loved, and still have a lot to gain from, this year
You can always gain something new from Pratchett books. I usually reread the diskworld every other year.
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#8There seems to something of a cargo-cult mentality underlined in this article. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Stephen King and Mark Zuckerberg all read loads of books (that's how they made their money!) Unless you have some set goal to know a certain body of knowledge (as I presume the four above have), reading should be done leisurely -- not a race to read, and half-understand, as many books as possible.
I also found the survivorship-biasy part of the article to be a bit goofy, but I found other parts to be pretty spot on. I have fallen out of the habit of reading this past year (I think in part due to stress over political news) and I've been looking for ways to bring it back into my life. These things hit home:
* While I don't think reading will make me successful, I do find the habitual focus/relaxation aspects of reading to be beneficial
* Regarding paper books vs e-readers, as much as I like the idea of carrying a book in my pocket everywhere, I somehow allow myself to get distracted even on a Paperwhite (I'll start browsing the library and/or shopping for other books), and so I've been thinking of going back to regular old paper books
* Decision fatigue! I spend way more time fretting over what to read next than I do reading
Regarding audiobooks, I enjoy "reading" books in that format, but I have wondered lately about the downside of constantly being plugged in; it's a great way to pass the time doing dishes, but I imagine it's also good to give your brain time to sit quietly without input. It's also a struggle to resist the temptation lose myself in escapist fiction all the time; there's a thin line (for me, anyway) between the type of reading that exercises your ability to focus and the type of reading that acts as a palliative.
On second look, it appears the link was changed from a summary of a Harvard Business Review article on Quartz.com to the actual Harvard Business Review article. The summary had lots of survivorship bias, and the HBR version does not. Thought I had lost my mind for a minute there.
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#9I found out that for many books on amazon when you buy kindle version that for, usually, 3-5$ you can add audible narration of the same book! Audio books enable me to read more books in mindless situations where reading paper or kindle is not easy or not possible (example when running, in store..).
Just a note, I tried (and paid) for blinklist.com before, but I am not using it anymore, I feel like I miss much out of the books that way.
Re: Ways to Read More Books
#10I go back and forth on if its helpful to set a goal on the number of books. Sometimes its a good motivation for me. Other times its a distraction to the goals of why I read: to learn and to enjoy.
The year my son was born I spent hours everyday pushing him in a stroller to help him stop crying and give his mom a break. I read / listened to 105 books that year, which ended up being too much. I couldn't remember most of what I read / listened to. The next year I had to re-read many of the books.
The sweet spot for me is between 40 and 50, although I've adjusted my goal from number of books to subject mastery. Focusing on a subject I care about and studying books, articles, etc. on the subject has ended up being more rewarding. In addition, I have a handful of books I read simply for the joy of reading.