So when it comes to books I use an app called readera premium. It has an option to turn the book into an audiobook. The cadence isn’t always good but it functions well for non-scientific books (for scientific books it keeps trying to read the charts and footnotes) so you can listen to them as audiobooks.
I use things like readaloud as a chrome extension to read articles to me.
NotebookLM is useful because you can upload a PDF file and then it will create an audio summary, as well as function as an LLM where you can ask clarifying questions for anything you need more info about from the PDF you uploaded.
However, I’m new to NotebookLM and haven’t figured out how to ask it to maybe create a 1 page bullet point list vs a 20 page summary of a book.
Any other good technologies to look into that makes it easier to find and obtain information from ebooks and online articles?
I know reading them is always a good idea, but I can only read so much in a day.
I read about 4-8 hours a day, and nearly always with paper books, so i do not think i am gonna be much help here in your search, but I am interested to see the suggestion!
And here i was going to post about the new Kobo reader i initialized last night… I guess i will anyway.
It’s not as nice as the discontinued kindle oasis. The buttons don’t sit so nicely under the thumb, the weight is more awkward, the touch screen isn’t quite sensitive enough. But the color is surprisingly nice, i didn’t think I’d like it. And the interface for changing font size and brightness is easy and intuitive.
Oh, it can directly interface with a library, but only with one library at a time, and if you select one book, you need to start over to look for more. It’s overdrive app sucks.
I haven’t had it long enough to have an opinion on its battery life.
(I haven’t gotten into audio books. I don’t like wearing headphones, and i hate earbuds. So i didn’t have a lot of places to listen to books. Also, i find it harder to pay attention to audio books than to writing.)
I’m a slow reader, and have lots of different interests which take away from reading. What I do is switch between reading and listening to the audiobook.
Getting ready for work - listen.
Eating breakfast - read.
Driving to work - listen.
Lunch - read.
Drive home - listen.
I’ll either read/listen with kindle/whispersync, or kindle/audiobook via my library.
This is an interesting topic, and I’m learning quite a bit by reading the replies. Even though the title is worded in a way in which Sheldon Cooper would pose the question.
A few hours later and the Kobo reader is growing on me. i just had to readjust my grip a little. I also like that it can be oriented either letter or landscape. That’s a nice little upgrade over the Kindle.
I can read so much faster than audio can play that I don’t see anything other than reading with my eyeballs to be particularly efficient.
However, I have found that with quite a few YouTube videos I can speed up the audio, which can get around the annoyance of a s l o w - n a r r a t o r.
I wish I had a magical summary tool that would just pick out the important factual points when I’m reading something for research rather than pleasure (because pleasure reading doesn’t have to be efficient) but I’m not aware of any tools for that. Maybe AI eventually, but I’m not convinced it’s here yet.
I mainly read paper books, but I almost always have an e-book I’m reading in Libby. I have the two same issues you do: I have to crank up the font size to read well. I’ll just keep upping my prescription and the font size, but at some point it’ll be one word per page. And I try to listen to e-books but it’s hard for me to stay focused. I can listed to novels, but anything around history or has a lot of details and I’m not following.
