Books

wwkirk

Divine
I criticize Google every now and then, but I think I ought to commend them when they do something good.

Google is making available free PDFs of some books. Just this month, I downloaded two of them. The rights holders are giving permission for this to happen, but Google is responsible for the actual digitization. Also, the quality of these PDFs can be superior to those from Archive.org.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I recently discovered that I can upload a pdf to Amazon and then receive it in a more useful Kindle format. Handy.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
What's the exact procedure or link?
I regularly convert EPUB format to Kindle but have had poor results with PDFs.
I am an Amazon Prime customer - don't know if that has anything to do with it or not. I had to snoop through their FAQ and support articles but it wasn't that hard to figure out. If you have ever bought a Kindle book there will be a email address similar to the one you registered with @ kindle.com. I think I just sent the pdf to that. Kindle ha nice little features for readability that I like.

I don't know about you but reading paper books is starting to wane a bit with me. I've had a hard time picked up the last couple but always have this damned phone handy. Plus, they pile up and get dusty.
 

wwkirk

Divine
I am an Amazon Prime customer - don't know if that has anything to do with it or not. I had to snoop through their FAQ and support articles but it wasn't that hard to figure out. If you have ever bought a Kindle book there will be a email address similar to the one you registered with @ kindle.com. I think I just sent the pdf to that. Kindle ha nice little features for readability that I like.

I don't know about you but reading paper books is starting to wane a bit with me. I've had a hard time picked up the last couple but always have this damned phone handy. Plus, they pile up and get dusty.
Thanks, I found it.

I have many e-books in various formats, but I mostly use them for reference. My wiring is such that I need a physical book when "studying" any material.
Get this. Over the past year I've been doing a lot of handwriting! It was a little strange at first. I do it sometimes for note taking, but more often for musings, even systematic reflections or "analyses".
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
My right hand has been badly broken twice and I'm afraid my handwriting has degenerated into a block hostage-note style. But I have always used a plain old ruled pad and am picky about having a Bic .7mm mechanical pencil that I constantly keep here at my PC for note taking. Did the same thing on the job or when I'm working on car stuff.

Handwriting's a lost art. My mom and aunt as well as my wife's all had absolutely perfect cursive handwriting. Rememebr being taught how to do that on the rough greenish strangely lined paper? I do. Mrs.Finkleday's Kindergarten class 1969.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I have always used a plain old ruled pad and am picky about having a Bic .7mm mechanical pencil that I constantly keep here at my PC for note taking. Did the same thing on the job

Human psychology at work - look at all the power we give away to strangers for free.

It was not unusual for me to walk into a business and spend hours or days planning out a project and of course my pad and pencil went with me. Walk around an office floor a while and my oh my do people fidget. All I'm doing is keeping track of phones, pcs, office equipment, access points, planning cable runs, whatever. But they automatically assume the worst. When someone would finally ask me a question I wouldn't answer right away but just ask their name and appear to write it down. Talk about ass clench - always good for a laugh.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
(Knowledge isn't free.)

Try this source:

How to access thousands of free audiobooks, thanks to Microsoft AI and Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg and Microsoft have created thousands of free audiobooks that use neural text-to-speech technology to generate the voices. The neural TTS feature uses AI to generate natural-sounding speech that matches the emotion of human voices. This option lets the developer of the audiobook choose a specific voice and tweak the pronunciation, pitch, rate, pauses, and intonation to create a more pleasing tone for narration.

Another challenge with audiobooks is that they can take hundreds of hours to create, edit, and publish. Working with Microsoft AI, Project Gutenberg was able to cut that time dramatically by automatically producing high-quality audiobooks from existing online e-books.

"In particular, we leverage recent advances in neural text-to-speech to create and release thousands of human-quality, open-license audiobooks from the Project Gutenberg e-book collection," a team of people from Project Gutenberg and Microsoft said in
a paper about the project.

"Our method can identify the proper subset of e-book content to read for a wide collection of diversely structured books and can operate on hundreds of books in parallel," the team explained. "This work contributed over five thousand open-license audiobooks and an interactive demo that allows users to quickly create their own customized audiobooks."

To listen to any of the audiobooks, browse to the
Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection. From here, you can access the books via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or the Internet Archive. The books are all public domain, which means you'll mostly find classic works from authors such as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy, Jules Verne, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Click the book you want to hear. You can then listen to it directly in you
r browser where you're able to pause, play, skip ahead, go back, and control the volume. Using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or one of the other services, you can also download and listen to the book on your mobile device.

"This project aims to make literature more accessible to (audio)book-lovers everywhere and democratize access to high-quality audiobooks," Project Gutenberg said. "Whether you are learning to read, looking for inclusive reading technology, or about to head out on a long drive, we hope you enjoy this audiobook collection."


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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Had to mix Knapp in there. I know he's the writer and I actually find him extremely personable but his name in connection with various topics make me kind of roll my eyes. The second book was a stretch, I may be able to control myself and not but the third one. Unless you tell me Chapter 21 is worth it.....
 

wwkirk

Divine
I've developed a love for Harold Lamb's biographical histories. His prose and style is sort of old fashioned, and some people characterize his books as "novels". Depending on how this is intended, I agree with it. You definitely get the feeling that you are reading a listening to a story. But the books appear well researched.
Thus far I've listened to the audiobook versions of Genghis Khan: Emperor of All Men and The March of Muscovy: Ivan the Terrible and the Growth of the Russian Empire, 1400-1648. I'm presently listening to
tamerlane.jpg
I should also mention that Charlton Griffin is the PERFECT narrator of Harold Lamb. It's almost like they were brothers or collaborators.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I've developed a love for Harold Lamb's biographical histories. His prose and style is sort of old fashioned, and some people characterize his books as "novels". Depending on how this is intended, I agree with it. You definitely get the feeling that you are reading a listening to a story. But the books appear well researched.
Thus far I've listened to the audiobook versions of Genghis Khan: Emperor of All Men and The March of Muscovy: Ivan the Terrible and the Growth of the Russian Empire, 1400-1648. I'm presently listening to
View attachment 19492
I should also mention that Charlton Griffin is the PERFECT narrator of Harold Lamb. It's almost like they were brothers or collaborators.
If you like that sort of thing you need to have a look at Dan Carlin:
Hardcore History 43-47 – Wrath of the Khans Series
 
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