eBook News

  Here is something that I have been fighting with teachers and librarians for years. Although either is good, together is even better for many students (RWL - Reading While Listening). I've been reading audiobooks for years now. For those who are starting to read audiobooks, don't expect your comprehension/ability to be the same initially as with the printed page. It takes practice, just as printed reading takes. You will also get reading tired after so many minutes, especially with non-fiction, but as you keep listening you will get better and longer at a setting. The other thing that I noticed was I can now not only listen longer, you might also listen faster. I always tell my students that they need to talk slower when making audio recordings for classes, as the normal speaking voice is too fast for many. But since I started using audiobooks I've gradually increased my listening speed and now find the standard speed on many audiobooks (such as those from Audible) to be ...

AudioFile has just opened the SYNC: Audiobooks for Teens 2020 Summer season. Starting the week of April 30th, teens (and others) can download two titles that are paired each week for the next 14 weeks (till August). Each of the pairs will be available for free during their week. Readers can download the books using the Overdrive app, and once you have downloaded them they are yours for free. So if you know a teen introduce him or her to some new titles or format or allow yourself to try some young adult books. SYNC is available through Sora, the student reading app from OverDrive. Available on Apple Apps and Google Play stores. The books are available at  https://www.audiobooksync.com/ Titles this summer are: Week 1:    Week 2:  Week 3:  Week 4:  Week 5:  And nine more weeks after that.

I am a strong believer in reading in any format, on paper, eink, digital, and even audio. They are all ways of conveying the content or story and all can be great ways to read new books or visit old favorites.  AudioFile has just opened the SYNC: Audiobooks for Teens' 10th season. Starting this week teens (and others) can download two titles that are paired each week for the next 14 weeks (till August 1). Each of the pairs will be available for free during their week. Readers can download the books using the Overdrive app, and once you have downloaded them they are yours for free. So if you know a teen introduce him or her to some new titles or format or allow yourself to try some young adult books. There are also some other greats including Shakespeare's Othello and one of my science favorites Mary Roach's Gulp. SUMMER 2019 SYNC TITLE PAIRINGS Week 1: April 25 – May 2 SWING by Kwame Alexander, with Mary Rand Hess, narrated by Kwame Alexander (Blink) BLINK &...

I find it interesting how many times I have discussions with others about what classifies as "reading". So many don't include other forms, such as audio although they get very hesitant when I ask about braille. I do understand that with print, such as you are reading now, it is the combination of the saccades and fixations to combine the elements into a whole word, and the words into sentences, and on and on. But if part of that "literacy" is the understanding, then listening to the words, or feeling the letters and words should also count. In one of my classes the students are required to "read" a book by listening. One good thing that I think that they experience is the struggle in "learning to read" as an adult. For most of us, learning to read occurred so long ago that you don't remember what it was like to learn that. Now as my students as adults are trying to read their audio book they talk about the fatigue they experiences through...

I've just been reading Clive Thompson's Smarter Than You Think and was on the passage about Total Recall and that made me think about how ebooks and related technologies are having the impact of remembering on me. I've been using LibraryThing for a while, and while initially it took a long time to get my print collection in, it isn't much of an effort to add a book or two a week. But now when I'm trying to remember something that I've read, I'll usually turn to my LibraryThing page to see if I can remember from the cover of the book where it came from, or as the books have been added (usually) my reading order, I can go back in time to see what I was remembering when - such as knowing I read it when I was visiting Denver. The point being is that my LibraryThing account is my Total Recall of what I'm reading. If I read a library book, it goes in the collection, if I read a free Kindle book, it goes in the collection, and if I listen to an audiobook, it g...