How I like to read and the software I use to do so. From physical books to audiobooks.
For some reason I struggled a bit with the title of this, with the way I read I don’t just mean what method or technique I use but, although I’ll write a bit about that. I also want to mention the tools I use to facilitate my reading and such.
I like to read, that much is obvious, but I am not an avid reading who will go for 70 books a year or some crazy goal like that. I don’t particularly like reading self-help or non-fiction. I’ve always been into sci-fi, and recently (last year, pretty much) I realized I can read regular fiction novels, detective stories, philosophical stuff and the like. But yea, I mostly like science fiction.
Anyway, after finishing The Mote in God’s Eye I realized I can actually read for longer than I would’ve thought, which was great to know since I was always a little afraid of starting big books and never finishing them. I actually didn’t even check how many pages there were until I was like 200 pages in, so maybe I should simply avoid looking.
I mostly like to read in digital format, I am looking into getting an ink reader, but I am still not so sure about it. I don’t really go to the library, but I am looking into it. With my internship I have not had time to check.
The app I use on my phone is Librera, I had already mentioned it in my what’s on my phone blogpost, it just works and it is pretty full featured. I like to change a few settings like the default theme, and I move the navigation bar to the bottom, but other than that it has pretty sane defaults, if a bit of an outdated interface and no animations.
In my laptop I don’t read very often, but when I do, I just use Foliate, I remember reading quite a bunch of 1984 on it while listening to a fantastic dramatized audiobook by Steve Parker, he made it available on YouTube and it is superb.
So, as you might guess, I really like audiobooks too. There’s some people out there who dislike them, or who like listening to them at 2x and such crazy things. I just listen at 1.15 at most. What I use for Audiobooks is just AntennaPod, while the app is focused on Podcasts, you can actually just set a local folder as a podcast. In my case I just place the audio files on a directory, alongside a cover image, and call it a day. Later I might write about how I get audiobooks and format them to my liking.
Another software I’ve tried recently is Audiobookshelf, this is a self-hosted audiobook and podcast manager, and I’ve also used it to store the audiobooks and access them via an RSS feed, I discovered all this thanks to this blogpost by Dom Corriveau.
While I like audiobooks, for some reason I have a hard time listening to them by themselves, there’s something different about typical dialogue and speech from podcasts, and the narration style used for reading books aloud. I just don’t get some words sometimes, it is how it is.
Therefore, most of the time I read and listen at the same time, I did this for Dracula, 1984, The Mote in God’s Eye and some of Sherlock Holmes’ stories. I didn’t read them 100% like this, there are times where I just read, and others where I only listen, but it has to be when walking or doing nothing. If I deviate my attention just a little bit I simply don’t understand, it is quite annoying, having a decent English level and being unable to do something like this, but life’s unfair sometimes.
I also like to read while listening to music. I find a playlist about whatever I’m reading, being something classical or futuristic, sci-fi, horror, anything. Funnily enough, I have listened to the Halo soundtrack more while reading than by playing the games at this point, it fits very well with a lot of genres somehow.
