Who doesn’t like being read to?
Posted in Review on February 16th, 2008
I review books. I, therefore, read a lot of books. That means taking time to hold a book in my hands, turning pages, and reading. I prefer reading paper to reading on screen because, well, I don’t care to sit at my desk with my laptop for hours and hours — I do enough of that with writing, email, blogs, etc. And, no one has seen fit yet to let me have a Kindle or other handheld book reader to review … yet … I live for hope.
Anyway, some of the publishers have been asking about sending pdf files rather than the book for review. I certainly understand that need — it saves a trees. Since I live on five wooded acres and garden in my few spots of sunshine, I’m concerned with the environment. But most of the other reviewers on the pubs aren’t keen on reading full books on screen anymore than I am. But, it’s these little challenges that spur Google searches — and Tor is giving away pdfs of books — so a couple of items came together and I found TextAloud.
I downloaded the demo version and got it installed. Downloaded the first Tor book Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. The installation of TextAloud went very smoothly. Then because, after all, why would I read directions, I found that it can’t read a pdf directly, you have to open it with the TextAloud program — minor inconvenience. Then the demo has a voice called Sam. Sam is like being read to by the computer in the film War Games or Stephen Hawkings. So then I downloaded a demo voice from Cepstral called Lawrence. Lawrence is British and reads with a bit more inflection than Sam but he nags you to buy him every few sentences.
However, while I haven’t really run the program through to many paces yet — I’m seriously considering shelling out for the full version of TextAloud. I mean if the book is a file and TextAloud can read it to me — I can knit or spin while listening to a book — multi-tasking is a good thing. Besides, I love being read to and if I can choose accents well that just adds to the pleasure. Check it out yourself, it seems a really decent program.