Passing time during a long holiday drive
September 20, 2007 at 10:33 pm | Posted in eBook, iPod, text to speech, Text2Go, travel | 1 Comment
It’s school holiday time again and that means there will be a lot families heading off on the ’family holiday’. If you’re one of the lucky ones, that will mean a quick trip by road, rail or air to some exciting holiday resort. For the rest of us however, it will be the annual pilgrimage to visit Granny, 7 hours across state by road, to a small town who’s only attraction is, well, er, Granny.
For trips with these levels of tedium, ‘I Spy’ is not going to cut it. You’ll be at each other’s throats before you get clear of the CBD. In fact, if Dad is going to have to stop the car one more time, then by the time you get to Granny’s, the holidays will be over.
My tip for surviving these road trips from hell is to load up your iPods and mp3 players with a collection of audio books. There is a wonderful collection of free eBooks available at Project Gutenbury and if you’re a science fiction fan, there’s the Baen Free Library. You can use Text2Go to convert these eBooks to speech and transfer them to your iPod. You can take advantage of Text2Go’s free 30 day trial and not pay a cent these holidays.
Here is a small selection of the eBooks that are available.
Children
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
Anne of Green Gables (audio) by L. M. Montgomery
Black Beauty Young Folks Edition by Anna Sewell
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Story of the Three Little Pigs by L. Leslie Brooke
English Literature
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Feel free to leave a comment and tell me your favourites.
For more great sources of eBooks, have a look at The Top 13 DRM-free eBook Sites.
Free Sci-Fi eBook Collection
September 3, 2007 at 10:14 pm | Posted in Commuting, eBook, iPod, science fiction, text to speech, Text2Go | 3 Comments
A friend recently alerted me to an extensive free collection of science fiction novels available on the web. These can be found in the Baen Free Library, a service provided by Baen Books, a publishing company specializing in science fiction and fantasy novels.
In addition to the free library which contains over 100 titles, you can also subscribe to their web based version of the serialized novel. For US$15 per month, you will receive 4 novels, delivered in 3 parts over a period of 3 months, leading up to the actual publication date. You are not locked in to a minimum subscription period. You can pick and choose which months you make a purchase and can even purchase a single month if you desire (giving you access to 4 complete novels).
I’ve just started reading ‘Mother of Demons’ by Eric Flint. I’m currently about half way through and it’s proving to be a thoroughly enjoyable read. As it’s in eBook format, I’ve used Text2Go to convert it to speech, so I can listen to it while commuting between home and work. Eric’s writing style converts very easily to speech, so I find myself quickly transported to the alien world of Ishtar. My commuting time has become something to look forward to, rather than dread.
If the rest of the library is as good as ‘Mother of Demons’, then I can see myself working through the whole collection.
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