TrickJarrett.com

Ebook2audiobook selfhosted project

Saw this project and dropping it here for me to come back to. The idea is you can upload an ebook and it generates an AI generated audiobook file for it.

The Lies of Locke Lamora - 4/5 Stars

I have been wanting to read this book for a while. In fact I tried a few years ago but bounced off it. Listening to it, via the Libby audiobook app, finally got me through the book. The style of the book takes some getting used to, it jumps back and forward in time which was part of what was offputting for me, but once I got settled I found it quite enjoyable.

There is a character, "Chains" (and whatever you are imagining for this character, I guarantee you are wrong.) I quite like this character and I kept imagining them portrayed by John Noble back in the early 2000s, when he played Denethor in the LOTR movies.

I'm onto the second book in this series, here's hoping it keeps my attention!

Self-hosted tool for syncing audiobooks and ebooks

I've been looking for exactly this sort of tool to enable me listening to audiobooks and ebooks. I'm sharing here mostly as a reference to myself as something to possibly explore in the future.

Listening to 'Project Hail Mary'

I started listening to Project Hail Mary's audiobook today. I had rewatched The Martian over the weekend and decided to pull the trigger on the audiobook and, as expected, I'm really enjoying it. The narrator's voice is super familiar so I came home and looked him up: Ray Porter.

I am not sure why though. I looked up his IMDB and there's no credits which would make sense (sure, I've watched Shameless and Almost Famous, but there's no way those are how I know his name.) So then I start looking up his book credits in case I've heard him narrate anything else. And I finally figured it out.

He read The Cartel by Don Winslow which was an audiobook I listened to a few years ago and really enjoyed the narration as well.

What I'm Reading

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

By: Tom O'Neill

A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York Times) reassessment of an infamous case in American history.

I started this a while ago and then got distracted by another book. I've come back to it and am just beginning to dive in.

How to Be Perfect

By: Michael Schur

From the creator of The Good Place and the cocreator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,400 years of deep thinking from around the world.

This one is my current audiobook. I had started it also a while ago and stopped thinking I wanted to delve deeper with the audiobook. But when I saw it available as a library audiobook I decided to go with it.

Braiding Sweetgrass

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices.

Another I had started as an audiobook but I didn't manage to finish it before it was returned to the library, and it hasn't been available for me when I've wanted it since then (everytime it came up I was in the middle of another book.) So, this week I picked up a physical copy from Barnes & Noble.

Others On Deck

These are books that are at the top of my unread pile. Will they actually be next? No idea.

• The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu - Another I had begun as an audiobook and quickly realized the book required more focus and attention from me.
• The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg - We just had the hottest week ever, I don't think we can consume too much information about what is going on and what needs to be done.
• Checkmate in Berlin by Giles Milton - Honestly, this is one I picked up months ago and then the physical book got buried and I lost track of it.

And then this is what the most recent books are in my ebook library:

Syncronizing between Ebooks and Audiobooks

One feature I dearly wish existed outside of the Kindle/Audible system was how they syncronized your reading an ebook and listening to an audiobook. Most of the time, this isn't a thing for me. If I listen to an audiobook, I don't also read it as an ebook. And in fact, usually, I don't want to.

But "How to be Perfect", which I mentioned earlier, is an audiobook that I do have the epub (ebook file) for, and I wish I could have that syncronization.

I've been thinking if there is a way to do this, using AI transcription from the audiobook to point to the ebook sections. I definitely don't have the time or skill to delve into it, but it seems like something which we're on the cusp of being able to solve quite easily.

Just Finished Reading

This past week I finished both the book I've been reading and the audiobook I have listened to while in the car.

Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik, #8 in the Temeraire series

I've gone through this series entirely as audiobooks from my library. I enjoyed it, as I'm invested in the main characters though this may have been my least favorite of the series. It just felt slow and plodding, and it felt like it was largely there to do set up for the finale in the next book.

Tsalmoth by Steven Brust, #16 in the Vlad series

I've read this series since I was in middle school. I can remember the first book being suggested to me by a clerk at a small bookstore and I've kept up on it ever since. The series is not written sequentially, and this book jumps back a fair bit of time, introduces a new over-the-top story which happens to the main characters - but then undercuts it at the end, to explain why it hasn't been something that comes up in any stories which take place afterwards chronologically.

Both of these books were entertaining, and I'm glad to have enjoyed them, but neither blew my socks off.

Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip

This is what I've just started and I'm too early into it to say much, but it's interesting so far.

Blurb from Amazon:

The New York Times Editors' Choice

NPR Science Friday Book Club Selection An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.

From award-winning writer Leila Philip, BEAVERLAND is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.

Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”.

What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, BEAVERLAND reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.

Currently Reading - 22 Feb. 2023

An Immense World by Ed Yong

A review of the book on goodreads:

This is one of the best science books I have read. Read this if you are at all curious about how other animals experience the world. You probably weren’t aware that humans can echo-locate. But other animals are capable of so much more than we are. Their abilities are amazingly fine-tuned to meet their needs. All of the concepts and experiments were very clearly explained and the audiobook was expertly narrated by the author.

Still early into this book, but I'm looking forward to it. It's fascinating, already, and I'm just into the first chapter.

The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes

Just begun this morning as an audiobook from the library after a recommendation from a friend. Already enjoying it, though I'm just a little ways in. It's campy urban fantasy which is something I enjoy for the lightweight nature of it. We'll see how it develops.

I had started King's The Gunslinger but fell off. Based on genre and writing, I should enjoy it and perhaps if I pushed through I would, but I just haven't gotten hooked. So, when Fred the Vampire Accountant became available from the library, I switched over.

"The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" - 3 / 5 Encoded Messages

I was in the mood for a spy novel so I checked this out from the library via the Libby app. I didn't realize it was the third in a series, though I don't know how much linear narrative there is given how this one went.

Overall, I really enjoyed the narration but the story was only so-so for me.

What I'm Reading - Aug. 1

Just Finished

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curreyy - Bite sized entries of varying size and depth about many famous artists and people of all sorts. It's infotainment. There were no real major insights or realizations, but it was interesting and fun to read.

Currently Consuming

Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away by Ann Hagedorn - Still early into it, but it's interesting and providing context to the era, the Cold War, and the cultures in their respective countries.

This “historical page-turner of the highest order” (The Wall Street Journal) tells the chilling story of an American-born Soviet spy in the atom bomb project in World War II, perfect for fans of The Americans.

George Koval was born in Iowa. In 1932, his parents, Russian Jews who had emigrated because of anti-Semitism, decided to return home to live out their socialist ideals. George, who was as committed to socialism as they were, went with them. There, he was recruited by the Soviet Army as a spy and returned to the US in 1940. A gifted science student, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he knew scientists soon to join the Manhattan Project, America’s atom bomb program. After being drafted into the US Army, George used his scientific background and connections to secure an assignment at a site where plutonium and uranium were produced to fuel the atom bomb. There, and later in a second top-secret location, he had full access to all facilities, and he passed highly sensitive information to Moscow.

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Ann Lembke - Listening to this audiobook. Came to it after hearing her interview on Tim Ferriss' podcast. I've got the audiobook checked out and need to get back to listening to it.

This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting....

The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.

Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol - Another Audiobook I have checked out from the library, just started it on the drive home this evening as I wasn't in the mood for Dopamine Nation. Still in the intro but enjoying it.

A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible.

Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process -- a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.

Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one.

Next Up

Checkmate in Berlin by Giles Milton - Picked it up based on the read of the book cover, haven't delved in at all.

In Queen Esther's Garden by Vera Basch Moreen (translator) - This line from the book cover caught my interest: "An anthology of Judeo-Persian literature." -- It's far outside my comfort zone and something I'm excited to dive into.

Cory Doctorow on DRM and why he doesn't put his books out as audiobooks on Audible

Heading off to bed. This evening has been spent in the air conditioned room to combat the hellfire heat outside. I've spent tonight listening to Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface audiobook as I update and manage my RSS feed reader, adding a number of tech blogs.

I also discovered a lovely new terminal app for my Linux, called Tilda. Its biggest feature is that it stays open and I can use a keyboard shortcut to make it visible for using over the top of other windows, and once I'm done I can click off it and it disappears again.