Books Bookmarks
I guess this is for sites I need to remember, and books I’m considering to buy (the long list of unread books notwithstanding).
​#Books ​#Bookmarks
Tsundoku (Japanese: ç©Ťă‚“čŞ) is acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them. – Tsundoku
Reading books:
The purpose of reading … like this is to gain, and retain, information. … unless you’re stuck in prison with nothing else to do, *never* read a non-fiction book or article from beginning to end. … you should *always* jump ahead, skip around, and use every available strategy to discover, then to understand, and finally to remember what the writer has to say. This is how you’ll get the most out of a book in the smallest amount of time. – How to Read a Book, v5.0
Buying books:
A regularly updated list of online bookshops that sell DRM-free ebooks, digital comics, magazines, and RPGs. – Where can I buy DRM-free ebooks?
Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost. – Standard Ebooks
Where can I buy DRM-free ebooks?
Kobo. Tor/Forge.
Reading eBooks:
CLI Ebook Reader. This is … a fork of epr with … extra features – epy
Making books:
We find digitized books in the public domain that look horrible and make them readable! – Aberrant ePress
Replace the Kindle firmware, if you want. @madskjeldgaard said it even re-flows PDF!
KOReader is a document viewer for E Ink devices. Supported fileformats include EPUB, PDF, DjVu, XPS, CBT, CBZ, FB2, PDB, TXT, HTML, RTF, CHM, DOC, MOBI and ZIP files. It’s available for Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook, Android and desktop Linux. – KOReader
Kowloon:
A revised, expanded and updated version of the influential, original “City of Darkness”, first published in 1993. "City of Darkness Revisited" is the most thorough record of the Kowloon Walled City, one of Hong Kong’s most notorious, and most misunderstood, neighborhoods. – City of Darkness Revisited
Alternatives:
A few years back I had a habit of every six months or so doing a thread on Fedi about options for getting books other than Amazon. Eventually it finally occurred to me that I could write it once, put it up on website, and update as needed, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel. – Where to Buy Books Other than Amazon, by Jess Mahler
Where to Buy Books Other than Amazon
Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social suggested these books for her astrobiology class:
Contact (Sagan); The 3 Body Problem (Liu); Old Man’s War (Scalzi); Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke); The Andromeda Strain (Crichton); Project Hail Mary (Weir); The Sparrow (Russel); Leviathan Wakes (Corey); Starship Troopers (Heinlein); Dune (Herbert); The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin); To Be Taught if Fortunate (Chambers); The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Chambers); Semiosis (Burke); Childhood’s End (Clarke); Ammonite (Griffith); All Systems Red (Wells); Fuzzy Nation (Scalzi); Ender’s Game (Card); Binti (Okarafor); Translation State (Leckie); A Half-Built Garden (Emrys); Aurora (Robinson); The Algebraist (Banks); Blindsight (Watts). -- source
@robin@riley.pub suggested NK Jemisin and Mary Robinette Kowal.
Not sure where to put things about learning languages. So now it’s in the books category. This one is by @elilla@transmom.love about Duolingo and alternatives:
My answer is that literally any other method is better than Duolingo lol
But I've collected some of my more detailed answers about two methods I strongly recommend—comprehensive input and tandem exchange—in these two blog posts:
Language learning methods that actually work ​#1: The bingeLanguage learning methods that actually work ​#2: You show me yours and I’ll show you mine
Language learning methods that actually work ​#1: The binge
Language learning methods that actually work ​#2: You show me yours and I’ll show you mine
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk writes:
I had no plans on using the stock firmware, and used it only so far as to change the language to English before flashing the Free software alternative firmware, CrossPoint. … The reading experience is… good. Neither terrible nor amazing. What makes it good is that it is pocketable and there when I want it. The 4.3” screen is, apparently, 220 PPI. It is not as crisp/sharp as the screen on my Kobo or Tolino.-- Initial thoughts on the tiny XTEINK X4 ereader, by Neil Brown.
Initial thoughts on the tiny XTEINK X4 ereader
About the recent years:
Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian
leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too
much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do
whatever they want--which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and
brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships
posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars
both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I'm going
to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy
today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the
nation. -- The Authoritarians, by Dr. Bob Altemeyer