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Hello!
Depending on when you're watching this, it is currently summer here in the UK
and what better time to try some new different things, considering it's the longest holiday
I'm aware that we get!
So, over the last six weeks we've had off in summer, I've been trialling two things
relating to books that I wouldn't normally try which are;
E-Books, which I've delved into
slightly before but not a lot and
audiobook, so I'd have a little *** through today what I like and don't like about them.
First, I thought I'd talk about E-Books, which I
read on this [iPad]
I have got a couple of Apps for getting different E-Books on, the first one
being iBooks, which is an Apple App, so you can only get that if you have an iPad
and the second one is the Bluefire
Reader App I believe
which I actually read most things on
on the E-Book front, so I jus thought I'd go through some of the pros and cons of these
two
Apps first.
So, this is the icon for the Bluefire Reader App
which is the first one I thought I'd talk about. This is what it looks like upon opening,
so you see you have the books displayed across the top
and you can also go into various different folders. You do this by
clicking collections at the top of the screen
where a list comes up, so you're able to sort different books into different folders
which I thought was quite useful because then it means you can have them
in genres, or your favourite books. What I've done is I've got books I've read
and I've got books that I haven't read, so I can easily tell which books I've already
gone through and don't need to look at again,
and which books I need to kind of, sort of, read! To open the book, you tap on the cover
and it will come up, fullscreen. First on the cover,
and when you've read part of the book, it'll go to the page of the book that you left off.
To change the page, just swipe, which I found quite useful,
and there's no strange animations, which is also quite nice
because sometimes I find it quite distracting when it does look like a real page
turning.
If I want it to be real book, I'd have a physical copy!
I also like how it's clear, how you're able to easily read the fonts and if you
tap, there are options down below where you can search various things,
you can make it larger or smaller, so to your preference
so I thought that was quite good as well. This App is also free
which is very nice because I found a lot of the reading Apps when I looked at them were
priced at about
£1 ($1.60) or £2 ($3.20), so it's quite handy having a free one, and it's very simple
and just easy to use which is handy because I'm not the greatest person with technology,
so yes! I'd definitely recommend this one. The second one that I'm going to talk about
is the iBooks App
which is this one. To open it, you just click
on the app, and it will come up in a shelf form
with all your books displayed, which I thought was really quite nice
I like that, it's kind of
very, sort of rustic and book like and you can see all the cover art
which makes it a lot easier to
find the book that you want to read, however, as far as I'm aware,
you can't put the into different sections unlike the Bluefire App, so that's not quite as
useful
as when you've got a lot of books, you've got a lot to scroll down all of them to try and find what you want.
To read a book, again you tap on it
and it will enlarge to the screen, then you can have it both portrait and landscape.
What I like about the iBooks App
is that you can also change the colour of the
paper that you're reading from, so you can have it stark white, like the Bluefire App
or you can have it sepia which is what I have because I find that nicer to read from
because it's not quite as bright and distracting or you can have it
in night-mode which makes the paper
black and the writing white, so it's not quite as bright for reading in the dark
so that's defiantly useful.
You can also change the font which I found quite handy
because some fonts are easier to read than others
and you can also change the size which is very nice for if you're blind
like I am! Next, I'm going to talk about
Audiobooks which are something I've very recently got into.
Apparently I listened to them a lot when I was younger, but
went through a phase of not listening to them and now,
through Audible, which is the Amazon E-book App,
I have got back into them!
And that is an App which is this one, right here,
so it's free to download however you do have to pay
for the books which are normally priced around
£5 ($7.50) and £20 ($30), it heavily depends on what book you're
reading. Also, there are various different membership options,
where by you get credits per month and one credit equals one book
so you pay a set amount per month and then get various credit
you can spend on books which is what I currently have. You click on it to open it
like so
where you get the loading screen, and all the books you have.
This is the title screen where it suggests what books you might like or recent news on books
which I thought was quite good because
then it draws you to more recent books or ones that have just been published
so rather than sticking to things you know you like, you can maybe find things that you
wouldn't normally read
and it suggests that easily to you. Upon clicking 'My Library'
you get to a section where all your books are stored. I have downloaded only two at the minute,
the first one being Memoirs of a Geisha, and the second one being a book that's come out
very recently called The Rithmatist
and I'm part-way through both of them
and all that you have to do is go onto the book store and download them
then, it takes maximum two minutes
thereabouts I found to download each and they usually
in a couple of segments.
The only problem I have with Audiobooks
is that some times the person's voice
is very, very irritating. When you click on the book, you get each part
displayed in the sections that it's in
and also how far to you are through each part so the red line indicates how far
through you are
so this one I'm finished, as I have with this one
then it shows how much time you have got left which I found useful
because sometimes I want to know how long
I will take to get through the book. I find that Audiobooks are very useful
for if you're trying to do other things as well as read the audiobook
because you're able to do more than one thing because where you've got the
books being read to you, you've got your hands free.
Having used both of these alternative
reading methods throughout the summer, I can defiantly say I prefer
having a physical book, though I do enjoy reading books both through
E-Books and Audiobooks. The Audiobook, I do quite like for if you're trying to do other things
as
it doesn't quite take quite as much focus but you still take things in
so you can be tidying or doing work
whilst you're still reading, well 'reading'.
So I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you have, give it a 'Thumbs up', go to
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Bye bye!