patrick.net

RC2006 says

I've started listening to audiobooks. At first I wasn't sure about the format but gave it a try since my eyes get a bit strained now reading. I still need to have complete silence and usually set or lay in the dark while listening and feel it's pretty comparable to reading The narrator makes or breaks it for me if it sucks I switch to reading.

Data rate is agonizingly slow - even on 2x speed. People generally speak at 100-150wpm, JFK was an anomaly at 200 WPM. Decent readers can do 400 WPM, my wife is like 800.

rocketjoe79 says

RC2006 says

I've started listening to audiobooks. At first I wasn't sure about the format but gave it a try since my eyes get a bit strained now reading. I still need to have complete silence and usually set or lay in the dark while listening and feel it's pretty comparable to reading The narrator makes or breaks it for me if it sucks I switch to reading.

Data rate is agonizingly slow - even on 2x speed. People generally speak at 100-150wpm, JFK was an anomaly at 200 WPM. Decent readers can do 400 WPM, my wife is like 800.

That explains why books seem to take longer. If I'm reading something I really love I'm pretty sure I'm reading 3-5x faster than if I read it out loud.

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. — A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.” - Schopenhauer

Wow. I'll have to order a copy from overseas. They don't want you to see this book, despite it going through at least 5 (FIVE) English editions in half a century

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=The+Pink+Swastika+%3A+Homosexuality+in+the+Nazi+Party&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313

This is almost as bad as "Camp of the Saints"

BTW, I'm on to Livy's "Early History of Rome" now.

Pretty good once again, like Plutarch and Suetonius. Lots of politics, murder, good and bad people. Every politician should read all that ancient history.

Have you gotten into the whole Livia-Julia Agrippina (the Younger) conspiracy yet?

It's wild.

That might be in Tacitus or Cassius Dio though.

I have not hit that.

I read that the entire set of texts which have come down to us from the ancient world would fit in one bookcase not taller than a man. Maybe I'll finish them all eventually.

Patrick says

I read that the entire set of texts which have come down to us from the ancient world would fit in one bookcase not taller than a man.

Yep, that fire at Alexandria.

I finished Livy's "The Early History of Rome" and was amused by his description of the Gauls who sacked Rome:

- "wine, a pleasure new to them, drew them to cross the alps"
- too numerous in Gaul, so they needed to migrate to new land
- "the religious sentiment is very strong in them"
- tend to anger quickly ("the uncontrollable anger which is characteristic of their race")
- were defeated partly because they were "a people accustomed to a wet cold climate, the heat stifled them"
- individually brave, but not as well organized as the Romans ("a people whose very life is wild adventure")
- often got drunk and were easy to kill when sleeping it off ("soused at night they lie at night like animals")

You could say a lot of that about the Irish.