The Sword and Laser discussion

I've been using Kindle's text to speech to listen to ebooks at work. Although, there's some things that you have to get used to, like incorrect pronunciations for some words, it's pretty good. Some books, I can listen to at 1.5x speed. I'm wondering, if anyone else has explored using this?

I don't mind it so much when reading along with textbooks or non-fiction because I listen much faster than I read, especially material I find boring. I've only tried it briefly with fiction and poetry and I'm not a fan. I need tonal changes and alternating voices for my fiction.

I agree, I would prefer an actual audiobook. But, it's not always easy to get an audio version, or too expensive. So, this has been a way to get through a lot of books I've wanted to read but never find the time for.

I could never get into it for fiction but it worked pretty well for nonfiction.

Especially with news, it just seemed like a really dry announcer on talk radio.

My current Kindle doesn't have TTS, though, and I gave up on the newspaper subscription because they left out too many articles.

I use it when I am trying to 'get through' books. Like when I have started a book and am not loving it, but for whatever reason still want to see how it ends, I might stick the text to speak on 1.5 or 2 and listen while I'm eating or whatever. Or if I have to read something by a deadline. Basically, whenever I want or need to read something faster than my usual plodding pace. If I am loving a book, I am happy to take my time over it, and I prefer proper audio books for when I really want to listen to something, but text to speak has been helpful at times. I think I'd miss it if I didn't have it on my kindle.