Reading

Where to Invest

by dldamore

November 22, 2013
2:09:46 PM

Found this in the highlights of a Kindle book I was reading.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin

Review your highlights from Kindle books at https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights

If you highlight too much of a text you will loose the ability to see the early highlights this way. I saved highlights to a personal Evernote file, one per book. That way if the highlights become inaccessable this way I have the early highlights already saved in a file I can review in it’s entirety any time I want.

2:12:58 PM

The Future of Reading?

by dldamore

The Future of Reading?

Recently, Amazon released new Kindle models. With this introduction Amazon is beginning a push to integrate their Kindle e-books with their Audible audio books. Recently, I’ve noticed that if you buy the Kindle version first, you can purchase the corresponding audiobook version for a greatly deducted price. As I recall, the deal would be about $16. The idea is that you can read an e-book and switch to the audio version for listening on the go. The beauty is that the version are synced. Meaning, the versions can pick up where you left off in the other format. 

How will combination ebooks and audio books change the face of learning? Some people find it hard to sit for long periods of time reading a book. If, after an hour of reading it might be useful to get up and go for a walk… and, while you are out, continue listening to the book you were reading.

 

Bottom Line

This is an idea that will shape the future. 

 

Notes:

This is a quick post. There may be some incomplete thoughts and other typographical errors. This was written while listing (live) to Amplified, the 5by5 podcast with Dan Benjamin and Jim Dalrymple. iOS 6 comes out later today.

 

Top Blogs in Google Reader – Shared Posts

by dldamore

ReadingTrendsscreenshot

 

Above is a screenshot of the reading trends from Google Reader for my account. In particular, it shows the ranking of blogs that I share with other people on Google Reader. If I had to eliminate the bottom 90% of the blogs I subscribe to, these would all be in the 10% I keep.

Regarding the “Twitter / Favorites from Admore”, that is a feed of tweets I’ve added to favorites and consider sharing with people in Google Reader. In this way, I can share funny, amusing and informational tweets with people who most certainly have not seen them.

Ebooks in Education – Amazon Kindle

by dldamore

 

Below is a screenshot of a webpage Amazon.com has for a finance book that presumably is used in colleges and universities.

There are more sections of highlighted text on the page that are not shown in the screenshot. The Public Notes section has no notes. The readers, students, could write in notes for a section of text and their notes would be easy to see on their own Notes page on the Amazon site. Notes they make public would presumably appear in this text box.

Screen shot 2011 04 17 at 11 32 44 AM

What would be interesting is if it would be possible to join a group, think class or book club, to read and share notes with. This could engage students and readers more. If half the class highlighted some text it would probably be worth talking about in class.  The notes people write would enable a better discussion because reader recall would presumably be faster when text the person wrote was presented. The internal database of the mind would be faster for searching and synthesizing the thoughts and ideas of the book and passages.

Notes:

Link to the page for the book screenshot above. Perhaps more passages will be highlighted by the time you visit.

 

Amazon Kindle Social Network?

by dldamore

 

ScreenClip(49)

Public Notes –  See image above. 4 people have this feature enabled

People can share their highlighted passages and written notes in the Kindle version of the book. This might be part of a reading club / social network.

  • Read book together.
  • Meet with other readers (people in your organized or not organized book club)
  • Discuss meaningful passages, notes and lessons.

There is a webpage where one can see all the highlighting one made in the book. There is also a page where some of the top highlighted passages are available. Here is the page for the book Content Rules. NOTE: This is an https URL. You might need to be logged in to Amazon to see it.

Snippet on Reading: Article | Is Reading Really at Risk?

by dldamore

“Reading at Risk” breaks down its readers into Light (reading 1-5 books a year), Moderate (6-11 books a year), Frequent (12-49 books a year), and Avid (50 or more books)

via Article | Is Reading Really at Risk?.

Came across the article and snippet above while researching how many books a person reads per year.  The average is around three or four. Depending on if you count the people who read zero books.

Currently I’m a frequent reader (completed 30 in 2010). Would really like to be an avid reader. Shooting for 60 books completed this year.

Books Completed in 2010

by dldamore

This year I completed the reading of thirty books. They are on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in the order they were completed from left to right.

  1. The Art of The Start
  2. Getting Real
  3. Unleashing The Ideavirus
  4. Radical Careering
  5. The 1% Windfall
  6. Linchpin
  7. The 22 Irrefutable Laws of Branding
  8. Borrowing Brilliance
  9. Thought Leaders: Insights on The Future of Business
  10. The Open Brand
  11. Hackers & Painters
  12. Drive
  13. Built to Last
  14. Valley Boy
  15. Free Prize inside
  16. Small Giants
  17. Delivering Happiness
  18. Swim With The Sharks
  19. Whale Done
  20. The Long Tail
  21. The Art of Non-Conformity
  22. Unmarketing
  23. Project 50
  24. American Steel
  25. Bo’s Lasting Lessons
  26. Angel Customers & Demon Customers
  27. Rework
  28. Serious Play
  29. Mirror Worlds
  30. The New Rules of marketing & PR

One of the things I realized in the past few days is that the number of books to be read is at about 60. These are books I’ve bought and want to read. More books are on the way too.  A soft target of 60 books for 2011 seems unreasonable, but I’d like to go for it. If 52 are read that will be a win. 39 or fewer completed would be a disappointment.  It will probably be a good idea to start reading the next book tomorrow, Saturday January 1, 2011.