Are you good at believing the things you believe? Does it show in the way you live?
June 19, 2008 Leave a comment
My friend, Michael Austin, has just announced at his blog that his latest book is now available. This is an edited book called Football and Philosophy: Going Deep (University Press of Kentucky). Congratulations Mike! I’m pleased to have a chapter in the book, titled “Inside the Helmet: What Do Football Players Know?” A look at the list of contributors and the chapter titles has me anxious to get my hands on a copy.
April 16, 2008 1 Comment
How do you encourage your kids to read? How do you find friends for your kids who read? What can you learn from your kids who read? How do you train your kids to think and talk about what they read?
There are many answers to these questions. But there’s one answer that covers them all: If you’re part of a reading group, schedule one meeting each year or every six months to include the kids.
I got this idea from a blog post by Kyle Design, who writes about how to start a reading group. Kyle says, “Include the Kids: Once a year we select a book that we will read to our kids, then bring our kids to our book group to discuss it. We all really want to instill our own love of reading to our children.”
I like this concept. This may even be a reason for parents of young children to get involved in a reading club. By participating in a reading group event with their parents, kids will learn new ways to think about reading. Parents will get insights from their children about the reading they do. And because other kids of about the same age will be at the meeting to talk about the same book, the kids will have the opportunity to make friends with peers who read. This is one way for parents to put the power of peer pressure to work for a good cause—on the principle that friends who read don’t let friends who read lose interest in reading.
April 9, 2008 Leave a comment
Audiobooks are great for life hackers who want their time to be productive while driving, jogging, or weeding the garden. It used to be you had to buy or rent CDs to listen to audiobooks. Now you can download them to your laptop or MP3 player from iTunes. Audible.com currently has over 40,000 titles. If you subscribe to their email updates, you’ll get notices of special pricing on items that may interest you.
Audio.com is the place to turn for books that are still protected by copyright. But now you can listen to works that are in the public domain . . . for free. LibriVox has an ambitious goal—”to make all public domain books available as free audio books.”
Copyrights last for a limited period of time. Original copyrights for books published in the U.S. prior to 1923 have all expired. Unless those copyrights are renewed, the titles are in “the public domain.” That means they can be copied by any means, without permission, and pretty much for any purpose. Project Gutenberg makes titles that are in the public domain available as e-books. Now we can get many of the same titles in audio format from LibriVox.
Volume IV of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire went online today. G. K. Chesterton’s book of detective stories, The Club of Queer Trades, has been available since Sunday. If you’re into Chesterton, you’ll be glad to know that his justly famous book Orthodoxy is there waiting for you.
The LibriVox website is neatly organized and user-friendly. Searching the catalog is a snap. Pages for specific audiobooks feature a number of useful resources: including written summaries of the book, links to pertinent pages in Wikipedia (for background) and Gutenberg.org (for the e-book version, if available), RSS feeds, and iTunes subscriptions. The total running time and reader’s name are indicated. Books can be downloaded as a whole or in sections.
Voice actors who aspire to voice-over or audiobook narration may want to get some practice and work on their portfolios. You can volunteer to be a reader for this service.
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