Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Reading Envy Podcast 125: Strong Tea and Suspicious Penguins

Luke and Juliane are back to chat books, comedy, and library apps.  Everyone shares what they've been up to this summer, and we start accidentally sportscasting, and have to refocus on books. But we get there. Stay tuned to hear Jenny and Luke disagree about a book, and to hear Jenny talk about birds in Alaska. I admit I'm a bit out of practice with three people, so this episode is a bonus fifty percent longer than a normal episode. You're welcome.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 125: Strong Tea and Suspicious Penguins

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Books Discussed:

James Acaster's Classic Scrapes by James Acaster
The Kangaroo Chronicles by Marc-Uwe Kling
Farthing by Jo Walton
Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture by Ken Jennings
Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban


Other Mentions: 

James Acaster - Repertoire (Netflix special)
QualityLand by Marc-Uwe Kling (German language)
Ross without laugh track
Garfield Minus Garfield
Silence of the Lambs recut trailer
Among Others by Jo Walton
Connie Willis
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Omnibus podcast
Hannah Gadsby - Nanette (Netflix, but don't read the comments, people must be really threated by Hannah)
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
Prador Moon by Neil Asher
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
SFBRP episode on Aurora
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor 


Related Episodes:

Episode 017 - Homeric Radiation at Lake Inverness with guest Luke Burrage
Episode 032 - Her Smoke Rose Up Forever with Luke Burrage, crosspost with SFBRP podcast
Episode 037 - Breakdancing to Bach with Juliane Kunzendorf
Episode 044 - Of Survival and Memory with Luke Burrage
Episode 069 - Evil Librarian/SFBRP Crossover Episode with Luke Burrage and Juliane Kunzendorf

Stalk us online:

Juliane's Website
Juliane at Goodreads
Luke Burrage on Twitter
Luke's podcast/blog, Science Fiction Book Review Podcast
Luke at GoodReads
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

2 comments:

  1. Hi Jenny,

    I have been listening and enjoying your podcast for some time now. I wanted to write to you about your discussion on ebooks today. I love holding a real book. Books bring back so many memories of being a child and going to the library with my grandmother every week. I have to admit though that now I am finding I also enjoy my kindle. I have a hard time remembering everything that happened in each book, and sometimes I can really be annoyed with myself trying to remember how a book ended! With my Kindle it is so easy to highlight and take notes, and then I can always review my notes at a later time when I am looking back at my book log.

    You mentioned Overdrive, Libby and Kindle highlights today. Are you aware that you can see a list of your notes and highlights at any time, even when the book has been “returned”? You had mentioned that if you take the book out again, but if there is a wait, or if you simply want to see a list of all of your notes you can see them at read.amazon.com and then along the top left, right next to the word Kindle is a grey box. That link will show you all of your highlights and notes for all kindle books that you own and borrowed.

    The second thing I wanted to mention is about the Libby app. I believe the Libby app was intended to be simpler to use than the overdrive website. I think it has good points and bad. I live in NY and belong to my county library system, but I also am allowed to join the NYC Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library. Before with the Overdrive website I would need to juggle all three websites to search for a book, see which library I had what on hold. Libby allows us to see our own shelf that shows all of our loans, holds and activity on one page with all libraries combined. For example all of my holds from all three libraries appear in one list. That makes it so much easier to keep track. Plus you can edit your holds and suspend them for up to 6 months. If I suspend a hold on a book, I keep my place in line for the book and when I am next I stay in that position and others pass me. Then when I am nearing ready for a book I simply make that book active hold and I get it usually within a few days as soon as the a copy is returned. Monitoring my condensed hold list I can easily suspend holds and activate holds as I am ready. This helps to avoid the problem of having 4 kindle books being checked out at the same time. It takes a little work but I find it a lot less clunky than using the three websites.

    The bad part about Libby is that I find the book search may be inaccurate. Often I search for a title and Libby cannot find it. If I then search on the Overdrive website the title may be there! I can still place a hold on it there, and it will appear in the Libby app for future monitoring. I don’t understand this quirk. The other thing is that if the overdrive site does not have the title, sometimes I am able to recommend it. If enough people recommend it, my library may buy it. This is not available in the the Libby app.

    I hope I haven’t gone on too long, but I was very excited as I learned these tips myself and I thought they might be very useful to you as well!

    Thanks for the great podcast!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Apologies for my incredible delay, Daniel, as I just found a batch of comments requiring moderation today!

      I do like the functionality of eBooks that you describe. That's one huge downside of Hoopla, being unable to highlight. I can bookmark but not mark passages.

      I did end up downloading Libby after this podcast discussion, because I couldn't complete a loan in Overdrive on my Android phone. Libby worked very smoothly and I was a happy camper.

      Thanks for listening and responding. :)

      Delete

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