Reading a book is very difficult for me. I can’t keep my concentration until I finish a book. I’m trying the approach of the listening book instead of reading a book to get over this bad habit and so far it looks good, so I’ll show you the approach.
This article assumes these environments
- Android
- All books are in the Kindle app
Listening book with accessibility feature
Android has an accessibility feature called TalkBack. It is a feature that reads out all the text on the screen. You can also use this feature to read text on your Kindle. When you enable it and open a book in the Kindle app, there will be an audio announcement, so you can gesture to read the book out loud and it will start reading. It will automatically flip to the next page and read it out loud. At first glance, this seems like a good idea.
However, there are several problems with this approach. The first is that it cannot be backgrounded. For example, if you want to do something else (like browsing or using a dictionary) while reading out loud, the reading will stop. Secondly, it can’t be put to sleep. Apparently, this problem is device-dependent, but on my device (Pixel 5), reading stops when I put the device to sleep. This means I can’t put it in my pocket and go for a walk.
Listening book with Amazon Alexa
After trying various approaches, the Alexa app was the best way to read out Kindle books. If you don’t have Alexa, no problem; just install the Alexa app, log in, and say “Alexa, read {book title}” to start reading out loud. Then you can play it in the background, and it will continue to play even if the device is in sleep mode! You can also change the playback speed from the Alexa app.
I’ve got the best reading environment. I am going to read a lot of books.
