books

<p>I am trying to get into reading and I started with Brave New World, I have been reading the book for a year and have about 60 pages remaining. Before anyone mentions I am aware it is a small book that can be finished in a week, I am not used to reading. I normally read short stories or comics. I finshed the machine stops quickly, but I couldn’t get into Brave New World, it has a lot of boring parts.</p><p>After finishing Brave New World should I read the Tempest, the main character made me interested in the story. I only read one other shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet the sparksnote version, it was great.</p> <small class="notice" x-post-type-data="None"> Takahe has limited support for this type: <a href="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/50900554">See Original Page</a> </small>

<p>The Alienist.</p><p>It is historical fiction that takes place during the Gilded Age and is set in NYC. The primary characters are a newspaper reporter (narrator of the book), a psychiatrist, two police detectives, a police secretary and a number of assistants the psychiatrist has helped throughout his career and became part of his crew.</p><p>The story is about the psychiatrist and his team, at the direction of Teddy Rosevelt, investigate a serial killer who prays on prostitutes.</p><p>The author Caleb Carr at the time of writing the book was a military historian so the setting of the books is meticulously researched and Carr works in historical figures and settings, such as JP Morgan, Adolf Meyer.</p><p>One of the primary early events of the book takes place in Teddy Rosevelt’s office when he was the police commissioner of the NYPD. A major theme of the book is inline with the gilded age as organizations moved away from conventional wisdom to more science based approaches.</p><p>The title of the book comes a widely held notion that people who had mental illness were alien their body, therefore psychiatrists were called Alienist.</p> <small class="notice" x-post-type-data="None"> Takahe has limited support for this type: <a href="https://lemmy.zip/post/46057237">See Original Page</a> </small>

<p>Still reading <a href="https://www.librarything.com/work/8103463/" rel="nofollow">Rosemary and Rue</a> by Seanan McGuire. First book in her October Daye urban fantasy series.</p><p>What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?</p><p>For details on the c/Books Bingo, check the <a href="https://threadiverse.link/lemmy.world/post/38545766" rel="nofollow">Midpoint check-in</a> post.</p> <small class="notice" x-post-type-data="None"> Takahe has limited support for this type: <a href="https://discuss.online/post/36049620">See Original Page</a> </small>

<p>cross-posted from: <a href="https://lemmy.world/post/43549159" rel="nofollow">lemmy.world/post/43549159</a></p><p><p>A feature-complete and elegant app</p><p>Until now, every reading app I’ve found has been a compromise. There are closed source apps like <a href="https://www.moondownload.com/" rel="nofollow">Moon+ Reader</a> with plenty of features and beautiful design. Some people don’t mind the one-time purchase. There are beautiful apps like <a href="https://github.com/Acclorite/book-story" rel="nofollow">Book’s Story</a> with a clean, modern design and simple library management, but with little beyond the core features. There are apps like <a href="https://koreader.rocks/" rel="nofollow">KOReader</a> designed for e-readers with little design consideration for tablets or phones, and a somewhat cluttered design. Each of these apps are beloved by their users for different reasons.</p><p>Then there’s Anx Reader. It’s <a href="https://github.com/Anxcye/anx-reader" rel="nofollow">FOSS</a>. It’s beautiful on a phone or ereader. It’s chock full of thoughtful features and customizations.</p><p>Design</p><p>It opens to a perfectly pleasing and intuitive library screen. You can import books easily, supporting most common formats including PDF. The library features smart categories of finished, reading, and not started. You can sort titles by recently read, progress, alphebetical, and more. You can also add personalized tags to keep your library organized. Group titles together by pressing and dragging into a collection.</p><p>Each book has a <a href="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b086a310-6644-4140-90a4-ab25daf8398e.png" rel="nofollow">detail screen</a> that shows a basic overview including tags and statistics. You can also view your overall reading <a href="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/64194b80-dc84-4dbd-92ed-2f1302b8ebdb.png" rel="nofollow">statistics</a> in a nice layout that shows things like your reading time, daily streak, etc. These are shown on cards that can be rearranged or removed as you wish.</p><p>Reading</p><p>The full screen reader can be customized in all sorts of ways according to your preference. I like to read books in a continuous scroll. That’s an option in addition to a couple page turning modes. It comes with fairly limited fonts, but they are easy to download and add if you have a preference.</p><p>Adjust the line spacing, letter spacing, paragraph spacing. Adjust the Intents and all margins. Of course you can adjust the font size, but also the weight. Choose the color scheme and image background (with a couple sensible options built in). Even use custom CSS if you have particular preferences.</p><p>You can read in uninterrupted full screen, or add tasteful headers and footers with your progress or chapter title, etc. Choose exactly how you want page turning to work, with screen areas.</p><p>Reading is seamlessly smooth as expected. Oh, and the whole app has an e-reader mode.</p><p>Library management</p><p>Anx uses a syncronizing method I haven’t seen before. No OPDS, KOReader, or the like, but you can sync over WebDAV between devices. Has anyone else ever come across this? Is it a feature shared by other apps or devices? I don’t know. Maybe more options will be developed in the future.</p><p>It works perfectly between devices running Anx in any case.</p><p>You can save, search, and share notes and highlights (in colors or underline).</p><p>Other things</p><p>Anx Reader has a number of helpful intelligent features. It is very AI forward, which is not a selling point for me at all. Shortcuts to AI options can be switched off in some places, but not everywhere. In any case, if you want you can connect it to an LLM of your choice to summarize previous passages or chat interactively about the book. If you choose not to connect one, it doesn’t do anything without your permission.</p><p>Some of the features that come built in are useful and may interest users who want a smarter reader. It can read aloud (using your on-device reader), or automatically translate. I haven’t tested these features as I don’t have any interest, but I can appreciate their usefulness to others.</p><p>I’ve noticed that while menus and reading are incredibly snappy, opening a book sometimes takes a few seconds, especially if you haven’t opened it in a while. It’s enough to be noticed but not quite enough to bother, especially since everything else works so seamlessly.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Anx Reader has a fantastic design that is a joy to use. It has piles of features, no matter what kind of reader you are. The interface gets out of your way and lets you just read and enjoy. Everything is intuitive and designed with care and intention. For me, it’s the one.</p><p>Anx Reader is available on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, and Harmony OS.</p><p><a href="https://anx.anxcye.com/" rel="nofollow">Website</a></p><p><a href="https://f-droid.org/packages/com.anxcye.anx_reader/" rel="nofollow">F-Droid</a></p><p><a href="https://github.com/anxcye/anx-reader" rel="nofollow">GitHub</a></p></p> <small class="notice" x-post-type-data="None"> Takahe has limited support for this type: <a href="https://lemmy.world/post/43549215">See Original Page</a> </small>

<p>Reading: <a href="https://www.librarything.com/work/28627832/" rel="nofollow">The Sunlit Man</a> by Brandon Sanderson.</p><p>Nothing new at my end. Had another busy work week, didn’t get time to read anything. It is over now though, so should be able to finish it this week.</p><p>What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?</p><p>For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial <a href="https://threadiverse.link/lemmy.world/post/28953205" rel="nofollow">Book Bingo</a>, and its <a href="https://threadiverse.link/lemmy.world/post/28953205" rel="nofollow">Recommendation Post</a>. Links are also present in our community sidebar.</p> <small class="notice" x-post-type-data="None"> Takahe has limited support for this type: <a href="https://discuss.online/post/25129707">See Original Page</a> </small>