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A friend who can only see degrees of light turned me onto text-to-speech for listening to epubs. Android’s default was good enough, and Librera, for example, allows for custom pronunciation. Listening by TTS is a way to keep reading while walking to work, for example, and be able to stop and highlight or make notes (which can be done by voice, I just haven’t switched from using my eyes and hands for that).

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I accidentally discovered this a year ago. I found that listening to the audiobook and reading along with the ePub was a great way to ingest the material even when in a tired state (since the audiobook keeps playing. Having the ePub also meant I could highlight and export my highlights as usual.

I did try this with iOS built-in TTS but found it was worth the effort to find the audiobook when possible.

This is also a nice way to get used to the rhythm of a second language. Kindle will highlight sync with some audible books (in some markets, not including Canada for some reason!). Reading Kafka in German this way helped me a lot with comprehension since the tone of voice communicates a lot of connotative information.

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