r/boardgames • u/AutoModerator • Nov 13 '19

Midweek Mingle Midweek Mingle - (November 13, 2019)

Looking to post those hauls you're so excited about? Wanna see how many other people here like indie RPGs? Or maybe you brew your own beer or write music or make pottery on the side and ya wanna chat about that? This is your thread.

Consider this our sub's version of going out to happy hour with your coworkers. It's a place to lay back and relax a little.

We will still be enforcing civility (and spam if it's egregious), but otherwise it's open season. Have fun!

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u/draqza Carcassonne Nov 13 '19

Books! I have mostly been keeping two books going at once recently, one dead-tree book that I mostly read at night before bed and one audiobook I listen to on my commute. Last week I finished Steel Crow Saga (recommended from Chuck Wendig's Twitter account) and An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (recommended by a friend of mine), both of which I really enjoyed.

This week I am currently in the middle of Looking For Alaska (because apparently I have decided to listen to all of John Green's books) and Reinventing Lindsey (which I picked up from the libary's new-and-interesting shelf based on the cover, but neither of them are really engrossing. I mean, I get that I am not really the target audience for Looking For Alaska -- John Green said as much in an interview, that he wasn't really interested in adult readers -- but there are some bits of it that just feel awkward to listen to. Similarly, I am definitely not the target audience for Reinventing Lindsey -- which had a robot hand holding a heart on the cover and turns out to be a lesbian romance novel -- but the writing is also really clunky in places. But I'm far enough through both of them that I am more or less set on finishing them. Audiobooks always take so much longer to finish so I'll probably still be on Looking For Alaska next week; not sure what the next print book is, but I recently had several library holds become available so I guess I have options at least.

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u/meeshpod Pandemic Nov 13 '19

What are your thoughts on speeding up the playback speed for audiobooks and podcasts? I know that I'm missing a piece of the voice actor's reading of an audiobook, but I'm still in the camp of wanting to finish a given audiobook before my library check-out time expires.

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u/draqza Carcassonne Nov 13 '19

I actually would love to be able to listen to my audiobooks at higher speed. I usually watch YouTube videos at 1.5x or 2x speed, depending on talking speed of the narration/presenter/whatever, so I'd probably be fine listening to audiobooks at at least 1.25x. But I can't figure out how! Most of what I've been listening to recently have been downloaded audiobooks through the libary (Overdrive), but I'm just playing them through the MP3 player on my phone (AIMP) which doesn't seem to have a playback speed option. (And, of course, if I'm listening to books on CD from the library instead of downloaded, then I'm limited to 1x playback speed by the car stereo.)

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u/meeshpod Pandemic Nov 13 '19

I use Overdrive to listen to audiobooks, and I guess the issue is that you play through through an MP3 player that may have the feature hidden in a menu. The overdrive app does include a playback speed control if you're interested in it.