I LOVE to read!

Altho, I havent read many real books in the past few years other than the Harry Potter series.

What I do read now is on the computer. I read fan fiction. (it's free)

Fanfic is stories about current or now-defunct television shows that are written by the fans. Sometimes fanfic written by amateurs can be almost as good as stuff written by professional writers.

I have a little HP pocket computer that I can transfer some of the stories to. I was going to get one of the Sony Readers (similar to a Kindle and actually probably better than a Kindle) as a christmas present, but decided my PDA was doing just fine.

When I had optic neuritis in 2006, it was really difficult to read on the internet, so my dad bought me a program called TextAloud. I use that program to read when I have vision problems, or sometimes when I want to crochet and knit, I'll put a story into the program and then I'll "read" and crochet at the same time.

The cool thing about the TextAloud program is that I can also use it to turn the text into an mp3 and then I can put the mp3 into my PDA or onto my mp3 player and I can listen to it thru headphones or even on my car stereo.

When I first downloaded the free version, it had the usual computer voice (like the computer voice in Wargames) but when I bought the full version the "Naturally Speaking" voices sounded almost normal. They pronounce some of the words a little strangely sometimes, but they sound pretty good. Not nearly as monotone as the Wargames computer voice.


Now, a lot of times, when I cant sleep, I'll put a story into the program, and will let the computer read to me. Doesnt always put me to sleep, but at least I'll be laying down and relaxing, instead of sitting there wondering why I cant sleep.

Oh, and aside from fanfic, sometimes I'll go to Project Gutenberg and look for something to read there. Project Gutenberg is a nice archive of books that have entered the public domain (no longer copyrighted) and you can read those books for free. It's a great site too...and sometimes a lot better than reading fanfic.

I've also been listening to audio books. I've got about 4 or 5 of the Harry Potter audio books, and I've got a couple of other books on cd. (Star Trek novels mostly...maybe one novel about Zorro) Those are usually a lot more expensive than buying an actual book, but they're usually pretty fun to listen to...and also most libraries have a decent selection of audio books that you can borrow for free.