quixotic chaotic

Free stuff!

Free short stories, essays, audio and video all by me at

https://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff

Because after the Masque of the Red Death reading in an empty church, the vicar insisted I try on the ancient hat a dead priest had left him, I'm using two photos of me from last night to remind you all that there are all sorts of free things to read and listen to and watch on my site...

And if you had problems getting into it before, the bandwidth has been boosted so it should be fine.

Just a reminder: you can watch and listen to The Graveyard Book and Coraline for free at

http://www.mousecircus.com/videos/

A real website despite the cod Latin...

Richard Armitage reading the proposal scene from North & South

Mr. Thornton stood by one of the windows, with his back to the door, apparently absorbed in watching something in the street. But, in truth, he was afraid of himself.
His heart beat thick at the thought of her coming. Strong man as he was, he trembled at the anticipation of what he had to say, and how it might be received. He was startled by the sense of the presence of some one else in the room. He turned round. She had come in so gently, that he had never heard her; He went with a quiet firmness to the door and shut it.

-“Miss Hale, I was very ungrateful yesterday.”

-“You had nothing to be grateful for,she said, raising her eyes, and looking full and straight at him.
But, if it will relieve you from even a fancied obligation, speak on.”

-“I do not want to be relieved from any obligation, fancied, or not fancied. I choose to believe that I owe my very life to you, to one whom I love.”

Her icy words faulted as if she knew not where to find them.

-“You seem to fancy that my conduct of yesterday was a personal act between you and me; instead of perceiving, as a gentleman would. That any woman would have come forward to shield a man form the violence of numbers.”

-“And the gentleman thus rescued is forbidden the relief of thanks! I am a man. I claim the right to express my feelings. I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you do not understand me. You are unfair and unjust.
You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other things.“

Today I learned

Free Audiobooks and Ebooks on OVERDRIVE.

Free Graphic Novels (DC, Marvel, Image, etc), Music, TV shows, and music on HOOPLA.

Free music that you can KEEP on FREEGAL

You are PAYING for all this with your tax money - USE THEM. Most likely systems will have all 3 or 2 out of 3, so if you aren’t sure call your local library’s reference/information desk and how you can get set-up or started.

Hey, highkey from a library worker: 

Overdrive has a new mobile app called LIBBY I find it easier to use.  It’s the same content as Overdrive just better for mobile.  Overdrive and Libby both let you send items to your kindle as well.  

Overdrive does NOT work on kindle outside of the USA

In Canada (and I think Australia?) Kobo readers work with Overdrive though!

what do you do if your local library does not use any of these services?

Gotta put in a word for my one true love Librivox.org - public domain recordings by volunteers of public domain works, so like, all the “classics.” Usually has multiple versions of each work so if you don’t like one reader you can try out another, or even several others. I think they have a mobile app too, but I always just listen on/download direct from their website, so I’ve never used it. 

For reading web pages aloud, I've been using my phone's built-in text reader that can be found under the Accessibility tools. It's a bit robotic, but you get used to it. (I mostly use it to read fanfic now, but it's also been useful for news & school stuff in the past :) )

For audio books, I cannot recommend Librivox.org highly enough. It's an entirely volunteer-read collection of public domain works, and the recordings are also public domain (which they specify when they record things) and so are completely free. You can listen on the website or download to your computer, phone, put on a CD, whatever you want. This site allowed me to keep up with all the reading I had to do as an English major, as just about anything older than like 1920 or so is in the public domain. (Also, on a personal note: I have all of Jane Austen's novels on audio from this website now, and other classics like the Count of Monte Cristo that I've always wanted to read but knew I'd never get thru by staring at the page. So not just for school, also just for fun!) I mostly use it for novels & such, as that was what I was studying, but I know they also have stuff like the Bible, older political essays, etc.

Also, if you can afford it, I've found a subscription to Audible well worth the money for anything newer (that therefore wouldn't be on Librovox). It's like $15 a month, and for that you get one 'credit' each month. You can buy an audio book on Audible for the full price at any time you want, but they're often reeeeaaally expensive, like $60 each, easy… So you can pay that price, or you can buy it for one credit. So that means once a month you basically get to buy an audiobook for $15 no matter how much more it would have cost normally. (I got the Hobbit & all of the LOTR books on audio this way, which, again, I've seen go for easily upwards of $70 on CD, just because there's only one unabridged version of the books on audio & the CDs can be hard to find.) You can also let your credits build up, I think for up to 6 months before they start to expire? So I would keep my subscription over the summer & winter holidays & then be able to buy all the books I needed with my Audible credits at the start of each semester.

The last thing I can suggest is… reading out loud to yourself, if you're able & have a good quiet environment. Recording yourself doing so is also good so you can play it back later instead of having to read it all over again. I started doing this with some of my Queer Studies readings for class, because they came as these gnarly old PDFs (so no go on a screen reader) & were often very dense, very esoteric, and not available anywhere on audio because of being 1. nonfiction & 2. from a fairly young, small field of study. It definitely takes some getting used to (and working thru a lot of anxiety in my case), but I found that reading out loud to myself helped me slow down & focus better on what was in front me, whereas my mind will wander off, my eyes will jump around, and my head, hands, and arms will quickly start to hurt if I try to just 'muscle through' and read like a """normal person""" (<-- sarcasm). Plus, lots of studies have shown that reading out loud generally helps with memory retention, as it engages multiple senses, instead of just vision!

And of course, as others have said, see what accommodations your school's Disability office can offer you! They provided me with a Livescribe pen to record audio in class that would be automatically synced with what I wrote on paper (because my hands hurt a lot & prevent me from taking notes) and with Dragon Naturally Speaking software so I could dictate my essays & stuff instead of typing or hand writing (again: my hands are shit) – and I never even knew either of those existed until I got all set up with our Disability Services office here! So it's always worth it to find out what they can do for you & your specific needs.

I hope any of this helps! Good luck!