September 1, 2015
by punjacked
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August 31, 2015
by Neelima
0 comments
“I’m thinking clearly now, right?” Abhaya said on reading The Art of Thinking Clearly. It’s become a kind of company manual now, since everyone seems to have read it or talked about it at some point. “Every chapter is a summary of key points of a variety of books, say for example Thinking Fast and Slow. If you want to understand cognitive neuroscience, it would be good to read this. The problem is this is what most companies employ to nudge their customers.”
Abhaya was not keen on the caveman dynamics that figures in books such as these. Maybe it reminds him of the self-help genre.
Imagine reading the Harry Potter series in continuum. Well that’s how it must be read and it took a month for Abhaya to live the Harry Potter dream. “I’m finally over the thick book syndrome,” he said as he had tackled a series. “J.K.Rowling is fiercely intelligent. Even her twitter handle is magical.”
Breaking the Bow is a collection of stories inspired by the Ramayan. “A couple of stories were hard hitting but I wanted more. There was no mention of Shabari, Vibhishan, Sugreev, Bali, Nishadraj, Bharat, Kaushalya, Manthara. No Meghnad, Kumbhakaran. And despite all the reinterpretations, there was no Wicked Sita!” Which is probably why by Arni and Shikandi and other tales they don’t tell you by Devdutt Pattanaik worked for Abhaya. While Devdutt Pattanaik writes the myth and explains it with footnotes the way A.K.Ramanujam does in his folktales, Samhita Arni is a master of subversion and brings in clever contemporary insights into an old tale that is as multi-headed as its antagonist.
An interesting speculative fiction collaboration between Australian and Indian authors and illustrators is Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean, some stories worked for Abhaya. “It’s interesting how collaboration between writers and illustrators from different countries could give, in this instance feminist fiction, a necessary lift.”
When we thought the list had ended, Abhaya mentioned that he had also managed to read and review Vandana Singh’s Young Uncle comes to town is all about the kind of uncle every uncle should aspire to be. He also read the Aditi Adventure series that he had got for his niece. “I like the way Suniti Namjoshi writes for children with characters as funny as the one-eyed monkey, an ant, an elephant(ant-elephant jokes are everyone’s favorite!) , a dragon and three female sages.” He also narrated a funny story about how one of characters tries hard but has no idea about how to get angry.
“I read the books I got my niece too,” Srishti said. She spoke about the good old Archie comics of yore, Calvin and Hobbes and the new X-Men issues. Who can resist Calvin and Hobbes? Strangely enough, Calvin and Hobbes works more for adults than kids. And the mutants have a democratic air to them—they seem more relevant than superheroes in a world where differences are often disrespected.
I indulged in a bit of weirdness with Carlos Castanada’s The Active Side of Infinity. If you haven’t heard of Castanada, his is an interesting story about an ordinary individual who discovers his esoteric side when he meets a sorcerer called Don Juan. I grew up listening to stories about him and so I expected a lot of magic when I picked up this book, but since this was one of his last in the series, he spoke about the ordinariness of his life and how he used memory as a tool to go to the other side. The earlier books explore weirdness in a more satisfactory manner.
Memory is a mystery and I constantly try to understand the origins of forgetfulness. That’s when I came across a series of lectures by Ouspensky. If you don’t understand the crux of the Fourth way (I don’t either), you won’t be able to fathom much of what this book is about, but I liked the way he tries to understand memory. It is impossible to pin it down- you can not remember, unless you consciously try, what you were doing at this time the previous day. Now you are reading a blog post, but yesterday at this time where were you, with whom and what did you feel at this moment? The very idea that we can not rely on day to day memory and must work hard to be aware of ourselves as often as we can if we are to remember anything at all is a life lesson that I do not want to forget.
I started reading G.R.R Martin’s A Game of Thrones to understand why the A Song of Ice and Fire series has gone cult.
The research is exquisite, the dialogues are riveting, the flow of the story prods you on, and there are dragons which I have realized lately are one of my favorite mythical creatures. A good story goes viral, as simple as that.
What have you been reading? Tell us what you think about the book.
August 28, 2015
by InstaScribe
0 comments
Shari’s Berries has created an infographic which shows you the right kind of sweet tooth that goes with the book you read.
So it’s butterbeer for Harry Potter, s’mores for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and milk custard for The Kite Runner.
Tell us your favorite dessert book combo.
Please include attribution to berries.com with this graphic.
August 27, 2015
by Neelima
2 Comments
Let me warn you that the book lists are long, but all lovers of books love the Long Book List—in fact it’s a great motivator!
Even though The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton is a very long book and a Booker winning one at that, Jaya found it an absorbing read. “I can read long books,” she says. “Even a book like War and Peace that I love has boring passages in between. Eleanor Catton doesn’t bore you. Even at the Jaipur Lit Festival, she came across as a warm, intelligent and charming writer filled with empathy towards her readers. When she writes, she is the same.”
As for Murakami’s South of the Border, West of the Sun, Jaya was not convinced. “Maybe I didn’t pick the right Murakami yet,” she said, aware of the die-hard Murakami fans she could be disappointing with this statement.
She was disappointed with a few more big names—Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman.
“On the other hand Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes was a great read. It does not romanticize the camaraderie that war time brings, nor does it condemn human frailty. Another book set in Vietnam was The Quiet American by Graham Greene, a good book that I took up because it is the favorite of my favorite author Kiran Nagarkar.”
“Another book that I really learned from was Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Set in Nigeria, in the backdrop of the Nigerian Civil war, Adichie traces the life of a family during political upheavals- coups, reverse coups, massacres and peace.”
“It makes you wonder about boundaries that are drawn by outsiders,” Abhaya said. “These don’t correspond with local borders, so there will always be unrest.”
Readers must be familiar with patriotic email forwards. For Jaya, The Sceptical 
Patriot: Exploring the Truths Behind the Zero and Other Glories by Sidin Vadukut, the premise of the book to explore the truth of the claims made in these patriotic outpouring was reason enough to grab it. “The book is good in intent, but low on content. A large part of it is completely irrelevant, narcissist description of author’s personal life, which adds nothing to the questions in hand. Although the little research that is there is good. It gets into the details of what exactly the ‘invention of zero’ means, for example, before deciding on whether or India invented zero. But there is too little of it. I had high hopes for this one, but the content is so thin that instead of a book, it would have been best published as an email forward or an enlightening facebook post.”
Jaya continues her fantasy book odyssey.
“What can I say about The Song of Ice and Fire except that it is a book that swallows you whole? So much, that I had dreams of people plotting, planning, back-stabbing and turning cloaks for several nights. I’m hooked.” This bought us to the whole ethics of spoilers of The Song of Ice and Fire series being revealed on unsuspected twitter handles. Abhaya was furious that a twitter handle he follows for publishing industry updates spoiled Jon Snow’s death for him. (Is he dead though?) Is this ethical, when you think of the reader who trudges his way through the series, lapping up a new reality and savoring the suspense?
Have you read our myth stories yet? Well you should. (Mythical fiction in India feat Anand Neelakantan, Mythical fiction in India feat Nilanjan Choudhury). Since we were in a mythical mood, Jaya read Yuganta, though she could not like it as much as it was rated.
It was Anil’s first book club with us and he talked about a Telugu book that he had read called Jayam by Malladi Venkata Krishna Murthy. The story is about how an engineer embarks on a spiritual journey.
More books that the bookish InstaScribe Team read coming up next week. In the mean time what have you been reading?
August 26, 2015
by InstaScribe
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By InstaScribe
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<div style="text-align: center; padding: 25px; background: #eeeeee; margin: auto;"> <a href="http://instascribe.com"> <img src="https://instascribe.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/quote58-1.jpg" alt="Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own."/> By InstaScribe </a></div>
August 25, 2015
by punjacked
1 Comment
1. MI5 spied on writer Doris Lessing for 20 years, new documents released by the National Archives show
2. Author A L Kennedy has said there should never be a female Doctor in “Doctor Who”
3. Romania city gives free bus rides if you read a book
4. Tourists offered chance to run a bookshop on holiday
5. Authonomy writing community closed by HarperCollins
August 24, 2015
by Jaya
0 comments
We have launched an exciting new feature on InstaScribe that will let you import your WordPress.com blog into InstaScribe, edit and format the content and export it into beautiful and compliant EPUB and Mobi files that you can publish on platforms of your choice.
Using it is as simple as using the rest of InstaScribe. Log in to your account and look for “Import a WordPress.com Blog” widget on the left sidebar.
Enter the URL of your blog, click “Import” and follow the instructions to authenticate.
You will be presented with a list of latest posts.
You can keep track of posts selected for import on the right side of the screen and remove them by clicking on the cross (x) sign next to them, if they are not wanted in the final list.
You can filter the post list by category to make the selection easy.
You can navigate to the next set of older or newer posts by using the “Next” and “Previous” buttons at the bottom of post list.
When you have selected all the posts you want, click on the Import button available at the top of selected posts.
You will be redirected to the InstaScribe’s Writing Desk with the selected posts imported as different chapters.
Edit the content, if needed. Add standard pages like Title, Copyright, Preface, etc.
Add cover, update metadata, create Table of Content and select a theme using the regular InstaScribe Options on top of the page.
Once you are satisfied, go back to the dashboard and export your eBook in the desired format!
Should you face a problem, or have a suggestion, we are always available at support@instascribe.com. Your feedback will help us make the product better.
The feature has been tested well on WordPress.com blogs. If you have a self-hosted blog with jetpack plugin enabled, it should work for you too. But we need more testing with such blogs. It would help us immensely if you could give it a try and let us know whether it worked and if not what error/problem you faced.
August 21, 2015
by InstaScribe
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August 20, 2015
by Jandré
1 Comment
Smith, Wheeler, Cooper, Fisher. These are all English surnames that once upon a time told you what a man does for a living. These names also remind us that once upon a time it paid to be skilled in a specific area.
This one skill or your ability at it made you prosper. You all know the expression “Jack of all trades, master of none.” It does seem as if it was penned during this time, does it not?
But according to our omniscient friend, Wikipedia, that is only half of the story. “Jack of all trades, master of none, Certainly better than a master of one.”
Wikipedia continues to explain this expression in this way: “Such a Jack of all trades may be a master of integration, as such an individual knows enough from many learned trades and skills to be able to bring his or her disciplines together in a practical manner.”
Where am I going with this?
Multitasking is exactly what the indie-writer needs. In this post we will help you develop one of your many skills. And we will call this skill: The Technical Know-How to create a professional audiobook.
You intend to make money out of this product. With the flood of options available, why should people choose your audiobook if it is technically inferior? The InstaScribe team will give you the tools on how to produce a professional product.
You already own a computer. We say this with a fair amount of confidence, because it is unlikely that you wrote your eBook on a Nokia 3310. This is the most expensive pieces of equipment you need.
Microphone/Headset
Obviously, you need a microphone. Your laptop’s built in microphone is more than good enough for Skype but won’t cut it for a professional sounding recording.
We suggest that you seriously consider a headset. You do not have to spend hundreds of Dollars. To help you to make an informed choice the InstaScribe team suggests that you have a look at this article. The guys at makeuseof make some valid points in favor of a USB microphone or headset.
InstaScribe’s Pro Tip
Get or Make a Pop filter. The verbosity of the Wikipedia definition tickled our fancy so much that we had to include it:
Popping sounds occur particularly in the pronunciation of aspirated plosives (such as the first ‘p’ in the English word “popping”). Pop filters are designed to attenuate the energy of the plosive, which otherwise might exceed the design input capacity of the microphone, leading to clipping. Pop filters do not appreciably affect hissing sounds or sibilance, for which de-essing is used.
What they are trying to get over is that a pop filter will make your recording sound much more professional.
Again, you can buy one. Or you can make one. Lifehacker tells you how.
The truth is that Audacity has got the free market cornered. What is Audacity? According to Webopedia:
Audacity is the name of a popular open source multilingual audio editor and recorder software that is used to record and edit sounds. It is free and works on Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.
Audacity can be used to perform a number of audio editing and recording tasks such as making ringtones, mixing stereo tracks, transferring tapes and records to computer or CD, splitting recordings into separate tracks and more.
The author can attest to the ease of use of this piece of software. And, he being a know-it-all would not even read the instructions. But there is a comprehensive Wiki available on how to use Audacity.
There are also hundreds (we calculated that by using advanced osmotic derivative mathematical theory) of websites that offer free tutorials. Here we suggest that Google or Bing be your friend.
File Format
This is a difficult question to answer. Not because the question is difficult, but because the answer depends primarily on your chosen distribution platform.
Amazon uses a form of DRM (Digital Rights Management) to attempt to provide protection against piracy.
iTunes uses something else again . The Apple-pickers have chosen AAC and Apple Lossless or also known as m4a. Apple’s proprietary DRM is applied to these files. (Apple devices can play a variety of formats including mp3.)
You can also use the plain old vanilla mp3 format. Just remember, mp3 files do not allow for bookmarking.
There are a whole host of websites where you can do a course on the whole recording process or parts of it, for as little as nothing or as much as a lot.
These websites include: Coursera, Udemy, Lynda.com, and Khan Academy.
Have a look and you will find a whole variety of options. Many of these courses are aimed at beginners and will help you to quickly find your feet.
You can do it, so just do it. (10/10 for not infringing copyright.) We showed you in Part 1 of this series how the Audiobook market is growing. In this post we explain that if you already own most of the equipment, nearly everything else is free or very close to it.
What suggestions can you make, based on experience? We always love to hear from our readers.
August 19, 2015
by InstaScribe
0 comments
By InstaScribe
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