You’ve been putting off reading that book for weeks, and you’re supposed to have read it all by tomorrow. Whether you’re cramming for school, or trying to avoid looking like a lazy bum in your book club, don’t lose hope. Patrick Allan from LifeHacker explores how to read an entire book in one day.

Reading an entire book in a matter of hours may seem daunting, but it all comes down to simple math. The average adult reads around 200-400 words per minute. The average novel ranges between 60,000 and 100,000 words total. If your reading speed is right in the middle of the pack at 300 words per minute, and you’re reading a middle-of-the-pack novel at around 80,000 words, you’ll be able to knock it out in around five hours or less.

That might seem like a lot, but it’s totally possible. And you can do it without any skimming or speed reading trickery, which can be bad when it comes to truly absorbing information. For the most part, it’s possible to read at your usual pace, absorb information at your brain’s preferred rate, and all you have to do is buckle down, make the time, and get started as soon as possible.

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The Kindle app lets you read your ebooks purchased on Amazon, of course, but it has other useful functions you might not know about. Patrick Allan from LifeHacker explores these functions:

Study Terms and Key Concepts With Flashcards

If you’re like me and are constantly highlighting passages in your Kindle books, and making notes on particular sections, you can create flashcards out of those for studying later.

Look Up Definitions, Translations, and Wikipedia Pages

If you see a word you don’t know, a phrase you can translate, or a person, place, or thing that isn’t familiar to you, the Kindle app makes it easy to look up. Simply tap the word and hold for a moment.

Make Reading Digital Magazines Easier

Simply tap anywhere in the magazine to bring up the view options, then tap the text-view icon up in the right corner (it looks like a piece of paper with writing on it), in order to adjust font.

Use “Send to Kindle” to Save Web Articles for Offline Reading

The Kindle app can also be used as a web page clipper, similar to apps like Instapaper and Pocket.

Fill Your Kindle Library With Free Classics

If you’re looking for free stuff to read, there’s always the classics that are now in the public domain.

Read full post on LifeHacker.com.

 

Is your Kindle feeling sluggish? Does it seems like it takes a little longer to change the page then it used to? That doesn’t mean there’s some technical problem. It means it’s time to reboot it. Thorin Klosowski from LifeHacker shows us how:

Anyone who has ever used a computer is well aware of the “turn it off and back on again,” IT joke, but a number of people have told me they’re thinking about buying a new Kindle because theirs is getting “slow.” It seems silly to even mention this because it should be common, but Amazon tucks the restart option so deep into menus that it’s a troubleshooting tip worth mentioning.

So, the next time your Kindle feels a little slow, whether that’s taking forever to wake up or the pages seem to flip a little sluggishly, restart it. From the Home menu, tap Menu, then Settings. From the Settings Menu, tap Menu again, then tap Restart.

Read full post on LifeHacker.com.

 

You’ve been putting off reading that book for weeks, and you’re supposed to have read it all by tomorrow. Whether you’re cramming for school, or trying to avoid looking like a lazy bum in your book club, don’t lose hope. Patrick Allan from LifeHacker explores how to read an entire book in one day.

Reading an entire book in a matter of hours may seem daunting, but it all comes down to simple math. The average adult reads around 200-400 words per minute. The average novel ranges between 60,000 and 100,000 words total. If your reading speed is right in the middle of the pack at 300 words per minute, and you’re reading a middle-of-the-pack novel at around 80,000 words, you’ll be able to knock it out in around five hours or less.

That might seem like a lot, but it’s totally possible. And you can do it without any skimming or speed reading trickery, which can be bad when it comes to truly absorbing information. For the most part, it’s possible to read at your usual pace, absorb information at your brain’s preferred rate, and all you have to do is buckle down, make the time, and get started as soon as possible.

Read full post on LifeHacker.com

Some people know how to quit a book as soon as they stop liking it. But many of us feel some sort of completist pressure to stick with every book we start, even when reading for pleasure. Nick Douglas from LifeHacker explores our struggle through stuff we don’t actually like, so we’re less likely to pick up the book and more likely to pick up our phone. We start reading less.

If you wish you could read more books, try quitting the one you’re on. If it’s not calling to you every minute that you’re away, maybe you should drop it and find a book that does. In fact, whenever a book bores you for two (or five, or ten) pages in a row, quit it. Move on. If you end up wondering what happened next, you can always come back.

The catch is, the moment you quit a book, you have to start reading another book. Ideally that very minute. You have to keep reading, but you can read whatever you want.

Read full post on LifeHacker.com

New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder recommends five great thrillers where the predator’s target discovers himself or herself to be in danger, but doesn’t know who the predator is…

Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (The Bill Hodges Trilogy Book 1)

by Stephen King

Kindle price: $8.99

The stolen Mercedes emerges from the pre-dawn fog and plows through a crowd of men and women on line for a job fair in a distressed American city. Then the lone driver backs up, charges again, and speeds off, leaving eight dead and more wounded. The case goes unsolved and ex-cop Bill Hodges is out of hope when he gets a letter from a man who loved the feel of death under the Mercedes’s wheels…

Gone Girl: A Novel

by Gillian Flynn

Kindle price: $9.99

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

by Tess Gerritsen

Kindle price: $4.99

It is a boiling hot Boston summer. Adding to the city’s woes is a series of shocking crimes, in which wealthy men are made to watch while their wives are brutalized. A sadistic demand that ends in abduction and death.

The pattern suggests one man: serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently removed from the city’s streets. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires. At least that’s what Detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her—literally and figuratively—she is determined to finally end Hoyt’s awful influence . . . even if it means receiving more resistance from her all-male homicide squad.

Rules of Prey (The Prey Series Book 1)

by John Sandford

Kindle price: $3.99

The killer was mad but brilliant.

He left notes with every woman he killed. Rules of murder: Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. Never carry a weapon after it has been used…So many rules to his sick, violent games of death.

But Lucas Davenport, the cop who’s out to get him, isn’t playing by the rules.

Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter Book 1)

by Thomas Harris

Kindle price: $8.99

FBI agent Will Graham once risked his sanity to capture Hannibal Lecter, an ingenious killer like no other. Now, he’s following the bloodstained pattern of the Tooth Fairy, a madman who’s already wiped out two families.

To find him, Graham has to understand him. To understand him, Graham has only one place left to go: the mind of Dr. Lecter.

Read full post on CrimeReads.com

Matt Salinger: ‘My father was writing for 50 years without publishing. That’s a lot of material’.

Among all the dispute and conjecture that has surrounded the life of JD Salinger, one mystery remains especially puzzling. What did he produce after ceasing to publish his writing in 1965, and will it ever be read? It seemed possible that more work would come to light after Salinger’s death in 2010. In 2013 a documentary and accompanying book claimed, among other things, to describe the contents of five new Salinger books that would be forthcoming by 2020 at the latest, yet here we are at his centenary and there has been no sign.

Read full post on The Guardian