Playing around with my surprisingly much loved Kindle, I came across the experimental heading in the menu,which opened up from the home page. I'm not sure how long I've had my Kindle, which is fact my second one, after Mike accidentally stood a chair on the last one and then sat down. No way a kindle could stand that type of assault, so Kindle 2 arrived and has survived.
The experimental heading covers Web Browser, Play MP3 which you can access directly from the same menu page, and then something called Text-to-Speech, which providing there isn't a rights issue enables the Kindle to you read your book to you.
At first I couldn't find how to turn Text-to-Speech on. But having found out, I was also very pleased to learn how to switch it off. My Kindle being an older version has the Text-to-Speech facility on the same page as screen rotation options. Don't know if it now features on the ordinary menu page of more recent versions of the Kindle, but anyway, first off I tried Wuthering Heights.
For Star Trek fans like me, there are loads of memorable quotations in all the films, but the text-to-speech experience reminded me particularly of McCoy in The Voyage Home, where he's in a hospital, dressed up as a doctor, and finds and elderly patient lying on a hospital bed in the corridor. 'What's the matter with you?' he asks. ' Kidney dialysis'. 'Kidney dialysis!' says McCoy.'What is this, the dark ages?".
Perfectly matches - at least for me - the quality of the Kindle text-to-speech experience. The dark ages of computer voice reproduction. Monotone expression, that completely ignores any punctuation and being computerised requires no breathing, so every sentence runs into the next. Then unfortunately, I tried Le Quatrième Mur, by Sorj Chalandon, which our bookclub is reading for our next meeting. Big mistake. All the above problems, but additionally, no French accent, terrible computerised pronunciation, with the words overlapping each other. Unintelligible at times. For example: guidé nos pas, becomes guided nose pad. Il était tout petit becomes El tout paddy.
Hilarious and excruciating at the same time. Sorry Kindle, but someone should have got in touch with Stephen Hawking's team.
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