Editing Openai/696ee667-0f5c-800f-bff4-40d6fcaaafa7 (section)

=== Assistant: Books are stubbornly physical. ===
Books are stubbornly physical. Paper does not hum. But you can absolutely make a physical book speak with a little technological ventriloquism.

The cleanest path is text to speech. Use your phone’s camera to scan pages and let software read them aloud. On iPhone, the built in Notes app can scan text. Once the text is recognized, turn on Speak Screen in Accessibility and the phone will read it out loud in a very decent robot voice. Android has similar tools through Google Lens and Select to Speak.

If you want something more purpose built, apps like Speechify, NaturalReader, or Voice Dream Scanner are designed exactly for this. You photograph the page, it converts it to text, and then reads it aloud. Voice Dream in particular is popular with neurodivergent readers because you can control speed, voice, and chunking so it does not overload working memory.

Another route is to check whether the audiobook already exists. Many physical books have legal audiobook versions you can borrow for free through Libby or Hoopla using a library card. That saves you time and avoids scanning page by page, which can get tedious fast.

There is also a hybrid approach that some people love. Read along while listening. Scan a chapter, listen to it while following the physical text. This doubles comprehension for a lot of brains and reduces fatigue.

One thing to be clear about. Scanning a book you own for personal use is generally fine. Sharing the audio or text is not. Keep it personal and you are on solid ethical ground.

The deeper idea here is that books are information containers, not sacred paper objects. Your brain does not care how the words arrive, only that they arrive in a form it can digest. Turning ink into sound is not cheating. It is adaptive intelligence in action.