A visitor requested a single collection of all of my “You Should Read More” blog posts.  Here is the master index:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six

I intend to write one post per month, and will add them to the list as they are created.

Through this series of blog posts, I hope to encourage students to read more.  Improving our reading skills is the only reliable way to improve our TOEFL reading scores.  Too often students try to learn “tricks” and “strategies” for the reading section, when they ought to be learning how to read better. 

The blog posts recommend a variety of things to read.  Some of them include links to magazine articles I’ve read.  Others recommend fiction and non-fiction books that I’ve read and enjoyed, and even a few audio books.  Some of these will be easy to find online or at your local library.  Some of them will be harder to find.  Just keep clicking around until you get something that you enjoy.

And, of course, I’m always happy to read stuff that you recommend!  If you’ve got something to share, please leave a comment.

For this month’s column, I want to pivot a little bit.  I’m going to discuss audio books and where to get them.  I know this isn’t exactly reading but obviously some good audiobooks can help a lot with your English skills.

Fortunately, there are a few ways for students to access audiobooks for free (or cheap).  Here’s what you should know.

Option One – Libby

Those of you who live in Canada and the United States can get free audiobooks and ebooks from Libby.  This Android and iPhone app is used by public libraries to distribute both audiobooks and ebooks.  Just enter your library card number and you’re good to go.  And if you don’t have a library card… go and get one.  It’s easy.  The only drawback with Libby is that you can expect long wait times for popular titles.  Instructions for using the app can be found right here.  I have seen Libby used outside of North America, so take a moment to check with your library wherever you are.

Option Two – Hoopla

I love Hoopla.  I really love Hoopla.  This is sort of a “Netflix of Random Junk” used by Libraries to provide content to patrons (for free) with no waiting times.  It’s got TV shows, movies, ebooks, audiobooks, comics, music… all sorts of stuff.  A lot of it is random crap that is pretty hard to enjoy, but if you know what you are looking for there are some real gems here.  Again, you just need a library card number to access it.  Here’s the Play Store link.  It is also available for iPhones, of course.  This one is strictly Canada/US.

Option Three – Audible

Well, okay.  Now we get to the paid services.  The most popular is Amazon’s Audible.  This one costs money, but when you sign up you can get two free books right away.  You can cancel the subscription before paying anything and still keep your books.  If you sign up at this link, I’ll get a few dollars.  When you cancel, check the “it costs too much” box and they’ll probably give you more free books.

Option Four – The Rest

Uh, there are a few other audiobook sellers online.  I’ll try to summarize those in another post.  They all provide a few free books before you have to pay anything.

Some Stuff

This month I’ve been listening to short science fiction stories from 2019.  I like to listen to them as I run.   Below is a list of my favorites.  If you don’t want to get them in audio form, they are all available on Kindle and in paperback.

• Permafrost, by Alastair Reynolds. This is a really gripping time travel story. I was hooked right from the in media res opening – someone’s dead, someone else is a bit stabbed, and the plane is running out of gas. It’s a fairly short novella, so I’ll spare any specific details. Basically, though, the premise is that an ecological catastrophe has befallen the earth in the near future, and “World Health” is attempting to use a novel time travel method to recover from it. The best short SF from 2019 that I’ve come across, so far.  Note that the audiobook is narrated by a woman with a Russian accent.
• Desdemona and the Deep, by CSE Cooney. This is an interesting one. Sort of a comedy of manners in a fantasy setting. Our hero, Desdemona Mannering (get it?) is the sort of person who doesn’t appreciate art, but does collect a lot of artists. She goes to cocktail parties and fundraisers. She drinks a lot.  She’s shallow. Eventually, Desdemona discovers that her father is a really terrible businessman. She’s going to have to descend into the worlds below to undo all of his evils.  Imagine that Ivanka Trump has to save our souls.
• To be Taught, if Fortunate, by Becky Chambers.  There isn’t much of a plot here, but I recommend it to everyone preparing for the TOEFL.  It’s about a happy bunch of astronauts who visit four planets and observe the life on them.  Along the way, the narrator explains basic scientific concepts.  See?  It’s sort of like a TOEFL put into fiction.  The audiobook narrator even SOUNDS like a TOEFL listening section lecturer.  There is a mildly interesting sliver of story between planets, but it is pretty basic. 
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djeli Clark. Quite a lot of good stuff here! The depiction of an alternate Cairo (in the 1910s) where Egypt has become a world power is atmospheric as heck. We really get a sense of all the sounds, sights, smells and tastes of the place. The goal here seems to be the depiction of what a decolonized Egypt would look like at this critical juncture, but the story used to set up that backdrop is enjoyable. Depicting a pair of bureaucrats trying to deal with a the titular haunting (on a budget!) it moves briskly enough and is funny at the right moments. The climax hits with some more-than-welcome action.  This is a sequel to A Dead Djinn in Cairo, but you can read them in either order.  Note that the audiobook narrator has an middle-eastern accent.
• In An Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire.  Take Alice in Wonderland, Adam Smith and Proverbs 22:7.  Mix together in a blender.  You’ve got “In An Absent Dream.” 

That’s all for this month.  The February column will have short non-fiction articles about science topics.

Hey, I found a new library!  That’s a big deal. The thing is, I live in a working class part of Seoul with a somewhat poor library system.  That’s because we don’t really have money for libraries.  But I learned this month that my district (only) has reciprocal lending privileges with the city of Gwangmyeong (just across the river), which has very nice libraries.  That means this installment of “You Should Read More” has a few interesting titles.  This list includes one great book that was recommended by a reader.  If you’ve got any books that I ought to track down, please leave a comment below.  I’ll do my best to find a copy.

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First up, I read “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz.  You can read this for free via the Open Library (or you can just buy it on Amazon).   This is the one that was recommended to me by a reader.  I’m glad they took the time to make the suggestion, as this is an absolutely perfect book to sharpen your academic reading skills for the TOEFL.  The paradox mentioned in the title is the idea that the overwhelming number of choices we have in the modern world (and are free to pursue) cause us to feel stress and anxiety.  The author supposes that we would be happier with fewer choices to make or if we could learn to focus on choices that really matter. What makes this a great book for future TOEFLers is that the book describes a series of academic terms or concepts (one after another) and then illustrates them using examples from the author’s life, or by describing simple experiments.  It’s basically speaking question four… in book form.  Indeed, students might want to try listening to the audiobook version instead of reading the book!  Seriously, if I were tasked with making a practice test, I might grab this book and use it to create questions about “maximizing,” “second-order decisions,” “opportunity costs,” “omission bias,” “regret aversion,” and a half-dozen other concepts.  Indeed, I’m sure that most of these have appeared on the test at some point in the past 15 years.  For what it’s worth, the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease score for a random selection of text I tested is 53, which makes this book a little bit easier than a typical TOEFL reading passage.

Next, I read “The Martian,” which you can also find on the Open Library (or, again, on Amazon).  Yeah, this one is fiction… but I think it will help.  This is an example of hard science fiction, which means that accurate science is at the forefront of the story.  Indeed, there is a lot of science-y stuff in here.  And I’m pretty sure ETS has written a lot of questions about whether or not we can survive on Mars.  One of the third-party textbooks I use on a regular basis has an integrated writing question about the danger caused by Martian dust, a hazard which actually plays a pretty big role in the plot of this novel.  Meanwhile, for added fun you can watch the film adaptation which stars Matt Damon.  Note that the prose here is pretty easy to follow, which should make it a relaxing read.

Finally, I read the July-August issue of Analog Science Fiction.  I know, I know.  I need to stop mentioning these magazines.  They aren’t exactly easy to find, and might be a bit niche.  However, this one has some great stories.  It’s my favorite issue of the year (so far)! Keep an eye out for “Retention” by Alec Nevala-Lee, which is a funny little story about a fellow who is having a really hard time cancelling his Internet service; “Ennui” by Filip Wiltgren, which is a great story about an AI struggling to run the systems on a colony ship that spends hundreds of years in space (a favorite SF concept of mine); and  the final installment of “House of Styx,” which I mentioned in the blog a few weeks ago.

Okay.  Over and out for now.  I’ll have some more articles next time, and some short fiction you can read online.

Hey, it’s time for another installment of “You Should Read More!”  This blog series encourages you to increase your TOEFL reading score by reading more stuff.  By reading stuff, you can develop your reading skills. The theme here is “comprehension before strategies.”  

But not only does reading stuff develop your skills, it also increases your ability to concentrate on dense academic content like what appears on the TOEFL.  Personally, I find that unless I force myself to read academic content on a regular basis my mind starts to wander when I am faced with a challenging text.  The problem isn’t that I don’t understand the text, but rather that I can’t focus on it.

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This month I read the September issue of National Geographic.  I love this magazine.  Every month I get a ton of great articles, and the cost of subscribing is pretty low.  Right now it’s just $19 per year in the USA, and $59 per year worldwide.  Or you can just read most of the articles for free online.  This month there is a great story about ostrich behavior that I really enjoyed.  And it goes without saying that ETS loves to write questions about animal behavior.

This month I also read two issues of Analog Science Fiction.  Now, you’re probably rolling your eyes at me now… but hear me out!  The issues contained the first two parts of a serialized novel called “House of Styx.”  The novel is about colonists on Venus who live in a station sort of like the “station… floating in Venus’s atmosphere, like a balloon, rather than standing on its surface” described in the integrated writing question of TPO 40!  The science here is well done, and the characters are sympathetic. If you are interested,  don’t waste your time trying to get the magazines pictured here – just get the Kindle version from Amazon. 

Next, I’m going to send you to an actual TOEFL book.  I reviewed Pamela Sharpe’s “TOEFL Practice Exercises” last week and observed that the book has somewhat inaccurate questions.  But it does have thirty-four reading passages about topics that commonly appear on the TOEFL.  They are also at the same difficulty level and are of the same length as what you’ll get on the test.  You’ll never find another collection like it.  And you can treat the inaccurate questions as a sort of “skill building” thing that forces you to concentrate a bit more than you really want to.  I know I am really mean when I write about TOEFL books, but I do want to stress that I appreciate the effort made by their authors.  I could never write such a monumental collection of content.  So check it out.

Finally, the late-August issue of “Science News” has an article about a certain beetle that gets eaten by frogs but is still alive after it gets pooped out.  Wild.  Fortunately you can read that article online.  Meanwhile, if you want something closer to what you will find on the TOEFL, the issue also has an article about how smallpox affected Vikings more than 1000 years ago.  

You know, a lot of students ask for “strategies” to increase their score in the reading section of the TOEFL.  Sadly, the strategies are always the same – read the questions first, avoid answer choices with superlatives,  skip the hard questions and come back to them… blah, blah, blah.

Those sorts of strategies help, but only a little bit.  A better approach is comprehension before strategies.  That means you should try to improve your overall reading ability before taking the test.  If you truly understand what you read, you won’t need to use any “strategies” on the test… or will only need to use them for a few questions.

How can you improve your reading skills?  By reading more!

Today I’m happy to help by beginning my one hundred part series that will highlight a few fun things you can read to improve your reading skills.  I will focus mostly on non-fiction, but I will throw in a few pieces of fiction now and then.  Some of the recommendations will be available online, but others will need to be purchased.  Most should be available at your local library if you are in an English-speaking country already.  I will only recommend stuff that I have read within the preceding month, but I am open to recommendations!

Let’s see how it goes.

First up, I finally read Freakonomics.  This is a classic, and all of your English teachers have probably recommended it already.  It is also available in the English section of most libraries around the world that I have visited.  This is a really fun work of non-fiction that uses economic analysis to study topics not usually looked at by economists.  Like sumo wrestling.  And drug dealing.  There is also a section on what makes real estate agents so frustrating which made me think a lot about TOEFL teachers.  If you read this book, let me know if you spot that connection as well.  Truly, this is a perfect example of mainstream, fun and accessible non-fiction.  This book is available via the Open Library.

Speaking of fun and easy non-fiction, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “Talking to Strangers.”  This book is about miscommunication, and our inability to interact well with people we are not familiar with.  I don’t think I grasped the nuance of the central thesis here, but I still enjoyed the book.  This is a “ripped from the headlines” sort of thing, and you’ll recognize a lot of the main subjects, even if you aren’t American – Sandra Bland, Amanda Knox, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Chandler & Monica, Bernie Madoff, etc.  Like “Freakonomics” it isn’t the deepest of non-fiction, but it is a really fun way to boost your reading skills.  Note also that the audiobook version is also wonderful (better, probably), as it combines music, audio from actual interviews and news clips with the author’s narration of the text.

Finally, I read the mid-August issue of Science News.  If you are going to subscribe to one science magazine to boost your reading skills, this is the one.  Yeah, it is mostly about COVID nowadays.  But there this issue includes an article about the discovery of stone artifacts which is just like a TOEFL integrated writing question!  Some scientists think the stone artifacts are proof that humans reached America earlier than thought… while other scientists think they are not proof!  There are even three reasons given by each side!  I think you can read that article at this link.  If that link doesn’t work, you can find the same story in National Geographic.  Meanwhile, this very short article about dinosaurs with feathers caught my eye, since that’s been a common topic on the TOEFL for a long time.

Okay, that’s all for now, but I will be back in a few weeks with additional recommendations.  I’ll try to toss some fiction into the list at that time.