#mb chatter

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

Did I finish reading a book on my "to complete" or on the "tbr" list? No.

Did I buy other books? Yes.

In my defense, one was 4 bucks and the other 1,95. Less than 6 bucks both: I had to grab them! (also bc I never find any Pratchett books in bookstores, not even the italian translation).

Maybe I'll swap the current "to complete" book I keep taking w/ me to work (and that I keep not finishing) and pick one of these. Maybe Small Gods.

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

I was thinking to get one of those book tracker apps bc I can't rely only on remembering to update my spreadsheet and the posts here yo keep track of stuff... and also bc I'd like to add the books I already finished reading, to organise them better (lack of space in my room, so some books got uhhh displaced and I forget where they are) but I have no clue which one to use. I searched a bit and the ones that look promising are Hardcover, The StoryGraph, Bookshelf and BookMory.

Does anyone know any of these and could tell me their opinion? Thanks!

Edit: I also saw PageBound on some posts on here... too many options!

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

Some language apps that I've tried

Not really a proper review thingy, but more like thoughts upon trying some stuff and deciding to keep some notes to not forget and end up picking stuff I did not like the first time.

All these are my personal opinions on them, so they might not align with yours. 👍🏻

Colour key (?) I made for these notes:

red: I'd avoid this app

yellow: meh, not a fan but there's worse i guess

pink: maybe it's better to try this when you already have some basics of the language, and not from scratch

green: I like this app

blue: not bad, like- good but nothing to write home about

HiLocal Appeared like a nice language learning app, with the chance of some language exchange feel... but as soon as I opened it, it shoved me their AI in the face for learning and it irked me a bit. Deleted account and uninstalled.

LanguageCrush Unless you already have some basics for your target language, it's not a good app for starting out. Better for practicing after having already a decent level of knowledge in a language.

Koryo Korea A pinch of basics are needed for this app. The courses feel a bit clunky and mainly give you some vocabulary and phrases but doesn't feel like it's helping learning. Better for memorising, maybe.

Teuida A good app. The lessons start from the basics and the video lessons where they simulate a real life situation where you'd use the words and sentences you have learnt. Mainly voice/audio focused, so it kinda helps with figuring out the pronounciation... even though the voice recognition sometimes doesn't really work, and makes you repeat something until the mic catches it.

Busuu I'd say it's better than Duolingo before it become ai-powered shit. The free version letsyou follow the main course for a language and only a few things are behind the paywall. There are ads, yes, but it's only promoting their paid version and usually only before and/or after doing one of the lessons. There's a little community-like thing where you can correct other peoples' exercises and viceversa.

HiNative Similar name to HiLocal but afaik it's a different thing. It looked kinda nice because you could ask questions/clarifications to people who know your target langued natively, but I uninstalled it quickly because unless you have already some basics it's not easy to start from scratch with this app.

HelloTalk I wanted to try a "language exchange" app that wasn't Tandem (it wasn't that great years ago and I heard that now it became worse) and I picked this one. I feel like if you're fem/register as fem you might have more chances of finding someone to chat bc many use these kinds of apps as dating-app-lookalike, but I tried registering an account under my deadname and I still had no interactions LMAO Feels more like a social network than a language app. There are some stuff in-app for learning, but I didn't really enjoy them when I tried them. There are voice chats (didn't do much other then lurking in one for a bit, so I have no opinion on those) and you at least can avoid interacting with the damn ai, because apparently they are everywhere now.

TalkIn Another language exchange app. Picked this because it had many stars on the app store, but weirdly no reviews written (maybe deleted? idk but it wasn't the first app with this issue). You can sign in with FB, Google acc, phone and mail. I tried the registration by mail because I didn't want to connect my google account, but then got an error message kept popping up. I uninstalled and left a negative review addressing this issue. The developer said they disabled email regisation to avoid bulk registrations and people bothering the community already in there... while this is understandable, I do not like an app who forces me to connect my personal account to register. And if you remove the option for mail registration, you should remove the option from the main page, duh.

Learn Korean! Hangul Okay. Nothing much to say about this, it's good for learning/reviewing how to write the korean alphabet. It's a bit picky with how you write the strokes for the letters.

QLango Appeared like a valid option, but I noticed that the difficulty of the various levels (A1 to B2) didn't feel regular as they should be. In a Korean A1 course there were more things you'd have to already know before starting out, while the French B2 was easier (imho, I have only B1 level and haven't practiced French in like a dozen years) than it should have been. And there's ai here, too. You can spot it only when completing an exercise (in the pop up that appears there's a "ask the ai" thing) or opening the sidebar menu with the buttong to go ask DeepSeek questions. Deleted account and uninstalled.

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

Should I make a post with my current "started but still not finished" list and the "to be read" list, so I can be pessur- ehm motivated to read them? 🤔

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

Pondering over making yet another sideblog, to keep all my reading/reviews/anything bookish separated from this studyblr and from old main writeblr 🤔

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

In the end, I picked PageBound and Libib.

One for a more uh- social-like approach and the other for cataloguing.

I had fun scanning barcodes and adding all the books! (At least, the ones I have in my room and the ones still in reachable places). But some are older editions with no barcode/isbn and I have to add them manually... and got tired after a bit lmao

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

Sometimes I lurk in r/specevo and r/worldbuilding bc sometimes I found neat resources I could use for my projects, and also I often saw people helping with concepts or giving feedbacks to them.

So I thought "maybe i could ask for help with this idea i had, since it feels too similar to [media i read recently]" and lo and behold: a few upvotes but no help!

[mbtriestolearnstuff]

Good thing I don't have saved on my tablet the credentials of jstor or I'd be following a rabbit hole instead of using my spare time (slow day at work) to complete reading a book