Saved by my Kindle

Since my son has required reading for school, I've found it helpful to read the same book as him while sitting alongside him (he reads the paperback and I read on the Kindle) and we discuss the chapters after we finish them. Yesterday, my son's allergies were bothering him and his eyes were tearing, so I used the Text to Speech feature on my Kindle and the text was read aloud to us as we followed along. The Kindle has a computer generated voice, which had unnatural pauses and accelerations, along with some mispronunciations, which we found quite humorous. It was a great solution for a night in which I didn't know how effective reading was going to get done, and I didn't have to buy an audio book, which I had considered. Caveat emptor: you have to follow along by reading the text or it would be close to impossible to understand everything!