Would I be converted to digital reading if I just got an ereader and torrent all the books I could ever want? Im willing to spend up to $200. What would I lose besides this? Is it as comfy as I'm told or is paper reading ultimately superior for reasons I don't yet realize?
What even is the best ereader?
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I have an ereader and barley use it, I still way prefer physical books, just is not the same to me.
I bought a kindle after hemming and hawing for months, and it's the best thing I ever did.
getting your shit in a twist about which one is better or worse is just annoying. they're all basically the same thing. Just make sure it has a light, because that's convenient as hell. the only upgrade you get by spending more is the new audiobook function, but why bother, when it's easier to just put them on your phone, where all your music already is.
You lose sense of reading and it becomes like text walls on reddit.
+ too many books on waiting list > indirect fatigue.
Don't spend that, get a used one off eBay. I hate the touchscreen ones so I got a Gen4 and it has physical paddles. I got it for £30.
Get that and pirate from LibGen and you will soon use it when you get a few of the hard to find/out of print/expensive volumes on there.
Just do not try using PDF, it is bloody terrible on e-ink.
I used to read a lot on a an e-reader but nowadays I hardly ever use it. Everything I read is actual physical books now. The fact is e-readers are just simply very clumsy to use, it's very slow to browse or jump around, search for passages, etc. I guess they're fine if you just want to blaze through a book but otherwise they're not great. The only thing they have going on for them is they can be used to read in low/no light places. This is purely personal but for some reason I didn't really get much out of the books I just pirated off the net whereas holding and reading a book I get from a used book store or whatever makes the whole process of getting into the book much more enjoyable. I have since purchased many of the books I read on the e-reader.
if you have a local library, go there and ask if they have some for you to to borrow. It'll give you some time to see how they work for you.
My library offers them for 14 days in exchange for a collateral
I have kindle, it’s slow, small and i think my eyes hurt bc of it. Just buy iPad, even iPhone is ok desu
DO NOT DO THIS:
Love mine. Don't download every book you can think of, you'll get decision paralysis. Just keep a few on it.
Some people don't like them. Look on eBay and get a used Paperwhite, they can be had for about 25 bucks and if you don't like it you can sell it for what you paid.
i have a different e-reader question. assuming i don't intend to torrent everything because of personal guilt/fear of being caught, is there some platform I pretty much have to get to be able to reliably read all of the books I want? like, must I go Kindle, or will Nook or some other competitor have basically everything as well?
DRM is a spook. Every ebook is crossplatform if you de-DRM and convert the file with calibre.
But really just get over it IP is also a spook.
If you don't love holding physical books and having a shelf then it doesn't really matter
Yes
I do the same. I don't have an e-reader, I just read on my phone but I am somebody who loves reading in bed under his blanket. This would be impossible with a physical book though. Also, I mostly use libgen to download books and yeah, there are some books that can't be torrented. But this doesn't mean that I'm forbidden of reading physical books.
Don’t get gen 4. lol all idiots need to at least get the kindle PAPER WHITE or any of them that have a backlight. It’s a completely game changer. Don’t get an LCD screen though stick with the E-ink
For me it's simple: it saves money (this compounds over time), time, and space, at the expense of the feeling of a book. Also a bit slower to navigate the book.
For me, as a student living in an apartment, it's 100% worth it.
To clarify I have the kindle oasis.
>(this compounds over time)
if you get your books off of libgen then you recoup the price in about half an hour. I've saved about $10000 since I got my first kindle.
I have read maybe 50 books on my kindle. I have easily saved hundreds of dollars by now.
My pussy wrists can't support a book for long periods of time + if I read with a book I have to roll over to turn the lights off. With my ebook I just drop it down the side of my bed and pass out
I dislike not being able to easily flick back to previous pages. Plus if you're reading a history book you went get the nice colourful illustrations in the middle of the book that you often do.
just buy a kobo clara hd and get your books from b-ok, import thru calibre and call it a day
imagine paying a publisher for the works of some dead fuck lmao
also nobody gives a fuck about the difference you wont even notice it when you're reading because you're fucking reading
exactly! the money you save is actually ridiculous.
Backlights on these things completely ruin the whole point, I want it as analogue as possible.
then get a book.
'the whole point' of an ereader is convenience
first off
do not buy an ipad. Incase you didn't know, some e-readers have an 'e-ink' screen that replicates the look of paper so that it doesn't strain your eyes. Pic rel
Second off, an e-reader is very convenient: reading in low-light situations, being able to pirate e-books and store potentially hundreds of thousands of them on one device, being able to carry it around with you easily, etc. It will never replace the sensation of reading a physical book but you don't have to choose either/or
I'd recommend getting a bigger one; Why? In 'The Elements of Typographic Style' by Bringhurst, he says that the best amount of characters (letters) per-line is about 61 (anywhere from 51 to 68 is okay, but 61 per line is the best; enough characters so that the lines don't feel choppy as your eye moves across and down to the next line, but not long enough for you to lose focus while following the line from one end of the page to the other). It's worth noting that this is the guideline most larger publishers (Penguin, Everyman's, etc) use when typesetting their books.
Now, you don't want the font size to be too small because it will strain your eyes; Most printed books use a font size of around 11pts or 12pts for the main body text; this is a comfortable, readable size (Assuming you're using a normal serif font meant for reading body text, like Garamond, Janson, Times, Gallimard, Bembo, Palatino, Minion, etc).
Now, you want an e-reader whose screen is wide enough to have about 61 characters per line of text at about 11pts; the standard Kobo Clara HD, for example, has a 3.5 x 4.75 screen; this is not wide enough to accommodate the specifications I just laid out; most of the lower end e-readers' screens are not big enough to read comfortably without making the font smaller or increasing the margins and making the lines of text shorter (reducing the amount of characters per-line).
It's also worth nothing that, for some retarded reason, e-readers measure their screens diagonally, like computer monitors; so a "6 inch screen" is actually only "3.5 x 4.75" inches. This article here
>wiki.mobileread.com
lays out how big the screens actually are (for example, an advertised "9 inch screen" will actually be around 5 x 7 or thereabouts).
Ok, to get 61 characters per line of text at 11pts on an e-reader, you will want a screen that is at least 4.5 inches wide; that means /at least/ an "8 inch screen" according to advertisements. That's also without margins: the text will have to go right up to the edges of the screen to fit; if you want margins (at least 1/2 inch on either side), you will need a screen that is at least 5.5 inches wide, which means a 9.7 or 10 inch screen (or larger). E-readers with a 10 inch screen are upwards of $400 brand new, so yeah, you might wanna buy used, but I guarantee the reading experience will be much better. Also, get a Kobo if you can, and stay away from Kindles and Nooks
This, fuck publishers
I got all my books on my phone I don't know why did you feel the need to buy that lol
The convenience is the massive library on the device itself. The reading experience should remain unchanged.
How is the experience though? I read a pdf once that I got sent through whatsapp and it was pretty abominable. Have you found some way to make it better?
I'm a person that generally despises all sorts of online services and DRM schemes. For that reason I recommend a Kobo if you must buy an e-reader because they're straightforward to use with files free of DRM that you can actually *own* and store wherever you like. That being said, the physical book is a rare example of a form of enjoyment that requires no electricity or any external service and I encourage people to buy physical books for that reason. Buying physical books has the wonderful side-effect of limiting the amount of trash books you consume because one doesn't want shitty books lying around. Quality over quantity.
do not get a kindle, get an e-reader that supports epub files. Much better selection available online.
Usually the books are in EPUB format and I use Readera or Lithium to read them
I just read on my phone. I bring it anywhere in my pocket and the metal back feels nice just holding it.
LCD screen fucks your eyes. Ereaders with backlights solve this problem
Kindle supports all file types now. No it doesn’t. It a
I bought a Kobo Forma and it's facilitated so much more reading for me. Books are easy to get, physically easier to read, there's a backlight to read at night, it weighs nothing. I love it. Only downside is that it's really only good for reading a book from beginning to end, good luck jumping back around or god forbid reading a textbook or something
I got a kobo clara hd and the ‘light bleed’ at the bottoms kinda
should I return it and try again? Or are all of them like that
I was considering buying the kobo clara hd, which one would you recommand instead? Are there ereaders that are bigger and around the same price range?
ReadEra rocks just sayin
Don't know how much a Clara HD is but I have a aura h2o. The battery lasts for months on end. It just runs koreaader. Just slap mobi epub fb2 whatever pdf on it. I don't really read any other way.
The biggest downside to me is that notetaking and whatnot is effectively impossible to do at any reasonable level (compared to hard copies). I would be using my ereader every single day otherwise, but for books that i both dont care to take notes in and dont own physically, its my go-to. E-ink is dope and the backlight is so useful that its worth buying for that alone.
They're worth having, but definitely don't buy a new one. Check out thrift stores - I go pretty often and there's virtually always eReaders there. I got a Kobo with backlight from Value Village for I think $15 that works flawlessly with koreader (strongly recommended btw). I'd say I still do 95% of my reading on physical books, but man for that 5%, being able to easily read in the dark in bed, look up words with a built in dictionary, jump back and forth to endnotes with zero effort, it is really fantastic.
baste
I'd totally recommend it, even being a real book collector that loves good edition's tangible feeling.
I live in a country where sunlight beams everywhere, and kobo clara hd screen looks brighter in lowest brightness and shined by the sun, pretty much like a book. Also a lot of epublibre and delphi classics can be found on libgen and as long as it's epub format you can adjust margins, letter size, dictionary, annotations, google search. Have never ran out of battery. It's just convenient, another important trait is that reading while eating or taking a shit is easier. You can get one of those adjustable desk phone holders and have it hands free while playing vidya or smth.
source?
>pussy wrists
jfc, what are you, that hipster guy holding an avocado or something??
I read and buy more physical books since I bought an e-reader, but also more than 2/3 of the books I read are digital now
They're slow as shit. They feel like 90s tech.
I bought a kobo libra 2 and it was the best decision I ever made
The physical vs. electronic argument is a pointless waste of time, it's not a choice between the two.
Your local library should offer them.
I own an e-reader and loved it, but I have a huge problem with it: durability.
I have purchased a Vivlio Inkpad 3 because fuck amazon, and it did me good service. But after a measly 6 months, the screen broke and it became virtually unusable. I'm not one to break my electronics though, I never the cracked the screen of even a single one of my phones. Luckily, I was able to get reimbursed and bought a new one, but six month later, the screen broke again. I'm in the process of getting it replaced.
So, what is it? Are all e-readers this fragile, or are Inkpads crap? Should I not store my e-reader in a bag? Should I try another type of e-reader?
I can not imagine breaking the screen of my Kobo.
I think I should specify, it's not like the screen was cracked after some kind of shock. One day I simply take my e-reader out of my shelf after not using it for one week, turn it on, and there's a large black and white square at the top left of my screen, blocking a quarter of the first paragraph. No trace of shock, no mark on the screen, but the pixels are all fucked up. I can't imagine this was caused by any kind of mishandling on my part.
Should've gone with Amazon. My Kindle is almost 5 years old with no issues.
I hate Amazon, Kindle screens are too small and they can't use ePub.
Are there any e-readers that are durable, bigger than 7" and that can read ePubs?
Kobo has 8" and 10" models
Onyx Boox has a 13" model too I think
you can get a Boox Note Air 10.3" for like $350 used
I find the two feed into each other. If I don't know if a book is worth owning (or if I'm poor, or if I don't have space, or if I don't want to wait) I read it on the kobo. If I like it, it goes on the list of hardcovers to own.
Guess I'll try a Kobo next time then. Thanks for the tip.
>if I just got an ereader and torrent all the books I could ever want?
you would save literally thousands of dollars
The true patrician e-reader pipeline
>buy large (9" or larger) e-reader with good PDF support
>literally only read PDFs of scanned books stolen from Internet Archive and Google Books (or even buy a camera and some glass and scan books you borrowed from a library yourself)
>make the PDFs even better by making them text-searchable with something like DangerZone
>no need to worry about bad formatting or errors in e-pubs because scanned PDFs retain the same layout and typeface as printed books