Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

in other news, the biography of thomas hardy i am currently reading has a thing where none of the words ending in "x" have the following space. "Sixmen", "Foxand", "boxand"...

I was happy to find that Zlibrary is still going, though I had to install Tor to access it. Probably the closest I've ever got to using "dark web"!

annas-archive.org is still going - tor unnecessary

got fed up of the lack of covers on penguin classics - sometimes they don't include them, if they do they are the wrong shape for my 3:4 ereader. so wrote something that'll let me generate them using a 600x600 image and mocking the rest. and it lets me do crap like this

http://www.koogy.clara.co.uk/feersum.jpg

(there are other generators out there if you search, that's where i got the font details from, but they maintain the aspect ratio and that's exactly what i needed to change)

zlib doesn't need Tor anymore, apart from a few books that have had requests to be removed, which are now only on tor

xp image opens in flagging, doesn't show for me on the web for some reason. anyway, nice :)

(it's linked from my personal webspace rather than, say, imgur. i do worry about that image being downloaded everytime someone views this page, but hey, it's what web servers are for)

that’s awesome, koogs

Has anyone tried the Boox Palma some people are now raving about? The phone format is both tempting and worrying

https://shop.boox.com/products/palma

um, in two minds about that. it looks ok of itself, but it's an even worse aspect ratio (imo) than the kobo (which is a touch shorter than a book). it's also twice what i'd want to pay (probably because of a pointless camera and microphone)

824 x 1648 (300ppi, 1:2) palma
vs
1072 x 1448 (300ppi, 6:8) clara

Why not just make an actual e-ink phone if you're going to do that?

i'd love to see the super refresh (you can watch videos on it!) but yeah not sure what market / purpose they're going for, it's obviously way overspecced (and small) for an ereader.

they quote a bigger diagonal screen size than the clara but that aspect ratio skews things

I could see the appeal of an e-ink phone (especially if it means that the battery life is significantly longer, not sure about that though).

I feel like somebody who wants something more portable to do their reading is just going to use their actual phone rather than carry around two similarly sized devices even if the phone screen isn't quite as good for reading as e-ink is.

xxp to myself

Might be worth watching this video on an e-ink monitor before committing to the phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZXrJRpA0Jw

As a fortysomething with increasingly iffy vision, I don't find e-ink noticeably better than reading on my phone - my Kindle still looks a bit sparkly and overly-contrasty, even though it's noticeably better than a phone on a sunny day. But my impression is that the resolution/DPI of the text itself is still pretty poor even on the most recent e-ink readers.

Chief benefits of the Kindle for me are:
-- Reading big Victorian novels is a bit easier on my back than carrying a big Victorian novel
-- Every non-reading experience on the Kindle is bad, which keeps me focused on reading
-- Useful on holidays and stops me packing 8 books in a suitcase

But I don't find the letter-and-sentence-reading experience itself any better

plus:
-- you can fall asleep whilst reading without creasing pages / facial papercuts
-- backlight means you don't need the main bedroom light on / can read between bands
-- ebooks are cheaper / free

minus:
-- ocr errors
-- amazon drm / hegemony

plus:
-- choice of fonts (serif for victorian novels, sans for sci fi) / text size

-- Every non-reading experience on the Kindle is bad, which keeps me focused on reading

Btw, this would basically be the main positive of an e-ink phone. Much like the reason why I am sometimes tempted to just buy a flip phone it would prevent me from wasting time doing dumb shit.

https://play.google.com/store/books

Real Life Stories:

Matthew Perry
Prince Harry
Alan Partridge...

what is a good ereader if I want something that works with Adobe DRM (for library borrowing etc.) and I have no interest in buying books from Amazon, or it doing anything other than showing me words in the right order.

although audiobook functionality might be good

totally lost as most ereaders have gone out of business, and I dont even know if the Nook is still going and sold in UK.

cheap please as this is just for a few cases where it easier to borrow digitally, or I want a searchable reference.

kobo works with adobe and public libraries in the uk (and us, canada, and others) - https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017814074-Add-eBooks-with-Adobe-Digital-Editions

the cheapest is the clara b&w, £120.

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/p/apps 8)

i'd've said kobo was the only game in town but there's boox and pocketbook also, but all quite expensive. maybe an app is the way to go.

(i've been reading on my phone recently and the form factor is a bit odd and the screen often turns off between page changes if you read slowly. the kindle app didn't want to know on my (aged) hudl2 tablet though, wouldn't get beyond the cover (comixology app is the same))

You could probably pick up an older or second hand Kindle fairly cheaply. The newer ones have some nice bells & whistles like backlights and waterproofing and larger screen size etc but nothing that's really essential to the reading experience.

And if you go the app route, I use Moon Reader on my (Android) phone which is pretty great

Kobo Mini (2010ish?) is a great form factor... wonder if there's still a decent used supply on eBay. Can't believe they still haven't made one as small.

I'm still pretty happy with my kobo clara that I bought about 6 years ago now. I use it for library books all the time and it works reasonably well for that.

thanks all, Kobo looks good. I notice that audiobooks have to be KOBO format.... not mp3 or anything... why do they always have to put in some proprietary BS in every product now...

not a big dealbreaker, but I'd be interested in how pdf/comic formats look in the colour versions. the fact that there are no example screens or anything pretty much tells me though...

would still love if they made a kobo mini with a backlight but i doubt that'll ever happen