sotolf

yeah.. I use a kindle

It was a gift, so don't shoot me. I know the kobo readers are freer, but it's what I have, so it's what I'll use, I don't believe in making more electronic trash, and it still works after 3 years or so of use, so I'll use it until it's no longer working, and then the next time I'll look into getting something a bit less unfree :)

Reading experience

An e-ink book reader has been such a great addition to my life, I used to love reading, but then fell off it for a long time, but then I got this thing, and it has gotten be back into the groove again, and I've read about 100 books again over the last couple of years.

The analog e-ink screen really feels very different from an O?L[CE]D screen, my eyes tend to tire out from looking at them, but the completely different technology is really not comparable to those screens, it feels close to reading on paper, and the screen is front-lit rather than back-lit, so you don't have your eyeballs blasted with light every time you look at the thing, which is great for reading before going to sleep for example.

Also I like to read sci-fi books, and they have a tendency to be quite physically big, one of my favourite authours Peter F. Hamilton seldomly writes books with less than 1000 pages, and having them on this smaller thing instead of carrying a big bastard of a paper book around is a lot more comfortable.

The downside of it is that it has to be charged now and then, but the e-ink display, and the really slow processor hardware in it results in me having to recharge mine only once a month or so, and I'm using it usually for a couple of hours a day.

Book management.

For getting books onto my device, and to handle my library I'm using calibre and it's a really great program to deal with books, it deals with converting the books into a format that the e-reader can understand, and it does its work very well, and is simple to use. You can also get some plugins in it to rip drm off books, which can be helpful as well if you want to back up stuff you might have bought in a store that puts drm on books.

Would I reccommend an e-reader for others.

Yeah, I would, of course if you are a person that prefers reading books on paper it wouldn't be optimal, and if you're an audiobook kind of person, then it doesn't make sense, but if you enjoy reading it's absolutely something worth giving a try.

Reading on this thing has made me read more, it's so easy to just chuck into a backpack or bag, and it's always with me, and I have the choice to read one of the ~800 books I have on my device rather than playing around on my phone or something else, and the convenience of always having it there actually makes me more likely to do just that.

Another good thing for me is availability of books, I'm an expat, so here in austria getting books in german is easy, getting english or even worse norwegian books, well it's not going to be such a nice experience, and your choice of books is going to be a lot thinner. Having the option to buy books on the net (or aquiring them by other means) have really made it a lot less stressful on me to get something interesting to read.

Getting an e-reader really rekindled my joy of reading, and it has become one of the favourite electronic devices that I have.