Trouble with e-readers
2024 Oct 03
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Trouble with e-readers
My grandfather had a trunk full of books, and I remember as a kid opening that and taking out a book and spending the afternoon trying to decipher the text in it. Even though I didn't always understand everything, I was fascinated by the idea of reading texts - the information density and the act of reading that makes consuming it possible. In college, I suddenly had access to a huge library and the time to go through some books. At some point I invested in a kindle, and the number of books read per year jumped remarkably up. It was amazing to read on this light device with its paper-like e-ink screen. I read day and night of things that blew my mind, things I was & wasn't prepared for - Selfish Gene and other books by Richard Dawkins; Notes from Underground & Brother's Karamazov; books by Italo Calvino, and Camus' books on existentialism and absurdity. 12 years and many books later, I definitely prefer a physical book - the cover design, pages, font etc. are all unique choices which gives a book certain personality. Going through the bookshelf, I can pick out a book resonating with my mood and complex of thoughts, and find something relevant there. But the power, the efficiency of carrying thousands of books in a tiny device is alluring to the engineer and minimalist in me. In our home, we have 3 bookshelf and even though my wife (who is also a fellow bookworm) has banned me from buying more physical books, I could continue to indulge in buying books with kindle.
Few years back, I updated to Kindle Oasis, and it's an amazing device with a premium feel. I'm glad to have splurged a bit of extra cash to get the best model at that time. But as the cost of accumulating books went up, it became more pressing to address some of the problems Kindle posed.
First there are DRM restrictions, which basically means that this particular amazon account is the only authentication context in which the book can be read. This means that I cannot use a non-kindle ebook device and port over the kindle-store-bought books. That started giving uncomfortable vibes, but since the ebook file format was MOBI (an open format), it was possible to remove the DRM, making it work across different devices. But then Amazon introduced their own format - azw, a proprietary format, and it became tougher to remove DRM. Additionally, there are legal implications of removing DRM, so it's probably not a good idea to do that.
In this context, the question became - do I really own my books?
I started seeing reports of Amazon closing accounts and the user consequently losing their ebooks. What if amazon closes down? What if for some reason I want to delete my amazon account? Or the government bans amazon in my country?
Apart from some troubling questions of ebook ownership, I also started reading more pdf textbooks, and kindle's screen size is not conducive for it. The lack of epub support since kindle's inception was always a glaring issue, after all a large volume of books on the internet is in the epub format.
Last year I got interested in e-notebooks and started to research. I ordered a OnyxBoox NoteAir2, the writing experience was good, though it didn't become an enduring part of my workflow. The reading experience on the other hand was superb – Onyx supports PDFs much better. The 10.3" inch screen is perfect for reading them. Since it also supports EPUBs, it's possible to buy ebooks from different stores like kobo.com which do not have device/ecosystem lock-in, so I'm truly owning the ebooks. I've been using NoteAir2 for about 1 hour everyday, and it's been comfortable enough. Compared to kindle device the ‘paper feel' of the screen is not great, but that might have something to do with the protective screen (which is something the clumsy me needs). Another feature I like is to be able to write notes on the sides of the margins.
So far I'm happy with the switch. I'm back to doomscrolling goodreads and playing around with the cart in kobo.com; I'm still a hoarder, and hunting and buying books (which I might not ever read) is still something that soothes me. Maybe I should talk to someone about this. But for now, I'm set.
Trouble with e-readers
2024 Oct 03 See all postsMy grandfather had a trunk full of books, and I remember as a kid opening that and taking out a book and spending the afternoon trying to decipher the text in it. Even though I didn't always understand everything, I was fascinated by the idea of reading texts - the information density and the act of reading that makes consuming it possible. In college, I suddenly had access to a huge library and the time to go through some books. At some point I invested in a kindle, and the number of books read per year jumped remarkably up. It was amazing to read on this light device with its paper-like e-ink screen. I read day and night of things that blew my mind, things I was & wasn't prepared for - Selfish Gene and other books by Richard Dawkins; Notes from Underground & Brother's Karamazov; books by Italo Calvino, and Camus' books on existentialism and absurdity. 12 years and many books later, I definitely prefer a physical book - the cover design, pages, font etc. are all unique choices which gives a book certain personality. Going through the bookshelf, I can pick out a book resonating with my mood and complex of thoughts, and find something relevant there. But the power, the efficiency of carrying thousands of books in a tiny device is alluring to the engineer and minimalist in me. In our home, we have 3 bookshelf and even though my wife (who is also a fellow bookworm) has banned me from buying more physical books, I could continue to indulge in buying books with kindle.
Few years back, I updated to Kindle Oasis, and it's an amazing device with a premium feel. I'm glad to have splurged a bit of extra cash to get the best model at that time. But as the cost of accumulating books went up, it became more pressing to address some of the problems Kindle posed.
First there are DRM restrictions, which basically means that this particular amazon account is the only authentication context in which the book can be read. This means that I cannot use a non-kindle ebook device and port over the kindle-store-bought books. That started giving uncomfortable vibes, but since the ebook file format was MOBI (an open format), it was possible to remove the DRM, making it work across different devices. But then Amazon introduced their own format - azw, a proprietary format, and it became tougher to remove DRM. Additionally, there are legal implications of removing DRM, so it's probably not a good idea to do that.
In this context, the question became - do I really own my books?
I started seeing reports of Amazon closing accounts and the user consequently losing their ebooks. What if amazon closes down? What if for some reason I want to delete my amazon account? Or the government bans amazon in my country?
Apart from some troubling questions of ebook ownership, I also started reading more pdf textbooks, and kindle's screen size is not conducive for it. The lack of epub support since kindle's inception was always a glaring issue, after all a large volume of books on the internet is in the epub format.
Last year I got interested in e-notebooks and started to research. I ordered a OnyxBoox NoteAir2, the writing experience was good, though it didn't become an enduring part of my workflow. The reading experience on the other hand was superb – Onyx supports PDFs much better. The 10.3" inch screen is perfect for reading them. Since it also supports EPUBs, it's possible to buy ebooks from different stores like kobo.com which do not have device/ecosystem lock-in, so I'm truly owning the ebooks. I've been using NoteAir2 for about 1 hour everyday, and it's been comfortable enough. Compared to kindle device the ‘paper feel' of the screen is not great, but that might have something to do with the protective screen (which is something the clumsy me needs). Another feature I like is to be able to write notes on the sides of the margins.
So far I'm happy with the switch. I'm back to doomscrolling goodreads and playing around with the cart in kobo.com; I'm still a hoarder, and hunting and buying books (which I might not ever read) is still something that soothes me. Maybe I should talk to someone about this. But for now, I'm set.