this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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In 2020 I bought a new tablet just so I could get back to reading books.
99% of time I've used it for YouTube.
I'm getting back to reading more ebooks just now, OK?
(A local ebook store said it's quitting this month. As I was transferring my EPUB purchases to Google Play Books, I realised I hadn't actually used this app for ages. Despite, you know, it being one of the few ebook readers I like.)
You might try out FBReader. It has lots of options to customize it, and you can store your books in Calibre where it can access them via OPDS instead of getting locked into some online BS like Google.
Oh wow, FBReader was literally the first Android EPUB reader I used... In 2013 or so. I guess I need to see how it has improved since then.
Also, Calibre and I have a strong frenemies relationship. Once upon a time I wanted to meticulously download, de-DRM, catalog and locally archive all of my ebooks. But while Calibre has the technological chops to do it, usability is a bit quirky. I actually just installed Calibre at my current system and will bring over my old ebook library as soon as I dig up my old laptop. And also bring over about a decade of Kindle purchases (most unread, yeah).
Edit: Wikipedia on FBReader:
Awwwww crap. Hope there's an actually maintained open source fork.
Yah, FBreader is all closed source now AFAIK. But it's still free, though you can get premium, I've never bothered.
As for Calibre, I've used the DRM once upon a time and I think it's still there. I find it easier to use Openbooks to get the DRM free versions from Usenet of anything I've bought rather than dink around in Calibre.
I have a docker-compose.yml that stands up a Guacamole-enabled Calibre server, CalibreWeb and Openbooks if you're interested. IDK how it would work on Windows docker if that's your thing, but I run it on a rPi with docker and it's fine.
I use Book Reader (it's on F-Droid) for my phone, which works well enough... don't know how it performs on a tablet or if it has the features you're looking for.
I would wholeheartedly recommend a dedicated e-reader with E-Ink display for more 'serious' reading (I have a Tolino for the evenings/bed. Depending on where you are located you could also look into PocketBooks or Kobos... just make sure they're not chaining you to a closed ecosystem like Kindles).
I really love calibre, but agree it can be a bit quirky. Like many ADHD people, I'm my own worst enemy sometimes, when I attempt to do a big import of books and then it's too much work and my library gets messy. Something I did that helped was I had different tags for different levels of processed. Newly imported books would be auto-tagged "new". Then I'd batch process them and remove the tag if I fully completed it. Often I'd burn out when I'd discover a book that still had DRM, or was missing OCR (ability to select text within pdf), so I'd add "DRM" or "NoOCR" tags. My workflow works pretty well for me now, because I've made it easier to do half a job
True! One of the big things that really put me off from reading ebooks was that I used to buy book bundles (e.g. from HumbleBundle) and then just dumped them in my library. I really should have been cataloging each new book bundle, but I didn't, somehow. I just saw a giant big mess of my own doing in the ebook library and went "nope" and that just became another Big Pile of Stuff I Need To Deal With Later.
Book bundles make things messy, yeah.
Something that I've really struggled with is that I wish it were easier to make notes of where you've gotten a recommendation from. Like let's say I'm learning Python and there's a dizzying amount of books available for that. Someone I personally know and respect gives a glowing recommendation of a book, so I download it and process it's metadata in calibre or similar. Then a Reddit thread has a dump of free books. I download and import those. Then a blogger I really like recommends a few books, so I retrieve any of those I haven't got yet and import them. Time passes, and I go looking in my library for a book to learn Python with, and I get overwhelmed by choices and I can't remember which of them were good and for what reasons.
I have a similar problem with bookmarks, because sure you can add tags, but tags are best when you've got a limited vocabulary, to maximise reusability. What if I just want to write a brief note about why I deem this worthy of saving, so that I'm not confused when I'm skimming over bookmarks months or years later.
Got the A-1 iPad mini for reading and never installed Youtube on it. It is my dedicated reading tablet and I love it. Usually I wouldn't buy Apple products, but the new processor had me feeling a bit excited. The Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire 13" both had glaring issues and reading the internet's negative views on android tablets left me feeling meh. The better kindle e-readers are really expensive too so I thought to just buy a fully functional high quality tablet instead.