A Bit of Electronic Advice

[ecosophia]

These days an enormous amount of old occult literature is available in PDF format. For ecological reasons, I'd prefer not to print out everything on paper, and it gets old having to sit at my computer desk rather than lounging on the couch, so I'm considering picking up some kind of electronic e-reader for the purpose. The difficulty, of course, is that I'm about twenty years out of date when it comes to technology and I have no idea what's available. 

What I'm looking for is a simple device that will allow me to read PDFs. I don't want it to be connected to the internet if I can avoid that, and I certainly don't want it to be dependent on one of the big predatory internet firms; I can get all the books I want from archive.org and iapsop.com, and I'm not averse from using USB drives to get them to my e-reader. 

Do such devices exist? Have you used one? Would you recommend it? Inquiring Druids want to know. 

(If I can get it used, that would be a plus -- I prefer to get all my technology that way, to keep things out of the e-waste stream..)

Comments

Pocketbook

[bendithfawr]

A bit late to the party but I'll chime in with a pitch for the Pocketbook e-book readers. Don't bother with a tablet, they are really hard on the eyes. It's like squinting into a flashlight all evening.

Pocketbook is a Ukranian company if I remember correctly and the usability of their readers is great. I especially love the physical buttons. No problem to read one-handed or in the tub or on the beach. Just put it in a Ziploc bag and use the buttons to turn pages. I used the Inkpad 3 until a few months ago when my son stepped on it. I'll buy another one soon.

Everybody already mentioned Calibre for ebook management but I'd like to add another workflow: I use a RSS reader (for me it's TinyTinyRSS) to keep track of interesting websites and bloggers. I mark interesting articles on my phone or desktop, then Calibre automatically downloads the full text and prepares it for reading on my reader.

Software to consider

[(Anonymous)]

I use Calibre Reader on my Android tablet. It's an open source ebook management solution that runs on several operating systems. Reads PDFs of course as well as other ebook formats.

Nice library system and tagging so you don't need to create a lot of folders to organize your docs.

https://calibre-ebook.com/about

Nothing makes sense anymore!

[(Anonymous)]

I cant believe it...JMG turning to eReaders...I understand the ecological reasons you give, but I thought good'ole books would be the one thing you'd rabidly not give up! I don't have any eReaders so I've no worthy suggestions.

...sorry John I'll need a moment to collect myself here, another pint there please...Quickly!

Re: Nothing makes sense anymore!

[ecosophia]

Oh, I'm keeping all my printed books, and will be adding to the collection. This is just a convenience for browsing.

[(Anonymous)]

This is a surprisingly difficult problem...

I second everyone who has mentioned Calibre as an excellent way to organize your ebooks.

I would add that you can get an internet connected device, keep it in airplane mode, and solely rely on calibre to upload books.

They make it difficult to live outside the ecosystem (I sometimes have difficulty and I'm an elder millennial,) but there usually is a way to use connected devices with minimal interaction with the mothership.

There are also third party ereaders to look into. I have less experience with them, but Kobo is where I'd start if I were looking to switch. They're totally unlinked from any ecosystem. I believe Sony has one too...

Look at Kobo

[(Anonymous)]

I would also suggest a Kobo product. They are able to read several different ebook and other formats out of the box. They do have their own online store, but they are definitely the product line that is least bound to a claim-all-in-their-field-of-vision company.

PDF is always a tricky subject. For those PDFs that are built from text to aPDF doc(articles, some books), most eink KOBO will do. But for scanned books (like you find on archive.org, especially older books that we all know you enjoy) you will tend to be better served looking at LED screens vs. eink black and white. And larger screen as well, especially if you eyesight is reached its post-50 stage. IMHO, color eink is still not ready for primetime, yet you will pay a premium. THe EPUBs on archive tend to have lots of errors.

"Used" is called "refurbished" in tech world. That is a better search term.

The calibre app is very useful for the not-making-Bezos-richer reader. Open source, free to download, etc.

Check for what is called "OTG compatibility". This allows usb flash drives to be recognized, usually with a OTG cable.

[(Anonymous)]

Older Kobo's don't play nice with PDF. While the document can be displayed, if the print is large enough to read, it's only part of the page. If the page is shrunk enough to be readable, the print is to small. Newer Kobo's may have resolved the problem.

Another advantage of the Kobo reader is that it can be managed from a computer with the Calibre program. (Free download)

I have an older iPad. Obsolete level older. I have the Koba app on that, and it handles PDF books just fine. Admittedly its a bit of a process. Attach tablet to computer, -> itunes, -> ipad summary ->, file sharing, -> kobo, -> add files, -> done.

That said I have several book length PDF's that are fine.

And the app is very friendly when it comes to organizing, allowing the book to show in multiple categories. For example author & subject(s)

I expect that any tablet capable of running the Kobo app will be similar. And not surprisingly the Kindle app as well.

[(Anonymous)]

Most ebook readers support PDFs. I have two Amazon Kindles and they all support it. I also have friends and relatives with Kobos and they support it as well. I'm satisfied with my Kindle(s) and I can certainly recommend them, although my next reader will probably be a Kobo. An internet connection isn't needed and I don't even use Amazon for my books, I get them from other places and then use a free ebook management program called Calibre to convert and send them to the Kindle. Everything can be done offline and the Calibre library is easy to backup, it's just a self-contained directory that can be copied and moved around.

https://calibre-ebook.com/

The problem with ebook readers is that they aren't very good when it comes to PDF compatibility, as they are optimized for file formats that allow for flexibility when it comes to rendering text, so that the reader can for example enlarge the fonts without messing up the "flow" too much. PDF files are terrible for this as they're usually used for precisely the opposite reason, namely, to ensure that a document renders exactly or almost exactly the same in most devices, regardless of screen size, zoom level, system fonts and the like, as long as they support the format. So some PDF files might render correctly, while others will just unreadable (garbled text, wrong spacing, etc), depending on how they've been formatted. In general text-only PDFs will render decently, illustration-heavy PDFs not so much. A PDF that doesn't really contain text and is just a "container" for scanned pages most likely will have to be converted to text using an OCR program like ABBYY FineReader (paid) or Tesseract (free and open source) as images don't render very well on e-ink devices, especially smaller ones. This is a problem common to all readers AFAIK but can be mitigated by using Calibre and converting textual PDFs into a format that is more e-book reader friendly, although the results may vary and some tweaking might be needed. (It's way easier than it sounds.) In general illustration-heavy PDFs are more suited for tablets with a LED screen.

Hope this helps!

[open_space]

Hey there, JMG

As part of work things I might get a Kindle from work. If you haven't gotten your pick yet I am giving my past Kindle away which is in pretty good condition, the battery still lasts for about a week on a single charge if you are interested --it's good for .epub files and at least some PDFs, though navigating PDFs can be awkward at times.