How getting an e-reader made me immersed in the world of books again

Published at 2024-05-13T12:00:00+00:00

Introduction

It's a story that I think is more and more common nowadays. A young child who spends hours every day reading books, be it school books or teenage novels, epic science-fiction, adventure books, comics, mangas or even magazines. The opportunites to read and just simply enjoy your time with a book in hand are endless when you go to an elementary school and get months of vacation to just be bored. Plenty of time to visit your local library and just look through books, with each every one feeling like something completely new in your short life.

That's partially what my childhood looked like to me. However, that might not sounds similar to you at all. After all, I've had peers who simply never touched a book unless it was strictly necessary to pass classes. Who just fell asleep at the idea of just picking up a book and preferred to spend time playing football, playing games, going to parties etc. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I just simply think that for even such people can get immersed into the world of books if access to them is more convenient.

When it comes to me, I also kind of became such a person. That is, there was always some desire within me to pick up a new book and have fun reading like in the good old days, but there were always excuses... Either the book was to big to carry, I didn't have time or there was something more engaging to see on my laptop or my phone. Why not play Minecraft instead? Oh, there's a new video in my subscribers feed! Now I have to my dinner and clean later. And after that time to browse reddit! And so looked most of the days.

Why I decided to get an e-reader in the first place

Sometime in the summer of 2023 I had a bit more time in my hands and found myself interested in books again. Most of the books in my room have been standing there for at least 10 years. A neat and colorful "Chronicles of Narnia" series, Karl May's adventure novels, set books from my school days, and dictionaries of all sorts, among other peculiar books. I have read some of them up to two or three times and certainly it wasn't anything attractive for an university student my age.

That's when I remembered that there were two books on my radar that I wanted to indulge myself in for quite some time. The first one being "The Hobbit" by J.R.R Tolkien. Yes, it's with shame that I had to admit, despite being a big fantasy fan, I have never read a single work of Tolkien in over 20 years of my existance on this planet. I could make it special, however. I decided to read the original version in English. You must understand, dear reader, that for somebody raised in a non-English speaking country, reading the original works of Tolkien is quite a feat. His language is... really old-fashioned and flowery to say the least. Based on my previous experiences there's no way I could make do without a dictionary.

The second book on my radar was "Free as in Freedom" by Sam Williams. A one of a kind biography of Richard Stallmann - a programmer and early free software activist. I could easily get this book for free on the Internet as it was distributed under a free GNU license. However, once I download it, how am I supposed to read it? My eyes quickly get tired of reading extensive text on my laptop or computer screen and their batteries die pretty quickly. Well, these are things I don't really want to worry about while reading a book and I guess neither would you.

Fortunately, there was a device that solved both of these problems - a built-in dictionary, long battery life, a display that's easy on the eyes and an easy process of uploading books. I am of course talking about an e-reader. I could simply read these books in my native language and find them easily in one of the bookstores, but I've decided to take a plunge. After a day of extensively reading reviews and weighing my options I settled on Kobo Clara 2E. I placed an order. "Worst case, if it doesn't work out for me I'll give it to my mom" - I thought.

The arrival of the e-reader

A week and 160€ later, the e-reader finally arrived at my home. Here's how it presents itself:

I don't really have much to say about it and it's not an advertisment. It looks cool, shows the text properly, has a built-in Oxford dictionary, color and light intensity regulation, you can easily upload files to it, I can read 2 or 3 books without charging. There is also a built-in integration with Pocket, so that you can easily read web articles on it. I don't find myself using it often though, but that might be something most people are interested in. All in all, it's simply everything I could ever ask for in an e-reader. Most importantly though, it doesn't show me any ads. That's why I never even considered buying an Amazon Kindle and I think you should never buy one yourself.

The effects

After uploading the books from my Linux laptop using Calibre, an awesome piece of software that makes this process as straightforward and easy as possible, I began reading. I made it my routine to reach for the e-reader at least once a day, even if for a short while. As I hoped for, the e-reader had made me read books again! I carry it with me anywhere. It contains a library of 30 books accumulated on it at this point. At any time of the day, be it the college campus, a bench in the park, my dinner table, my bed or while travelling on a train or a plane I can pop it out and immediately get to reading. If there's a book I'm not particularly in a mood for or one that straight up sucks I can quickly make a switch without worrying about getting it to the library or moving it everywhere with me.

Since then I joined a community of readers running bookwyrm on ramblingreaders.org. Keeping track of read books while not having to use the more-and-more hostile goodreads also boosted my interest in books again, I recommend it.

In conclusion, I think e-readers are a marvelous piece of technology. They make reading a book a great convencience. In the era where smartphones dominate our lives, fight for our focus and destroy our attention span, e-readers stand in kind of an opposition. They make that time actually matter and be valuable.