Getting into eBooks

Normally, if I read on my phone I tend to use FBreader (the sepia background helps with reading). But prolonged reading depletes the batteries really fast. The small screen makes it harder to read long articles and books too.

As my book shelves at home are getting full from buying too many books (maybe I should let go some of them). So I thought I'll venture into reading ebooks.

However, my primary issue is screens, be it on my computer monitor, mobile phone or windows tablet tend to be glaring and tiring for prolonged reading.

So I recently bought a Kobo Glo HD from eBay and was pleasantly surprised.

Bought it because compared to a Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, it has a better bang for buck.

Could be kinda bigger (maybe 8 inches) to increase the amount of space for reading pdf that are A4 or larger in size. But still the 6" Carta E Ink touchscreen (uses infrared tracking instead of capacitive), 1448x1072 with 300ppi is really clear and great on the eyes. It also has backlighting (which can be reduced to 0%), which helps in reading in the dark.

It only holds up to about 3GB of memory (no expansion sadly but ebooks are real small in file size so I doubt it matters much).


The Kobo is very portable, fits easily into my back jeans pocket. Much lighter at about 180grams, lighter than bringing books around. eBooks takes up lesser physical space than actual books too.
Probably helps to reduce paper usage (environmentally friendly) and cheaper than buying physical books too!

For those who are interested, NLB website has eReads, where you can download the books to read on the ebook reader in epub or PDF format (more savings :p)


Transferring ebooks in is real easy as well, just plug it in like a flashdrive with the cable supplied and drag and drop.
I heard using Calibre to manage it with tags, but I wasn't really successful in doing it and syncing, opted to do manually (a couple of hours to organise as I transferred about 200 books).

After all of that, I still wanted to find a way how to read books at home on my desktop and enabling my family to use my now rarely used Windows Tablet for reading if they want.

Thought I'll share my settings to make it nicer to read. I find that using biege or sepia doesn't work as well on my computers so I used a more grayish shade instead.

For those on Calibre's ebook reader,
Can go Options->User Stylesheet and input these:

body {color:rgb(0,0,0);
background-color:rgb(228,226,224);
text-align:justify;
line-spacing:1.8;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:4px;
margin-right:50px;
margin-left:50px;
text-indent:2em;}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6
{color:black;
text-align:center;
font-style:italic;
font-weight:bold;}

You can adjust the indent and line spacing if you find it too much or too little to your liking.

However, some epubs are rather annoying and still retain the bright white backgrounds, so just set (in addition), the background to #E4E2E0 and the text to #000000 (black).

Also, I use Droid family fonts, especially Droid Serif, which are the default fonts used on your android phones, felt it makes better reading.

For those reading PDFs (some ebooks only come in that format, especially older ones), my solution would be to use SumatraPDF (it works with ebooks too, I use Calibre on linux natively, but installing the KDE suite just for Okular is too messy), for Windows (linux users can just use WINE, or Okular if you're using KDE).

To get the same font and background I just changed the following lines:

FixedPageUI [
    TextColor = #000000
    BackgroundColor = #e4e2e0
    SelectionColor = #f5fc0c
    WindowMargin = 2 4 2 4
    PageSpacing = 4 4
]
EbookUI [
    FontName = Droid Serif
    FontSize = 11
    TextColor = #000000
    BackgroundColor = #e4e2e0
    UseFixedPageUI = false
]

Hope it helps those who have trouble reading like me.

Hope that I can at least clock on average one book per month for this year (last year was 11 I think).

Enjoy reading!

EDIT (20 Feb 2017): For those ebooks with no epub/mobi format, and only in the terrible PDF format, there is a way to sorta reprint the PDF except with a custom size, with you reducing the margins to 1mm and adjusting the paper size to crop out the extra margins. Helps with reading.

EDIT (23 Dec 2017): Someone asked me if there was a better/alternative software for reading epub on Windows, I have tested another suggestion. Use FBReader, they have it now for Windows and Linux (at least not that most debian based distros need it). If you want the same background, go to Colors and set the background Red: 228, Green: 226, Blue: 224. As for the fonts for Windows users, can try either Georgia, Verdana or Arial. The rest of the settings like font size and line spacing you can play around. One tip I have is to drag the window to the side and let it take up half the screen, makes the width narrower to make ease of reading, else just resize the window width manually would work too.