#e-reader

[mr-elementle]

Being able to take little notes and draw directly in my ebooks is a game changer, I always wanted to be the kind of person that annotated books didn't want to "ruin" them by writing in them,

[teknologinow]

E-Reader Anti Doomscrolling: Review Xteink X4 Magnetik

E-Reader Anti Doomscrolling: Review Xteink X4 Magnetik Di era di mana notifikasi smartphone terus-menerus mengganggu konsentrasi, sebuah inovasi menarik muncul dari dunia e-reader. Perangkat bernama Xteink X4 ini menawarkan pendekatan unik untuk melawan kebiasaan doomscrolling yang sudah menjadi masalah umum di kalangan pengguna gadget modern. Dengan desain magnetik yang bisa menempel di…

E-Reader Anti Doomscrolling: Review Xteink X4 Magnetik

[leiajen]

My New Secret to Stress-Free Reading (Cat-Proof Included!)

I’ve been a book collector for as long as I can remember. There is something so special about the weight of a paperback and the smell of the pages, isn’t there? For years, I was that person who always had at least one or two books tucked into my bag every time I left the house. Whether I was commuting, waiting for friends to show up, or just chilling at a coffee shop, a book was my constant…

My New Secret to Stress-Free Reading (Cat-Proof Included!)

[sleepandblog]

when y'all say your kindle/e-reader battery lasts a month, do you mean with using it daily? cause girl i need an upgrade if those really exist. mine dies usually after 2-4 days of use (like 1 book worth of battery if we measure it like that)

(also in my defense my kindle is old and i would never choose amazon brand if i was buying it right now)

[vashti-lives]

In the midst of all of us feeling like shit over staff shooting the website like they're drunk farmers confusing their relaxing horse for a horse with a broken leg I guess I'll try and bring a little positivity?

So for the last few months I've been really feeling like I want to be on my phone less and like, I have a lot of non phone hobbies already. If you've been following me for any amount of time you proably already know that. I have many making stuff style hobbies but I wanted shit that I could do at night before bed, and in those moments when it's not convenient to make a huge mess or use my brain, you know?

(TL;DR-- I got a phone shaped ereader and a handheld emulation device! They seem good so far!)

Anyway I was looking for things to replace like, piecemeal mindless scrolling which is how I ended up looking at e-readers shaped like phones. It's stupid but after loosing my kindle for so long I just have gotten really used to reading on my phone and the ereader I have just wasn't cutting it, I wasn't reaching for it, it was no longer doing what I wanted. Plus, ok this is dumb as shit but I wanted something that would *feel* like a phone in my hand, you know?

So. I went looking and there were some super expensive options that were basically phones with e-ink screens, which wasn't what I wanted. Eventually I settled on the Xteink X4, which is fucking tiny. I've only had it for like a day so this isn't a full endorsement but now that I've flashed crosspoint on it I really like it.

I cannot emphasize enough that the out of the box software sucks and can't natively read epubs at all well so if you think this looks cool you should really look into flashing crosspoint on to it. Luckily flashing crosspoint was as easy as plugging my device into my computer and going to a website and clicking some links but you know, it's kind of annoying. Here's a video about it.

While looking for e-readers I discovered something that has apparently been around for a while but I had never heard of before... they make reasonably cheap handheld emulator machines now! I bought an Ambernic RG35XX H which again I have only had for a day but I'm very happy with it so far. Works pretty well out of the box and came loaded with a lot of games including like at least 10-12 I am interested in playing. Eventually I'll probably find more ROMs to put on it and I might mess around with the software but tbh right now I feel no need to do anything but play with it. For someone who hasn't used an emulator in like 15 years and has never actually had to download or find anything herself (I was given a thumb drive with the emulator and games already on it) this has been perfect.

I'm not linking to my fake gameboy-- feel free to google if you're curious-- but I am going to link this video which is part of what got me to buy the game emulator I did. It seemed to come reasonably highly recommended by multiple people.

(I really aesthetically liked that tiny device that flipped closed but when I was shopping I couldn't find it for less than $80 and I got the ambernic device for $45 including shipping because it was on sale. I just couldn't justify $80+ for something I wasn't sure I would like.)

It's too soon to say for sure but last night I went to bed with my phone battery at 62% and even now my battery is at like 55%.

Both devices are fairly small and I think will be fine to put in my purse or skirt pocket! For clarity I’m not linking either device yet because I haven’t fully tested them, this post is just about the proof of concept! Little phone shaped e-readers are cool emulation consoles are cool! Maybe we should all be reading more books/fanfic and playing more viddy games.

[the-sleepy-archivist]

Installing Better Dictionaries on Kobo (and other) Ereaders

In my experience, the dictionaries that come with the Kobo ereaders are often lacking definitions for uncommon/archaic words or foreign loanwords, things from the mythologies of other countries etc. Thankfully! It is very easy to install custom/third-party dictionaries on these devices.

TL;DR:

You can install dictionaries created from Wiktionary from Reader-Dict (monolingual dicts are free, bilingual dicts cost USD$5 with lifetime updates)

You can install custom dictionaries from the MobileRead forums (mono/bilingual, all free, but more outdated than ones from Reader-Dict).

You can install fictionaries (dictionaries of people/places/concepts from fictional universes like LotR, Wheel of Time, etc.) from The Fictionary (advanced users)

Details and instructions under the cut.

Monolingual Dictionaries

My preferred way to do this is to download the free dictionaries from Reader-Dict. These are created using the Wiktionary entries for 17 languages (see list at bottom), so they are crowd-sourced, comprehensive, and updated at least monthly.

Just go to the Reader-Dict website, scroll down until you see "Or get a monolingual version for free" and then choose your language from the dropdown next to that text.

For comparison, the default English dictionary from Kobo is 7 MB large. The English Wiktionary-based one from Reader-Dict is 46 MB - more than 6 times larger than Kobo's. The one that includes word etymology is almost 10x larger than Kobo's. Where it really shines in English is with rare/archaic words or foreign loanwords, and sometimes has more detail on mythological creatures too.

For example, these words were all in the Reader-Dict dictionaries but were missing from the default Kobo ones: fuligin, prolixity, Heorot, Mandelbulb (and those were all from just the first 25% of one book I read yesterday).

Bilingual Dictionaries

You can also install both mono- and bilingual dictionaries from this thread on the MobileReads forum (example: Chinese -> English, English -> Catalaan, etc.). If you are a language learner or are often reading translated books that leave some words in their native language, these could be very helpful.

Reader-Dict also creates bilingual dictionaries, but these ones are customized by them so they do cost money. Very reasonable costs though imo: USD$5 for access to a single 2-language combination (with lifetime updates), or USD$20 for ALL languages -> [single language].

Installing Dictionaries on Kobo

Copied from the reader-dict Github (see link below).

Download the dictionary file to the computer (it should be something like dicthtml-XX-YY.zip, do not unzip it, pay attention to Safari that may auto-unzip it in the background).

Plug the Kobo to the computer with a USB cable.

Paste the dicthtml-XX-YY.zip file into the .kobo/custom-dict folder on the Kobo (you may need to create it first).

Safe eject the Kobo, and unplug the USB cable. After a few seconds, the Kobo should start indexing the new dictionary and show a message about updating on the screen.

Reader-Dict has installation instructions for several popular ereaders here.

Advanced Users

Fictionaries

Fictionaries are "free look-up capable custom e-book dictionaries of fictitious terms, places, and people in literature. Created by author provided content or community wikis". As an example, you could load a fictionary for the Lord of the Rings series and be able to lookup definitions for ring wraiths and see lore from background materials, or load one for the Wheel of Time universe and look up what "Power-wrought" means, all without leaving your book.

Most fictionaries are hosted on TheFictionary.net and can be downloaded for multiple types of ereaders. The website provides a different fictionary for each book in a series too so you can avoid spoilers; the fictionary for the first book in the series will only include details from the first book, the next fictionary will include details known in the first and second books, and so on and so forth. That way you can look a name up in the first book without seeing a mention about what that person did in book 6.

However, The Fictionary only provides Kindle and StarDict file formats. If you want to use them on a Kobo device you will need to read the following section.

Converting Dictionaries from Other Sources

Have a dictionary from some other source that you want to use on [insert ereader here], but it's in the wrong format?? PyGlossary can convert between 39 dictionary formats, including reading the StarDict fictionary format and converting it to a Kobo Dict. Installing and using the tool is beyond the scope of this post - I would start with the install instructions in the PyGlossary github - but feel free to reach out via ask if you attempt this and have problems you can't solve.

Notes

Reader-Dict creates dictionaries from Wiktionary in the following languages:

CA - Catalan

DA - Danish

DE - German

EL - Greek

EN - English

EO - Esperanto

ES - Spanish

FR - French

IT - Italian

JA - Japanese

LT - Lithuanian

NO - Norwegian

PT - Portuguese

RO - Romanian

RU - Russian

SV - Swedish

ZH - Chinese

[avidbookreader2028]

Let's get caught up with each other's reading!

January/ February Wrap Up

[pixelmesh-studio]

Boahr, wie ich dieses Teil liebe! Der XTeink 4 ist ein kleiner E-Reader mit Crosspoint Software. Mit dem Ding macht das Lesen so viel mehr Spaß.