/lit/ - Literature

If you don't have access to a library they're pretty great.

>>12328652
I love mine desu and it's definetly cost effective. Pdf support is shite on all of them afaik which is a bummer for articles, but some features like the built-in dictionary and instant translation are amazing, specially if you read in foreign languages.

Pros: great battery life and readable surface
Cons: shit at anything but the ebook format

I prefer my tablet

>>12328652
Depends what you read. Pop books, sure, get a cheap e-reader.
If you need to read textbooks, academic journals, older books, and non-fiction works and cite easily, then you're going to get a device that can handle PDFs natively (screen size 10"+), and those cost around $500. Worth it if you truly are a heavy reader.

I personally rank it this way:
PDF on e-ink device > physical book > epub/mobi

>>12328652
I have a Kindle Paperwhite and it's pretty convenient for commuting or going on holiday. The reading experience isn't as good as physical books and you're gonna have a hard time trying to flip between two parts of the book, but looking up words and taking notes is easy. You'll definitely also save money if you pirate or look for public domain texts instead of buying everything.

>>12328652
download epubs for free. if you buy a kindle you can convert epubs to mobi (kindle's format) and it'll be as if you had bought them.

Best investment I've made. Super easy to pirate books and read anything I want within minutes. I can take it out with me and have access to whatever I'm in the mood for instead of being stuck with one book. The built-in dictionary is useful, too. I still prefer physical books if I get my hands on them (library trip or used book sales), but I rarely have the need.

FYI it's for actual readers though, not faggots that just collect books or read one a month.

>>12328899
Why is it only for readers?

>>12328960
Because otherwise you're just a consumerist shithead buying gadgets you won't use.

Better than physical books because you can turn off text justification.

>>12328652
they're a good meme

>download all the books you want for free
>the books you want to re-read or value you can still buy in paper
Whats not to like?
Ohh right you can't post in your cringey "monthly haul" threads anymore or work towards that ebin library tour for your booktuber channel.

>>12329281
If you're after non-english books, options for pirating are still limited.

>>12329370
>reading in any language other than English

>>12329380
>using english in any situation other than hurling insults at anglos

>>12329385
this but unironically

>>12329370
Not true in my experience, at least for Spanish and German

>>12329398
Where do you get your German books my man?

>>12329385
ascended

>>12329398
>>12329399
Seconding request.

>>12328670
Why is a pdf superior to epub/mobi on an ereader?

>>12328652
libgen.io
b-ok.cc
save money for kindle paperwhite 2018 version, download books for free ever since. I send even blogposts and long article to my kindle - no distractions compared to pc and much better on my eyes. I read more and with better focus

>>12329398
>>12329399
Thirding request.
Most German ebooks are in terrible formatting.

>>12329546
fuck amazon, i'm buying a kobo

>>12329546
I can never seem to find SHIT on b-ok. just endless pdfs

>>12328652

E-Readers are unironically pretty sweet.

I read a load of trash scifi and fantasy and historical novels. Stuff I'm never going to read again. I dont need 8 books of the Safehold series on my bookcase. Kindle is perfect for that.

Also you can pre-read a book before buying, and download a load for free either because the author gives them away, they're pirated, or they're in public domain.

I have said this countless times: yes, they're worth it if you even remotely enjoy reading and yes, it's way cheaper than buying physical copies of books.

>>12328652
probably best buy I ever made

>>12328652
Depends on what you read. The problem I have with ereaders is that they are not great with pdfs unless you have some huge one and that is not convenient anymore to me enough + it costs to much. Why I care about pdfs is that the only reason I consider ereader is free books but if you are reading philosophy and science like me it seems to be not worth it. You wont find all the books in epub/mobi format so pdfs reading.. and often you wont find better translation which I consider important for philosophy even more so because I am not that great in english. The other big disadvantage is that you can easily flip through many pages and I do that a lot while thinking about some concepts. The good things are the background light, battery life and ease on eyes. Its good for reading classics as you will find those.

> muh pdf
Spastics

They’re great. But I like collecting books so I don’t use one

>>12328652
I just bought one and I was shocked at how expensive the kindle editions of books are. Some books are actually more expensive on kindle than paperback. I thought I'd have access to a bunch of good books through Amazon Prime, but theyre all trash. They want you to sign up for a separate serve that gives you access to titles. It's like $10 a month. So dont think you're gonna save money with a kindle.

Having said that, I fucking love my kindle paperwhite for how ncie it is for reading in bed at night. The backlight is bright enough that I can read the text but it doesnt bother my gf trying to sleep next to me. I bought a case and when the cover is open, it blocks the light on her side. Very lightweight and easy to hold. Normally I would play games on my phone in bed. Now I play for a little (gotta do my daily objectives in Looney Tunes) then I read a chapter.

I have a Kobo I got here in Tokyo for like $50. Reads almost all file formats easily. It also has expandable memory. I have had it for about four years and it is a lifesaver on my daily train rides where actually trying to hold a book to read is impossible.

Nook + Libgen.io = awesome

Ok I just used libgen.io to download a book, and I imported it to my kindle using calibre.

Is there a way to make the formatting proper? Right now the chapters all start randomly in the middle of the page. Also the page numbers are in the text.

>>12329623
Kobo Aura One H2O goes like a dream. I can download practically any PDF and read it under water

>>12330438
That's probably just a bad OCR, try another epub

>>12330500
Huh?

Tried another download. This one is even worse.

Once again losers lie about the quality of piracy.

>>12330534
That looks like some OCR scan shit, stick with epubs (convert to mobi for amazon ereaders) and do the bare minimum research on how to get them. (hint, IRC).

>>12330574
Tried a 3rd time, used epub format. When it outputs, all the fonts are italicized. Really annoying and at this point a waste of my time. I know poor people like you are ok with wasting hours to pirate one book, but my time is valuable.

>>12330534
>>12330585
>too dumb to download a book
>Insults others
Just go before you embarrass yourself any further.

Physical paperback trumps all

>>12330600
I download three books and theyre all shit quality. Youre just like the deluded losers on /sp/ that pretend their bootleg streams are the same quality as real TV. Sorry youre so poor you dont know what quality is.

>>12330463
what is better for pdfs, kobo or kindle paperwhite? (except the bigger scteen on kobo) I just watched some side-by-side comparison, and kobo aura one was veery slow at shuffling around and zooming pages in a pdf.
anyone with experience with pdfs on kobo can comment on this?

>>12330616
The time you take here crying would be enough for the average 4channler retard to download, convert and send the entire western canon to their e device.
The fact that you are unable to do even a fraction of that makes you a complete retard and it's probably better you don't even bother with it since reading apparently makes your brain hurt.

>>12330650
I notice you dont actually have a solution for the problem of bad formatting. That tells me that youre stupid, and that youre a butthurt little bitch.

You're always gonna be a dogshit loser, kid. You're always gonna be poor.

>>12330650
>>12330600
Such a mad pathetic little bitch.

Mommy and daddy were losers too, werent they? Yeah they were.

>>12328652
I use mine for ePubs of LibGen, pretty handy to take out and about rather than a regular book.

Just checked out some of those online and turns out they're actually not that cheap :/

>>12330463
>read it under water
For what purpose exactly? Are you a fucking dolphin?

>>12330676
Too bad everything on libgen is poorly formatted trash. It's like downloading a movie that's only 480p and has mono audio.

>>12330690
I got a brand new 7th generation kindle paperwhite off ebay for $100. That's cheap as fuck.

>>12330706
Fair enough

They're amazingly convenient. The only time i don't read ebooks now is if i want a specific edition you can't get in e-format, or a book i just can't find in an electronic version alltogether. The only way i find them inferior to physical books is quickly turning to a specific page (but then it has other benefits like hyperlinked end notes that physical books don't have) so it's a tradeoff.

>>12330690
I got the latest kindle paperwhite 2018 for 76eur and disabled the ads for free thanks to 10minutes of googling

>>12330699
>Complaining about free books

>>12330616

I am in agreement. I see too too many people pushing for "digital libraries" and I can not help but think they do not actually read books, as how one can ever prefer reading on a computer or tablet or even an e-ink reader is beyond me.

>>12330789
After reading on e-readers exclusively for a while, I started reading a physical book last week and I constantly find myself looking for the search function, th table of contents, dictionary and also format adjustments.

>>12330818
>search function, th table of contents, dictionary
OK but some of us arent uneducated brainlets that need to look u every other word.

>>12329500
not him but pdfs when read on kindle size tablets tend to not scale well. kindles is best for pure text books no images so with things like textbooks with images and text come out mangled on the kindle

>>12330463
How deep can it go?
Asking because scuba diving + reading a book would be heaven.

>>12330648
>>12329657
OCRed pdf are fine in the Kobo in my experience.

Realistically speaking, it depends on what you're actually hoping to get from the book itself.

If it's something that you plan on reading for pleasure- or for fun- then I suppose something like an e-reader would be perfect for such since people generally report having a much more enjoyable reading experience on an e-reader.


However, going along with what I just said, if you actually plan on learning from the book, or truly want to recall it's contents then various scientific sources all seem to conclude that reading from a book rather than an e-reader is associated with higher recall in regards to the contents of the book itself as well as many of the principles found within it.


Also, it's worth noting that everyone has different needs and different experiences (subjectively speaking) so while reading on a book may have higher recall for someone else that may not be true for another person. It's just that current scientific research seems to indicate that for the most part, actual books are better for learning.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb-less-kindles-paper-study-plot-ereader-digitisation (The Guardian)

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/513766/this-is-your-brain-on-e-books/ (MIT Tech Review)

>>12331088

And to add on to what I just said, if you're the type of person that would just like to hunker down with 10 fiction books- go for an e-reader. Personally though, I prefer non-fiction so I generally just get the actual book. It's up to you though.


I fully understand being reluctant to shell out $5+ for a book when you can have an e-book library of more than 50 e-books for free (Project Gutenberg or other sources) when something of that sort with an actual book could cost an upwards of $200+ (Assuming it's new- but even used would get close to that if you decided to factor in shipping costs).

>>12331088
>guardian

Also, bump.

I think this is a pretty important discussion to have.

>>12331122

I don't like the guardian myself, but it's simply a summary of the actual scientific paper. Unless...you'd like me to try to find the paper itself?


Do you have something against my point itself?

Here are some other sources:


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

https://newrepublic.com/article/135326/digital-reading-no-substitute-print

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/9/paper-or-tablet-reading-recall-and-comprehension

>>12331155
your sentences are too far apart for me to read desu

>>12331088
>Guardian
>2014
baka
>Result shows that the reading behavior on e-ink-displays is very similar to the reading behavior on print. ► Overall the results suggest that the legibility of the current e-reader generation is good.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141938211000497

>>12331165

Personal preference when writing, but alright- it doesn't matter.

>>12331185
>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141938211000497


This paper measures the similiarities in the behaviours found in reading, which I myself agree with- they are in fact similar.

However, my initial point was in regards to recall which the paper you linked towards doesn't actually address. Recall is the important factor here, not reading similarities.

>>12331185

Also, again- the Guardian was simply summarizing the paper itself- and I wasn't going to link the paper since just like the paper you provided it likely wouldn't go farther than the abstract in regards to access. Did you take a look at the other 3 sources I posted?

>>12331185

And just in case, I wouldn't suggest arguing this from a stance of legibility since legibility doesn't inherently mean there is easier recall in the long term. In fact, there is more scientific evidence that seems to suggest that certain fonts that are by design harder to read can actually correspond with a higher rate of recall and learning.

>>12331213
Neither of can tell for sure whether there's a significant difference between recalling texts read from e-ink or from actual paper. I also wonder whether this is just overanalysis, since we could then also raise the question whether reading texts printed by laser printer onto fax paper are different than hand written notes on old school paper sheets or letters carved into stone.

>>12331283
+in the end you're just looking for meaning in an arrangement of symbols and you're trying to achieve this by a learned and automated skill.

>>12331202
>>12331155

Why are you reddit spacing so hard?

>>12331283

If you're going to question any overanalysis then I would say that that's a fair point to raise. It's a difficult question to ask- where to draw the line. However personally, I firmly stand that physical books that we can interact with truly do have better recall in the long term simply because of that aspect of physicality.

And that stems back to my previous point of people being different. I see myself as a learner who has an easier time attributing aspects of what I've learned to different things throughout the process of learning (such as remembering the page it was written on). I appreciate that physicality and as such I generally have a much easier time of recalling characteristics of something that I can interact with and this is very much the case for an actual book.


However, I would also disagree with your statement to some extent because I think one of the sources I've provided (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/)) echoes not only my sentiments exactly but doe a fairly decent job with answering the question.


And as a bit of a side note as to recall in regards to the differentiation of how the text was written- the article has a fairly interesting segment!

> Some of these repurposed brain regions are specialized for object recognition—they are networks of neurons that help us instantly distinguish an apple from an orange, for example, yet classify both as fruit. Just as we learn that certain features—roundness, a twiggy stem, smooth skin—characterize an apple, we learn to recognize each letter by its particular arrangement of lines, curves and hollow spaces. Some of the earliest forms of writing, such as Sumerian cuneiform, began as characters shaped like the objects they represented—a person's head, an ear of barley, a fish. Some researchers see traces of these origins in modern alphabets: C as crescent moon, S as snake. Especially intricate characters—such as Chinese hanzi and Japanese kanji—activate motor regions in the brain involved in forming those characters on paper: The brain literally goes through the motions of writing when reading, even if the hands are empty. Researchers recently discovered that the same thing happens in a milder way when some people read cursive.


And it goes further along that line. It's a nice bit of neuroscience if you're interested in delving in it further.

>>12331317

I personally think it's just easier to read in the long run, for some reason I've always had trouble with text that's too bunched up. Ironically, this is an issue that an e-reader is effective at solving since you can change up the spacing pretty nicely.

Do you have anything to say about my actual point?

>>12331321
by all means, then stop reading from digital screens immediately if this stuff concerns you but you sound like a debating club faggot that just likes to play ping pong for the sake of it.

>>12330534
you gotta download epubs and convert to mobi. pdfs dont convert well

>>12331369

I'm just saying, I think both forms of reading have quite a bit of merit- and I think I've raised a fairly decent point.

Also, it does't concern me- it's just fun to talk about and I think it's a pretty important thing to talk about concerning the direction reading is going towards (which is to say, digital). It's not even a debate- just a discussion.

And I think it's a bit funny how even you have managed to ignore my original point. I'm just saying it could matter depending on the type of thing you're reading. I actually really love reading from e-readers if it's something I'm not reading seriously but just for the hell of it.

>>12330463
finally. im so fucking tired of getting bored out of my brains when scuba diving.

E-readers are great for traveling and for reading old works that are no longer in print. There are plenty of scans of old books online

>>12330880
2.0m depth unfortunately

>>12331461

Well, I hope they expand on it- but it'll be cool when they do. I really like the brand as an alternative to Amazon.

>>12330648
Kobo can sometimes be a bit unresponsive with pdfs that are quite large and complex (like high quality scans).
Zooming in can be a bit frustrating especially because you can’t set a stable zoom for an entire book - it just resets back to 100% zoom every page or does some terrible page realignment. I just re-format every PDF I download in Adobe Acrobat so it fits right and the font is large enough. About 90% of the books on my Kobo are scanned copies of old books like pic related

>>12331484
Yea, it’s great, I’ve gotten many good hours of reading from mine. The battery life is fantastic too

>>12329398
>at least for Spanish
Yesterday, out of curiosity, I searched inside piratebay for "Spanish epub". Result? A torrent with 70GB of books, both new (literally less than a month old) and old. All correctly labeled and sorted by folders. 67,000 books.

A marvel. Ebook piracy in spain is truly something else.

>>12329385
based and gaelicpilled

>>12331498
thanks fren, this was helpful. I assume those fat black screen margins are just because you zoomed out to much as for some demonstration of zooming out feature?
also tip from stemfag: when dealing with scanned books heavily, you might consider converting those to djvu instead of pdf as djvu format was more or less designed for that purpose - good chance djvu could perform faster for your use.
But can you please provide your comment about the true pdfs, like modern scientific papers?
btw your cat is a stunner tbqh

>>12331549
>spain is the only spanish speaking country

>>12330585
>my time is valuable
>reads self-help for housewives

>>12331940
kek

>>12331697
Whatever makes you sleep at night anon.

>>12331317
That's not reddit spacing, this is

Example


Example 2.

See? Two spaces. On reddit you need to make two spaces to make one space in the post. I like to make one space on 4chan posts for reading clarity

>>12328652
they are great if you pirate. I pirate.

>>12331690
>flat black screen margins
Nope, if you notice at the top it says powered off. That is just what happens when the Kobo is turned off. Pic related is what it look like while reading.

Thanks for the file handling tip.

I’m not sure about “true pdfs” I dont have any scientific papers downloaded. I have a few EPUBs on History which work great. There’s no lag between page turning and you can change the font size/style.

Ye, he’s a real qt - he’s got one green eye and one blue.

>>12328669
how do you read with a tablet? Can you give me some tips? people keep saying that it burns your retinas and that headeaches are common because of the brightness of the screen.

>>12332942
>>12331690
Sorry about the sideways image. Silly phone.

>>12332960
It's looking at you with utter contempt and digust, tells us a lot about what kind of person you are.

Tablet > ereader. You can listen to music/ambient sounds while you read, you can access the internet to do research, shows colors and can effortlessly zoom in on images and pdfs.

I have a second generation kindle. The thing is slow and doesn't have much memory. I also didn't put much effort into figuring out libgen and shit so it was just another annoying project to put books I'll never read on a laggy format I'll never remember to charge.

The screen is a beautiful function and the size is eloquent. I hate reading long texts on normal screens, but the kindle I have is just too annoying to use when I already have 100 books I haven't read.

>>12332983
>listening to music while reading

>>12332976
You’re not wrong

>>12333008
Yes, anon. Many people do.

>>12328664
>>12328669
>>12330879

I know I'll come off as a shill, but I do think it's important to mention. I own a kobo (the H2O HD version) and I absolutely love it. It's true that most e-reader brands do not do PDF well at all. This includes Kobo, Kindle and the Nook. But I do want to mention that, quite recently, there's a new competitor, from china. The likebooks. Their main draw is that they run android, so you can install any apps on it, besides the reader function. This would include app stores and apps that allow you to download books. The main difference in reading them versus the classic brands is that, because it runs on android, its PDF compatibility shoots up. and has a special, on demand, high refresh rate mode for turning many pages quickly. The likebook mars is already the very best reader for manga or even comics (if you don't care about coloring) and the PDF is miles ahead of regular readers, you can actually read reference books on it. Now this is where it gets good, they'll be releasing a new model, the likebook mimas (what a name) and it's an absolute monster at 10.3'' of screen space. It's actually geared towards PDFs and reference books, on top of being a wacom tablet screen, so you can take handwritten notes, edit and draw on PDFs or empty note pages you attach to them. The wacom means the touch is pressure sensitive and the higher refresh rate allow for non-laggy writing. It also runs android, and, like the mars, also has an audio jack for audiobooks (I think I forgot to mention it). The mimas also has physical buttons, which many people prefer, on top of touch and swipe commands. It's not out yet, since the company is still working on making the English language ROM, as of now, only the chinese version exists. There's some youtube videos showing off the tablet and quick PDF navigation. I know this is unbearably shill-y but it's actually a good product that solves a lot of problems a lot of people have with readers, and as someone who's a fan of the very very niche technology, I like to spread awareness on them.

>>12333040
based chang

>>12333040
thank you for your post, based chang. I will investigate

Reading on tablets hurts my eyes

>>12335356
Well the whole point of e-readers is that their display is made as to not hurt your eyes or strain them. Of course they'll feel strain after hours of use, but it would be the same as reading a physical paper book. Some of them let you read in the dark or badly lit places or even underwater/pool and beachside.

>>12335356
It's fine, anon. People with disabilities wear helmets and drool collectors all the time, it's normal. You use an ereader.