eBook Readers

Since it's summer, I have the luxury of a bit more free time to do stuff like reading. Don't get me wrong—I'm not some fantasy-obsessed bookworm who spends every waking moment buried in books. I read casually when I feel like I've wasted too much time on YouTube. I usually read general non-fiction because I like normal language without any over-descriptive wordy paragraphs. I wouldn’t say I hate fiction—Gatsby and TKAM are some of my favorites—but it’s not usually my first choice. 

Whenever I read, I almost exclusively do it digitally. Some people hate it because it doesn't give the same feeling as reading a normal book (obviously), but I don't mind it that much. Honestly, I don't really feel like buying a real book. Granted, I do miss the smell of the book, the feel of turning the pages and the satisfaction you get seeing your progress. The good part of the eBooks, however, is the vast amount of books you can carry with you and the ability to read at night. I can carry thousands of books in my pocket to read anywhere. I can adjust the font, size and the background color. Best of all, I can highlight and annotate the text much easier (without trying to awkwardly use sticky notes to avoid ruining the book).

Indeed, annotating the text as I read is perhaps the biggest reason I choose to read books digitally. Even though I'm a slow reader, I typically forget a big portion of what I read from any given book after a few weeks go by. If I'm reading passively and not interacting with the text (by annotating), I find it much harder to remember what I read and what my thoughts were about it. 

Let's take the example here with Mel Robbin's The Let Them Theory. 

I have simple annotations to provide a reaction to the text in a random e-reader on Arch Linux: 

Admittedly, this is a bit basic. You can make the annotations more interesting by converting the ePUBS to PDFS, which will then allow you to draw freely on the pages. Unfortunately, all the features that ePUBS offer on most software goes away (meaning no more dark screen or changing the font size). 

 

Just doing this made me remember a bit more of what I was reading. After I finished this book, I felt like I could better recall each chapter's main idea. If I couldn't then I had my notes and highlights to remind me what piqued my interest.

 

Give it a shot.