HACKER Q&A
📣 cauliflower99

How do you read online books?


I love reading and my company give us access to O'Reilly learning which has more knowledge than I could ever absorb. However, my big problem is that I have to read from a screen which means I need to be either in front of my laptop or on my phone, neither of which I find particularly enjoyable for study.

Do you have any hacks to read books / ebooks / pdf / blog posts effectively that makes it feel like you're not looking at a screen all the time? Is there any technology out there than solves this problem?

Thanks!


  👤 sybercecurity Accepted Answer ✓
O'Reilly has an android and iOS app so tablets are an option instead of phones. I use a tablet for ebooks most of the time. Either Kindle or calibre (depending on how I got the ebook). Lots of ebook apps have settings to reduce eyestrain.

I'm used to tablets for reading now. I prefer that over the desktop experience. I still buy print if I think the book will require a lot of jumping between sections or use as a quick reference lookup later on. I know there are features to recreate that in O'Reilly Safari Online, Kindle, etc. but I personally feel they are awkward.


👤 pamoroso
I've been reading exclusively ebooks and digital content since 2010. Over the same time span I bought only half a dozen print books.

My current reading devices are an 8" Android tablet for technical ebooks, the tablet or an Android phone for straight text ebooks, and a desktop computer for most other digital content such as blogs, online books, websites, and so on.

Digital reading feels second nature now. What works for me is to do many short reading sessions, e.g. a couple of screens at a time.


👤 WallyFunk
I prefer PDFs over EPUB files. EPUB looks too raw for my liking. PDFs retain the original style of a book. I have a separate monitor with Okular[0] running on it to read e-books. But to answer your question: an iPad is preferable too, and more ergonomic as you can lie down when reading a book which I enjoy too.

[0] https://okular.kde.org/


👤 simonblack
Many online books can be downloaded and then read on a Kindle or similar. Use software such as Calibre to store the books in a 'library' or convert the book's file-format.

👤 elviejo
I own an ePaper Android tablet. Onyx boox max lumi. All my books are on it either PDF, epub or even kindle. Is such a relief for my eyes, and I can read more for longer.