? For the Love of Reading (Premium)

I’ve written about my love of reading here and there over the years. And while some of this is difficult to find, Night Shift (Premium) and Re-readable (Premium) are good places to start if you’re curious. (Looking at these now, it’s interesting to me that each includes a story about a book–Night Shift by Stephen King and The Russia House by John le Carré, respectively–that was seminal in my reading experiences.) But I also highlight my favorite books–these days, e-books and audiobooks–each year. For example, this past year, 2023, 2022, and 2021.

When I was growing up, books were, well, books, these paper items that took up space and became unwieldy over time as the collection grew. I started buying books as soon as I had the money to do so, and I spent much of my teenage and young adult years in bookstores.

By the time my wife and I moved to Phoenix in 1993, three years into our marriage, my book collection was already big enough to require several boxes to store them all. And we initially kept those boxes at my parent’s house in Massachusetts, unsure when we’d have a place of our own so they could be shipped out to us.

That took a few years, as it turns out, and my parents moved the boxes of books out of their attic where I’d putt them without telling me, later claiming they were worried about the weight. This always seemed like a non-issue to me–I would have just made sure the boxes were placed over cross-beams–but whatever, my parents are nuts. They moved the books out to the garage, where many were ruined, in time, by mold. I discovered this on a trip home, and it felt disrespectful. To me and the books.

I moved the books that weren’t too gross back into the attic, positioning them over cross-beams just in case. But it was only a matter of time. And before long, my vastly reduced book collection, still smelling of mold, arrived non-ceremonially at our apartment in Phoenix. They were our problem again. But it was a problem that I was happy to have: As any book lover will tell you, part of the appeal of books is that you can collect them, organize them, and display them like some big game hunter. We purchased giant bookcases to hold the books. And when we finally moved back to the Boston area in 1999, it all came with us. (As did similar collections of VHS and cassette tapes. Our DVD and CD years were still ahead of us.)

The physicality of books was cited as the key reason early e-book detractors rejected the shift to digital, and it’s a debate that continues to this day in some circles. But I never understood this. Having carted my books across the country and then moved them multiple times in-state afterward, I began to see my collection as both good and bad. And when it came to e-books, the good outweighed the bad. I loved having books as much as anyone, but I also understood that I would one day hold my entire book collection on a device that was smaller and lighter than a paperback book. It was intoxicating.

? Reading goes digital

It just wasn’t clear which device would contain these digital books. When Microsoft dominated and defined personal computing, it seemed like a sure bet. The software giant introduced its Microsoft Reader application for Windows PCs and Pocket PC PDAs in 2000 with the vaunted ClearType “sub-pixel rendering” technology that made text appear visually smooth and without jaggies on the low-resolution displays of the day. I read my first e-book–The Time Machine by HG Wells–in its entirety on a Pocket PC, and figured it had a chance.

But then it seemed that e-readers would follow the razor/blade model used by music and video, with dedicated hardware devices. Not surprisingly, given its history of combining content and hardware in other markets, Sony created an e-ink-based e-reader called Sony Reader in the mid-2000s. Also not surprising, I wanted one badly. But the high price tag and my history with Sony’s dead-end media formats gave me pause, as did the fact that Sony wasn’t really known for books.

Many forget this, but Sony was the original Apple from a retail store perspective: It had Sony Stores all over the country in the early 2000s, and I would always swing by the one in the Copley Mall in Boston when we were in town. I was a fan of Sony stereo components beginning in the 1980s, and my first CD player was a Sony. And by the 2000s, they also made trendy looking computers and other electronics. But I would also spend time with a Sony Reader in a particular bookstore–Borders Books, I believe–when I could. It was close, but in the end, I never did buy a Sony e-reader.

And then I didn’t have to: In 2007, Amazon released its first Kindle e-reader, and though it was expensive and a bit industrial at first, I felt like this was the right company with the right product and ecosystem. And I went on to purchase most of the subsequent Kindle e-readers that Amazon made, experiencing its transition into a more sophisticated touch-based device.

? Disruption

Of course, the Kindle was disrupted as a hardware device–and almost as a platform–when Apple unveiled the iPad with Apple Books in 2010. Leaving aside the illegal collusion with book publishers, the iPad played the same role as the iPhone before it (and the PC before that), but for slate-like mobile devices. That is, it was an “everything device” that could do much more than a single thing. The Kindle retained some advantages, and still does–key among them its distraction-free user experience, pleasant e-ink display, and the weeks of battery life–but the iPad was too desirable and too versatile to deny. It also offered color, a feature Amazon didn’t add to the Kindle until this past year, and it addressed a key limitation of the Kindle by being compatible with all the content that Amazon sold (via the Kindle app).

I went on to own most non-Pro iPad models over the next 14 years, too. From a reading perspective, there were two major changes: Weight reductions that made the standard 10-ish-inch iPad easier to deal with, and the iPad Mini, which arrived in 2012 and offered an even more compelling form factor.

And like the Kindle, the cost of the iPad came down dramatically over time, making this versatile device even more interesting. (On the other end of the spectrum, Apple has resisted making iPad Pro, especially, a true laptop replacement by artificially limiting multitasking and background services.)

The success of Kindle as an e-book platform helped to remove some doubt from the equation. The Kindle app is available basically everywhere, which these days mean Android phones and tablets, iPhones, iPads, and the web. And so one can use a dedicated Kindle e-reader, a phone or tablet they like, a PC or Mac, or any combination of these things. And Kindle will do a reasonably good job of keeping your position in each book, regardless of which device you pick up at any time. Amazon offers a similar feature for its Audible audiobook service, of course, but the audio nature of this content makes the choice of device easier. Most just listen to Audible titles on their phones, I assume.

The success of the Kindle also meant that later e-reader entries, like the Barnes & Noble Nook and Kobo eReader were less interesting to me. I was already locked into the Kindle ecosystem, but I was fine with that. It had, and still has, the best content, the best overall prices, and my ever-growing collection of content. Between my wife and me, we now have several hundred e-books, plus over 300 audiobooks in Audible (and about 60 books that are available in both systems, with platform sync).

? It’s not just books

Of course, reading isn’t just about books. I spend much of the day reading, and a lot of that is work-related. Where I read books in Kindle/Audible, my other reading is all over the place, on the web and in various apps. I still read two newspapers each day–which mostly involves skimming the new articles that appear each day and diving into those that seem interesting–and today, that occurs through mobile apps on my iPad. (Earlier on, Kindle had newspaper subscriptions that I still sort of miss.) I read through everything new each morning in three feed-type apps–Google News (technology), feeeed, and Google (Discovery feed)–plus Substack, which my wife and I use for Eternal Spring. I catch up on “read-later” content in Instapaper (and use the daily Instapaper and Pocket email newsletters to find new things to read later). On my PCs, I also use a Google Reader replacement called The Old Reader to catch up on personal computing news throughout the day. And I typically end each day reading a book in the Kindle app.

This diversity is what continues to put the iPad over the top for me when it comes to reading. In fact, it’s pretty much what I use an iPad for. I do occasionally watch videos on the device, mostly when flying, but not all that often. And because my newest iPad (see below) has a lot of storage, it’s become even more versatile for me because I can use it to read and manage email (in the Gmail app), shop online (Amazon app), access content in my cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive), and use whatever other apps. In the past, I had to manage storage and couldn’t install apps I’d only use sometimes.

My wife isn’t what you’d call an Apple fan–she doesn’t own or use any Apple products or services I can think of, though the rest of the family does–and I’m semi-fascinated by how different her reading habits are. Like me, she loves to read, and, like me, she starts and ends each day reading. But she uses completely different devices. She reads news on her phone on a tiny folding stand in the morning, these days on a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. This has a large display for a phone but a small display compared to a Kindle e-reader or tablet. And she reads books at night on a Kindle Paperwhite.

I sometimes ask her about these choices. I don’t quite get the phone choice, especially, given our age and how small the display is, relatively speaking. From her perspective, this is more about not having multiple devices to manage and keep charged, and I guess the S24 Ultra is a compromise of sorts. But if I were fully in the Android ecosystem–really, fully outside the Apple ecosystem, given her use of PCs–I think I’d want an Android tablet of some kind, if only for the larger display. Plus, this would provide a reasonable alternative to the iPad I chose, with similar benefits from the various apps. But she doesn’t seem to care.

I care. In fact, I think about this stuff a lot. And in the past year, I’ve experimented with any number of alternatives, some I’ve written about and some I’ve not. And while I keep coming back to the iPad for all the obvious reasons, I still wonder. And there are new alternatives–a growing collection of Android devices of all sizes that feature e-ink screens and apps–that are very interesting to me.

? The right tool for the job

Ultimately, this is a classic Right Tool for the Job scenario. But it’s also a highly subjective one–we all have whatever preferences–and the choices are constantly evolving.

In the past year, I purchased a Google Pixel Tablet and tried to make a go of it (twice). It’s so close. But the Pixel Tablet is undermined by its wide aspect ratio display, which makes it unappealing for reading in portrait mode. It just looks awkward and weird.

I also bought a Kindle Paperwhite in the Spring, and then a Kindle Colorsoft the day Amazon announced it in October. I guess some things never change, but I’ve always loved e-ink, have really appreciated the many advances in that technology–like the warm backlighting–over time, and have long wanted color. But in both cases, I ran into the same issues I’ve always had with Kindle e-readers. They’re too small. They’re too slow, with unresponsive touch controls. And they’re too limited: There’s a basic web browser on the device that opens up the possibilities a little bit, but you’re pretty much stuck with text-based books only. I have friends who read on a Kindle e-reader when possible and use an iPad (or phone) otherwise. But this is where, to me, the versatility of the iPad outweighs the complexity of multiple devices. So I’ve passed it along to my wife, as I figured I would when I bought it.

I also recently bought a Kindle Fire HD 8 because you never know: Maybe Amazon will get this device right one day, and maybe I could put up with the inherent cheapness, lack of Google Play support, and other limitations. But it didn’t take long to realize that this device wasn’t for me. I can put up with the big bezels, the cheap build quality, and maybe even the Amazon Appstore and whatever nonsense I’d have to go through to side-load the Play Store. But this device is terrible. There are two speakers, but they’re on the left side when you hold it in portrait mode, as I will. The display is low resolution (800 x 1280) and low-quality. The performance is eh. And the user interface is ludicrous, like a full-screen ad for Amazon products and services. I like the idea of the Kindle Fire, and I love the pricing. But it’s not the right device for me. So it’s going back to Amazon.

The iPad is the right device. But I managed to screw that up, too. In June, I stupidly bought a 13-inch iPad Air M2 to replace the 11-inch previous-gen iPad Air I had been using. And for the first time in a while, an iPad isn’t working out for me. It’s too big and heavy, and while I had vague ideas about an iPad that somehow sat between the base iPad and the iPad Pro and might one day make sense in a laptop-like keyboard case scenario, buying this iPad was a mistake. It’s an overly expensive device that I only use for reading, and I wish I could have held out for the iPad Mini update that Apple finally delivered four months later.

So this gnaws at me. I can’t trade in my iPad Air to Apple yet, it’s too new, but I’ve looked into selling it on Swappa or a similar service. I price out the iPad Mini, comparing it to the base iPad, which has an 11-inch display, but because that iPad comes with just 64 GB of memory, the two are priced identically if you upgrade the storage on the latter. And I like the idea of a smaller iPad, given how I use this device. But I’m stuck.

And then there is the outlier. This thing that many upend it all.

? Change is in the Air

I noted above that there are various e-ink-based Android devices out in the world. And that these devices of course include Android apps, thanks to the bundled Google Play Store. That’s interesting because they could provide the e-ink Kindle experience using that app, but also an e-ink reading experience in other apps, including most of the apps I currently use on the iPad. (Not all of them, sadly. The feeeed app is Apple-only, for example.) And that is very interesting to me. Granted, an iPad with this type of display would be even more interesting. But we all know Apple will never make such a thing.

There are several interesting choices here, including the phone-sized Boox Palma 2 that starts at a reasonable $280 and uses a reasonably modern Android version (13) and includes a fingerprint reader for security.

And at the higher-end, there are big devices like the Boox Tab Ultra, which features a 13.3-inch display.

These are both grayscale e-ink devices, which is honestly not horrible. But there are also some devices like this with color e-ink displays. And that type of device is very interesting to me. Especially if the display is the right size. Say, 8 to 10 inches.

They exist. Sticking with Boox, there’s a Note Air4 C with a 10.3-inch color e-ink display, but it starts at $500. That’s too much money, and I’d like an even smaller display. And so the Tab Mini C, with its 7.8-inch color e-ink display and $350 starting price, looks interesting. But it’s stuck on Android 11. So I’ll keep my eye on an update. And on other similar devices.

And who knows? Maybe this year, I’ll make a change. I’m open to it. But for now, sadly, I think I’m stuck with this gigantic iPad that I regret every time I pick it up. It works. There are worse problems to have, I know.