maemo.org - Talk - FBreader: library recommendations

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Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Oh My! Feedbooks only has a couple of hundred titles I want to read. I feel like a kid set loose in an amazon warehouse!

My poor n900. They dont make cards bigger than 16gb yet, do they?

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Might I point you kind folk in the direction of manybooks.net? A broad selection of out of copyright stuff, mostly sourced from Guttenberg I think, in more or less any format you care to think of.

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Try http://manybooks.net/ or http://mnybks.net/ .
This website can generate downloads in a wide range of formats of many books (in the public domain in the US) .

There is also http://www.munseys.com, which provides the same functionality (many books many formats).

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Quote:

Originally Posted by RevdKathy (Post 449747)

Oh My! Feedbooks only has a couple of hundred titles I want to read. I feel like a kid set loose in an amazon warehouse!

My poor n900. They dont make cards bigger than 16gb yet, do they?

16GB will hold many thousand books. It is audio and especially video clips that eat storage space.

You can put a huge number of books in your n900 MyDocs and not even make a dent in your free space.

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Quote:

Originally Posted by j.s (Post 450053)

16GB will hold many thousand books. It is audio and especially video clips that eat storage space.

You can put a huge number of books in your n900 MyDocs and not even make a dent in your free space.

To be honest, I'm more worried about the dent in my free time from all those books... ;)

I'm also worried about the effect of near constant use. Can you wear a n900 out? I wore all the silvering off the buttons in the n95 in the first 12 months. I can see my n900 this time next year all wrinkled and decrepit from overuse.

Re: FBReader: library recommendations

Quote:

Originally Posted by RevdKathy (Post 449655)

Posting this here because although it would be really helpful to have some suggestions for sources of books now that FBReader has made it itnot extras, i could see this also becoming a sort of 'maemo book-club'.

So... those of youi already using FBReader, where do you recommend? What format? What do we need to avoid? Can we buy books or are we limited to what's available free?

Well, if you are a fan of Science Fiction, there is also the Baen Free Library. It has a collection of free books from current authors, like David Drake, David Weber, Eric Flint and John Ringo. I have also bought books from Baen's site.

Quote:

For example I can find a number of places selling books on this list - are they all encryption free? Or do I have to avoid the ones marked 'secure' (which cuts down their listing considerably!)

And within that - what is good to read there? (Yes, I know that's utterly subjective... I'm curious what people are reading on maemo devices!)

I'm excited that the reader has made it to 'extras' having promised myself no more 'testing' apps till I've given feedback. ;)

I have had pretty good luck with mobi and epub formats.

Another application which I run on my desktop is an ebook library manager called Calibre. From the user manual:

Quote:

calibre is an e-book library manager. It can view, convert and catalog e-books in most of the major e-book formats. It can also talk to a few e-book reader devices. It can go out to the internet and fetch metadata for your books. It can download newspapers and convert them into e-books for convenient reading. It is cross platform, running on Linux, Windows and OS X.

It is nice because you can convert various formats, including pdf and html to epub or mobi, and upload to your device (I use scp to copy books over). A cross section of my books include leisure reading like the Baen books, conversions of PDFs and html on various subjects including Linux administration, high performance computing, and security, and a couple of public domain books.

Hope that helps,
--vr

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Quote:

Originally Posted by RevdKathy (Post 450073)

I'm also worried about the effect of near constant use. Can you wear a n900 out?

No doubt, but it does seem to be relatively well built. I am expecting mine to last, but who knows?

Quote:

Originally Posted by RevdKathy (Post 450073)

I wore all the silvering off the buttons in the n95 in the first 12 months. I can see my n900 this time next year all wrinkled and decrepit from overuse.

I am hoping that the n900 will get a nice book reader with a nice touchscreen interface, at least for turning pages. Given that, book reading should be a gentle use for it.

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Quote:

Originally Posted by j.s (Post 450764)

No doubt, but it does seem to be relatively well built. I am expecting mine to last, but who knows?

I am hoping that the n900 will get a nice book reader with a nice touchscreen interface, at least for turning pages. Given that, book reading should be a gentle use for it.

FBREADER works quite well with touch screen page turning.

Id still rather right|left split for forward and back but the Top|bottom split isnt giving me too much trouble

It isnt quite paragrahing the same way as Mobi Pocket did for the same book, making it slightly more difficult to follow conversations, but other than that its a tip top ebook reader

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgarvie (Post 450963)

Thanks! I'll give it a try if it ever gets optified.

Re: FBreader: librbary recommendations

EPUB files can be DRM'd (the ePub format does not specify a method of DRM, so the method and device support can vary from file to file). 'Secure' is just a euphemism for DRM in this context. Avoid them like the plague.

I'm also a fan of http://manybooks.net

I just started reading the book 'Makers' by Cory Doctorow, who publishes all of his books under Creative Commons licenses and provides free downloads on his website: http://craphound.com/?cat=5 Really digging it so far, and it's free (as in beer *AND* speech)

If you're at all interested in the legal/political climate (in the US) that prevents you from being able to legitimately purchase reading material for your devices I highly recommend the book 'Free Culture' by Lawrence Lessig It's a short, informative and enjoyable (though at times infuriating) read.