A Few Weeks With a Kobo

A few weeks ago, I thought crossed my mind: buy an e-reader. It wasn’t the first time. In the beginning of this year, I read many books and I remembered considering it back then. However, that wasn’t the first time either. So I just decided to go with it and ordered a Kobo Clara HD.

Over the years, I have accumulated quite a few books. When I was in my parents place, I never thought about the space that they consume or even if it was environmentally friendly. Once I moved to Lisbon, I also wanted to move some books just for decoration. During my bachelor years I didn’t read that much so I didn’t end up growing a large bookcase in there.

Why get an e-reader?

Since I moved to the Netherlands, I have been trying to read more and more. However, one of the problems is that books occupy quite some space and I really don’t want to think about all the things I’ll have to move the next time I move.

I must confess: I love looking at a shelf filled with beautifully curated books, sorted by colour and sizes. It’s beautiful and I have one - actually two -, of those. Sadly, that doesn’t scale well when you don’t live somewhere that you feel is permanent. Even if it did, space is limited. With e-books, I can read them digitally and if there is something that I really enjoy, I can always buy the physical version for display.

Another issue is that books can be quite cumbersome to carry with you. I was bringing a backpack everywhere I went even if it was super unnecessary. This is a hassle. Mainly in summer when it’s hot and we sweat, a lot.

Recently, I bought 6L capacity sling and I have been carrying that everywhere when I know a backpack won’t be needed. It’s been quite amazing. The problem? It won’t fit a book of course. An e-reader however? Fits perfectly! I can think of some other aspects, such as the environment, the trees, etc, but let’s keep it short 🌳

How has it been?

I really enjoy it. I haven’t used an e-reader before and the only other e-ink device I have is an Eve Room to monitor the temperature and humidity inside my studio. I must confess that I am quite impressed with the technology and it feels like real paper in the sense that it looks like real paper and behaves like real paper when in contact with daylight.

One advantage, besides the size, is that it has a back light that you can turn on to illuminate the screen if you want to read at home or in some darker environment. With physical books it’s always a hassle to find the best position against the light.

There are, of course some drawbacks: the e-reader doesn’t have USB-C. That is personally my biggest drawback but it’s also not a gigantic issue since I don’t really need to charge it or connect to the computer frequently.

Does it replace the feeling of a real book? Of course it doesn’t. Does it matter? Well, that certainly depends on you. I will miss seeing new books pop up on my shelf, but I’m very happy seeing them in my e-reader and being able to carry them and reading them everywhere I go.