I don’t own a chunk of novels or books that I want to read or are my favourites. And for a long time, I’ve avoided buying a Kindle as I’m never too confident whether I’ll like it or not. I’d love to have a shelf full of books that I’ve read, but as of now, my collection remains on the internet and the hard drive.

In the past, I’ve mentioned that I’m not a fan of reading, and it’s the truth. I read because of curiosity rather than enjoyment. To this day, I feel weird saying that I enjoy reading because I don’t. Two pages inn and I’m already yawning, but I do force myself to read. Anyway, I don’t know why I started writing this paragraph. Mind’s distracted already, I guess.

The only reason I started writing this post is that I’ve finally decided to settle down on applications when it comes to reading books on a device. God, who gives a fuck? Never mind, I talk to myself and write for myself.

I’ve been using Ereader Prestigio for months, and it’s one of the finest reading apps out there. I don’t care about MoonReader. I never tried using it, except for once and ended up not liking the user interface. The “feel” is genuinely essential to me, and it’s one of the reasons I faced a hard time finding the right app before settling down to Ereader Prestigio.

Am I endorsing Ereader Prestigio? Fuck yeah, but since no one will ever find this post despite being on my website, my endorsement doesn’t mean shit. But yes, it’s a good app. As I’ve said before, and I hate to repeat myself, but I’ll do it - I haven’t tried a lot of apps. Damn, I hate repeating myself. Wait, I did that again. FUCK.

Oh wait, I don’t think I repeated myself, except for once. I hope society will find me superior now. God bless.

Now, what happens when you find a good app? You change it, of course, you want to try a few more. That’s what I did, at least. What about Ereader Prestigio? I got bored of it. It was time for BookMate to arrive, and it did. Profit? Yeah, not much. The interface was elegant. I liked how easy it was to customize it as there weren’t many options available, and it wasn’t even a problem IMO. Bookmate had limitations. You could only upload EPUB and FB2 files. For me, the sync wasn’t working well. I could see what has been highlighted in the “quote” section on both of my devices, but if I highlight something using my phone and check it on the web, the highlight with specific colour didn’t appear, only the text in the “quotes” appeared. I don’t know how to explain it distinctly, even though I just did. To be honest, it’s not a big of a deal, but to me, it was. I found a reason to search for something else which could do things the way I wanted. Moreover, I didn’t like the inbuilt dictionary.

Let me make it clear - BookMate is a fantastic app. I prefer its web version over the mobile version. If I had to rate it, I’d give it 4/5. The app had a bunch of flaws, and I have no energy to mention them. You won’t even notice any of it. Definitely not the last time I’m contradicting myself, but yes, it’s a great place to read books.

What did I do now? Yes. I went back to Ereader Prestigio as I found “Foliate” to read and manage ebooks on my laptop. What about synchronization? I don’t care. Why did I ditch the BookMate app? Yes. What about its web version? Yes, I was using it, but not too much.

I found the combination of Foliate + Ereader Prestigio suitable for me. I know I bitched about synchronization, but hey, I stopped caring about it as there was no way those apps were related to each other in a way to fix my issue of synchronization. I was reading different books on different devices anyway.

I wasn’t looking for new software/apps to read books. A whole year passed, and I thought this is it. I didn’t think so, but I’m writing it anyway. As we all know that happiness is short-lived, it’s not that those apps were making me happy, but it was time for me to go on an adventure to find something new where I can build my collection from scratch and settle on one final platform for smartphone and laptop.

Bow down to the king Kindle. Fuck, no. I have always stayed away from it. I don’t hate Kindle. How can I hate something I’ve never used? I have used the app, but I don’t hate it. The whole process of moving books is a pain in the ass for me. I don’t buy ebooks, sorry. I’m pro-piracy unless it’s my content, which doesn’t exist. On a lighter note, if I didn’t have any issue shifting my collection of books, I’d have settled down with Kindle, but that ship has sailed with Vasco da Gama. Everything works well in Kindle, the features are good, and it works without any problem apart from my problems, which I’m not going to write here.

On Kindle, I read “Nicola Tesla - Imagination And The Man That Invented The 20th Century”, and my experience was satisfactory but damn, I’ll never waste my time converting books from one format to another. My case regarding me being pro-piracy has already been established, and I’d not like to contradict myself again even though I will.

“So, I think you went back to Ereader Prestigio and Foliate, right?” Well, how can I do that? Of course, I did. Just kidding, or am I?

It’s not the end!

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon this Reddit post that was related to ebook-reading apps. I scrolled way too down to see what it has to offer, and I saw someone had mentioned Google Play Books and how good it is, plus the page scroll effect is unbeatable. For the sake of trying, I wanted to try it, and I did. I mean, that’s why I’m writing about it. DUH.

The app hit me. I don’t have any bruises to prove if it did it or not, but it’s the standalone app I’m using on my phone and laptop. It has everything that I wanted. All the features work well and maintain their rhythm. I don’t have to convert any book’s format, I don’t have to worry about highlights, and the dictionary is good, too. Sometimes there’s a DRM issue that blocks me from reading the book, but Calibri, along with the DeDRM, makes the task of removing DRM easy as 3.14

Google Play Books has its limitation as it doesn’t support all the formats and sometimes fails to process the books, but that’s okay. To me, it works well. Finally, something I can stick to, and this time I’m sure.

I know I have not attached any screenshots from my phone, and it’s okay. I wanted to do it, but hey, anyway.