KOReader, Readest, and Readeck for an OSS Reading Powerhouse

I don't want to be too grand, but I may have achieved e-reading nirvana.

I've had a refurbished 7th gen Kindle paperwhite since 2020, and it's been absolutely wonderful and reliable all this time. I bought from a third party reseller, since I figured Bezos has enough cash as-is. Same goes for avoiding buying Kindle books specifically, since they're licensed, and not owned. So throughout it's lifespan, it's been used primarily for library books and DRM-free ebooks, which has been well & good, and worked fine on the normal Kindle OS.

KOReader

Not too long ago, I & four million other people saw Dammit Jeff talking about Jailbreaking your Kindle, and figured it'd be a fun weekend project (it was!). Since then, I've been using KOReader and loving the flexibility in changing exactly how reading & gestures worked, the ability to connect to my Calibre content server, and setting my own backgrounds. But one aspect still bugged me that I couldn't quite solve until recently. I wanted to be able to read a book on my phone (iOS) and pick it back up on my e-reader.

Readest

A few weeks ago I finally found Readest, and realized I finally had a solution to my problem. Readest allows me to read a book on my phone, but still use KOReader for reading on my e-reader. It's not hard to set up (the app is self explanatory, and the KOReader integration has a simple guide), but I'll caution one snag I hit. For me, it worked much better to upload my e-book from KOReader to Readest. I believe you should be able to go either way, but starting with Readest first tended to cause headaches getting it either on my e-reader at all, or syncing properly.

After it's all said & done though, a bit of tinkering has gotten me a setup that lets me breeze through a few pages on my phone during the day, and be able to pick up my e-reader at night, not have to skim to find my place, and settle right in where I left off. The option to read on my phone has helped me scroll a bit less, and the fact that I'm reading bits throughout the day has me more inclined to dive in deeper later in the evening, a lovely recursive pattern.

Readeck

If e-books were all I got out of the setup, life would be good, but it can be better! Readeck is a read-it-later application that you can self-host, and (you guessed it) integrates with KOReader via a plugin, so now if I see something interesting in my RSS feed, or get something good shared in Slack that I don't want to focus on right now, I can send it to Readeck to not lose it, and if it's a nice meaty article, I can even read it on my e-reader with ease.

Open Source, DRM-Free, and Owning your Device

While I am personally jazzed about my reading setup, I really wanted to sing it's praises because it feels like a huge win for open technology. This was all made possible by open source software and taking control of a device I bought in 2020 and is no longer supported by the company that made it. I'm able to buy DRM-free e-books thanks to publishers like Tor that require stores like bookshop.org to make their books easy to read how anyone wants to read them.

As more things on the internet feel closed off and siloed, it's nice when you can still make your tech work your way. It's worth celebrating.