Making Connections discussion
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Hello to all of you,Michael, what sites do you go to to find French ebooks? I've looked around, but have not found good ones.
As for the discussion about readers, tablets or laptops, I use my small (11"6) and light laptop at home and so far nothing else... I've been thinking of buying a tablet, but the one I want (yes, Microsoft surface 3) is much to expensive. The other ones will do less than a laptop, so not worth it -unless really cheap. I've thought of an e-reader, but cannot make up my mind. On the laptop, I have the kindle app and ADE. To read, ADE is a lot nicer. That bothers me and has prevented me so far of buying a kindle.
Have a nice day,
A
I tried amazon.fr, and among the cheap ones got no more than my money worth of it... Romances with no story, thrillers without a thrill, etc. I did not look at the normal ones, as I said I could not continue spending $150 o $200 a month on books. Thanks anyway. There is the French FNAC, too. Otherwise netgalley has a publisher called the French Book, but they are already translated in English, and quite well.
Anne,I found myself in a similar situation 4 years ago when I moved to France from the US. I read only ebooks now, because with a click I can get English books from a variety of sources online.
Over 4 years, I've collected 4 different reading devices- an iPhone, two different tablets and one ereader.
At first I read everything on my iPhone because I had iBooks, and downloaded several other reading apps, including Kindle.
The first tablet was an Acer I bought cheap for 89 euros. I loved it for reading books. It was less expensive than an ereader, yet I was able to download various reading apps and get books from more places. The only downside was that is only had 8GB of space and because I don't delete books, I ran out of space. I rarely ever used the Internet capability, except to download books and occasionally check emails.
So, next I got a Galaxy Tab S4 with 16 GB of space and room for up to 64 via SD card. I LOVE my Galaxy Tab and carry it everywhere. But I use it for much more than reading. The reading experience is great. It has a slightly larger screen than my Acer did, which is good because my eyes are getting old! Keep that in mind--screen size.
Then I got a Kindle HD6. It came as a freebie in some software I bought, and I was surprised how much I liked reading on it. But I only read Kindle books. It has Internet, but they make it really difficult to do anything except buy Amazon products. The screen is also smaller than both of my tablets.
So, to summarize, if I had to choose, I would go with a tablet, even an inexpensive one for reading only. On the tablet you can easily download the Kindle reading app, Kobo app, Nook, and almost anything else, except iBooks. While, like you, most of my reading is done via a Kindle app, I do like to go into my other reading apps sometimes and find books. The Kobo reading app is especially nice and they have a nice selection of books, including free promos.
I should mention that I use my Kindle app on the tablet all the time to read PDFs, whether they be manuscripts sent by authors who want me to publish, or other work-related docs. I simply email them to my unique Kindle address and they sync with my app. But recently I found another advantage to the tablet over reader: I downloaded the Dropbox app to the tablet, and now I can just upload files from my computer to Dropbox, it syncs with the app on my tablet, and I can easily read all types of documents on the go, not just books. Then it's easy to empty out my dropbox, save the files on my computer and keep my tablet clean. Recently I went to a conference. I left my computer at home and took my tablet with all the docs I needed in Dropbox. It was nice not to lug my laptop for once.
you may be right, Toni. I've not tried the smartphone for reading, and won't. Too small, battery problems if away, etc. I moderately enjoy kindles. I cannot find the page number, no easy way to go back or ahead, to browse through, and other things preventing them to be pleasant. But I use the one I downloaded on the computers, as much as ADE, which is much, much better! With ADE, you get the page number, you can move back or ahead, you may cheat and read page 340 before anything else, or find what you forgot from the prologue, whatever. And of course, a tablet is easier to handle than the crooked shape of a laptop -which is getting old, five years. Then, I still have to solve he price question. I looked at the Nexus 7, $400, too much. Same for the regular priced Samsung. I'll have to find one on sale. About French books, I hardly noticed the language the book is written in, sometimes not at all. But the American culture is so self centered there is no place for anything else. Good books, like good movies, are made in other countries, too. It's a shame to lose access to all non-US books. I must say too I'm sometimes horrified by the translations. If you don't know anything about a country, don't write a book about it and don't translate books others have written. Dropbox is a smart and useful app, I totally agree.
Good ideas!
As with anything else, the choice of e-Book reader varies by individual. I personally read only traditional print books and do not own an e-reader; however my four adult children and four grandchildren do. Here is the breakdown:3 Kindle
1 Nook
2 tablet
2 smart phone
I have somehow ended up with four different mobile e-readers. A basic kindle, a full sized ipad, an ipad mini and a Galaxy S3 phone. To be perfectly honest, they all do the job pretty well. If I had to choose between them?
The kindle is the simplest and lightest. It also has the best battery life by far. But it is limited in its choice of books and can only do one thing (although admittedly it does it very well).
The full sized ipad is a very versatile thing, although it does feel a bit heavy compared with the others.
The S3 smartphone is the easiest to put into a pocket and the screen is perfectly big enough to read on. The battery life is shockingly poor though.
Probably the best compromise is the ipad mini, although I suspect that a cheaper android tablet would be almost as good for quite a lot less money.
But frankly the differences between them are pretty minimal. Any one of them does the job of being an ereader, so the choice may come down to what else you want to do with it. I happen to prefer the ipad mini, but none of the others would be a bad choice.
You may be in danger of overthinking this one. If you only want a basic ereader, I would recommend a kindle. If you want more bells and whistles, then a 7" tablet would be just the ticket. Start by looking at an ipad mini and then work your way down the price range until you find one that has the right balance of features to cost.
But I wouldn't agonise too much over the decision. Any of these options would be fine.
I looked on amazon.ca, where most of the nexus are around $300. That is a lot for a 2 year-old tablet!
amazing how two countries so close like Canada and US may have such price differences, no?
Anne wrote: "you may be right, Toni. I've not tried the smartphone for reading, and won't. Too small, battery problems if away, etc. I moderately enjoy kindles. I cannot find the page number, no easy way to go..."Anne, you are quite right that countries other than the US have excellent literature. My comment was not to place any emphasis on country or language. Because English is my native language, I read in English for pleasure. That is the only reason I search out English books. Fortunately, there are English books written by authors from countries around the world. I have read some excellent books by authors from UK, Australia and India, among others--on my tablet:D
I agree, Toni. Looking for a book written in English is easier than anything else. By the way, your comment popped a question in my mind. I understand that ebooks, internet, new technologies, etc.. have made writing and publishing easier and financially possible for most people. Some of the indies will turn out to be great writers and it is wonderful news. But how come everybody in the U.S. is writing books? Some are just unreadable. I make a difference between books I don't like, because I don't like violence or explicit sex, but which have still thoughts behind them, and others I still don' like because they are trash, written in a week or so, no story, no style, nothing. Does every one in the U.S. have a book to write?
I too have a Google Nexus 7 made by Asus.
It's a good piece of kit and has the advantage of being much more than just an e-reader but with all the portability that you want in a device of that type.
If you are accessing most of your e-material from Amazon it doesn't really matter what model of e-reader you choose as the free downloadable Kindle reading app. is available for just about any device.
See this link to see which one is right for you whether to read on your laptop or on a newly acquired e-reader:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custome...
Happy reading on the go :)
Best, Alex