KC /int/ Book Club discussion

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HOWTO: Reading (presumably pirated) e-books on PC

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message 1: by [deleted user] (last edited Feb 15, 2012 09:29AM) (new)

I found this piece of software for reading e-books, which is probably the best of the lot. It's also available on every platform (e.g. on Linux).
To use it, just click on "add books" in the main menu and select all your downloaded e-books. Then double-click on them to read them!

It would be brilliant for reading "illicit literature"--by this I mean, of course, books gained by shady means on the interwebs.

On my Android phone I use an app called FBReader. Light on battery, superfast, highly recommended. Also, a nice and cosy interface, and cool transition from page to page. And open source, too, for you tin foil hats out there.
EDIT: Looks like FBReader is also available for the desktop. It's brilliant as a reader, but it cannot convert between a multitude of formats. Most notably, it cannon convert PDFs to EPUBs or FB2s, which means your books will look like ass on your tablet or phone and you'll need to constantly zoom in and out. I'd still go for Calibre on the desktop, though it's up to you.

Now enjoy the reading experience. :)


message 2: by Kosherman (new)

Kosherman | 1 comments Speaking of shady means of obtaining literature check this out http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/Bookz


message 3: by Igor (new)

Igor | 6 comments I can drop a list of all english books I've downloaded from russian tracker. It's mostly in fb2 format so you'll have to convert it through calibre (about 30,000 books). Is there any filesore here where I could drop this list into?


message 4: by [deleted user] (last edited Feb 13, 2012 02:08PM) (new)

Igor wrote: "I can drop a list of all english books I've downloaded from russian tracker. It's mostly in fb2 format so you'll have to convert it through calibre (about 30,000 books).

30,000? Fuck me sideways. o_O

I guess... you could create a 7zip and link to it... http://ifile.it/ seems like a good site, but no, there's no file-sharing facility on a legitimate site like this you nutter!


message 5: by Igor (new)

Igor | 6 comments Admiral Cockroach wrote: 30,000? Fuck me sideways. o_O

Yeah. It's about 10 Gb of books in ePub and fb2. I've uploaded the list so you can see what I have. And I'll need some big filehosting to store all this. Or I could cut it into pieces and upload one at a time. Here is the list: link


message 6: by Matheus (new)

Matheus | 2 comments i used to have a glorious site to download shit from aswell, but it went offline one day without warning...


why did you have to abandon me sandy? why?


anyway you inspired me to find out what happened to that index and i found out two things first that the

booklist of that glorious site i mentioned earlier is still up
http://www.nautilus-solar.net/SandyGu...

and secondly i found this index

http://www.preterhuman.net/texts/lite...

since i just found it i have never used it myself so i can't comment on it's worth but it seems like something and most seem to be in .lit format


message 7: by Bellis (last edited Feb 13, 2012 04:24PM) (new)

Bellis Coldwine (belliscoldwine) | 10 comments Calibre is yucky, I'd rather organize my books myself (also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+b...)

For reading alone, I use FBreader, it just works and doesn't get in the way.

Getting books: I use Bibliotik, which is a pretty well-organized library tracker. I already downloaded more books from there than I will ever read, but it's a bit hard to get into now. Rumor has it that they will open up again as soon as a bigger server has been set up.

Say, do goodreads keep track of what kinds of links are posted here? Because if they don't, I would just keep a few DHT-only torrents seeding indefinitely.


message 8: by [deleted user] (last edited Feb 13, 2012 05:39PM) (new)

Bellis wrote: "Calibre is yucky, I'd rather organize my books myself (also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+b...)"
Hurr, security holes. As if they'd affect you anyway.

It's a very fine program, and very convenient too you autist. Not to mention it lets you read EPUBs from the PC!
(mouseover the image)
(and then right-click > view image because goodreads distorted the fuck out of it)


message 9: by Bellis (last edited Feb 14, 2012 06:58AM) (new)

Bellis Coldwine (belliscoldwine) | 10 comments >epubs on the PC
http://www.fbreader.org/content/docum...

I know what Calibre can do, it's just that the author's attitude scares me and I don't want to have it on my drive. But I won't tell you which client to use :)
As for features, FBReader does exactly what I want.
http://i.imgur.com/V5NsW.png
http://i.imgur.com/R8d26.png


message 10: by [deleted user] (new)

Holy poop, FBReader also has a PC version? That I didn't know!

But I'll stick with Calibre. I still haven't begun downloading a bunch of books I'd like to read in digital formats. Although the PDF to EPUB conversion can produce somewhat imperfect results, at least it makes shit readable on a small screen.

The whole point of PDF, you see, if for pages to look exactly as they would if they were printed. So on a small screen like that of your phone or maybe a tablet (hipster faggot), you need to keep zooming in and out!

But EPUB and FB2 and all those e-book formats are made specifically so that they reflow the text in accordance with screen size. And that's why I find Calibre superior, because I can just click on "path" for each book and drag 'n' drop the EPUB file to my phone's SD card. Simple, eh?


message 11: by [deleted user] (new)


message 12: by Igor (new)

Igor | 6 comments FUUUUUUUUU~ What the HELL? I think soon I'll be marching with these budlo gay foxes and blowing the government buildings!


message 13: by Bellis (new)

Bellis Coldwine (belliscoldwine) | 10 comments Btik is down too now ;_;


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