I’ve come to the point where I’m decent enough at reading light novels and mangas, though I need a lot more practice.
It’s easy enough to download an epub or pdf into any tablet, but what could really help me, I think, is a way to take notes - underline a word you don’t know to reesarch it later, writing down a definition next to it, etc.
Has anyone here learned the same way? If so, what tablet are you using? Any recommendations?
From my preliminary research, the best for that use seems to be the RemarKable2, but it costs half a plane ticket to Japan, so it’s not a purchase one can make lightly.
A regular Kobo (and I assume kindle will do the same) let you highlight stuff in the book and add notes.
It’s not as reactive as a remarkable of course. But it does the job.
I usually highlight words I want to remember, and do a quik card création session from time to time.
I’ve read that Kobo has some restrictions on note-taking on anything that doesn’t come from its application, is it true?
Besides the quality of note-taking, it’s important that the DRMs or restrictions arent’ too inconvenient, since I’ll mostly be downloading LN and PDFs from various sources.
Note taking is a feature available on pretty much any ereader and you don’t need to buy the overpriced remarkable. Besides, I think they released version 3 already.
Make sure to do a proper market research and go over posts on reddit. There is a subreddit r/ereader where many people seek help with picking the right ereader for them. If you make a post about what is your budget and what features you expect, they will point you in the right direction.
Different brands have their own restrictions on what you can do with books from outside sources. Kindle is the most closed system, Kobo is somewhere in the middle but I don’t know the details, PocketBook is the most open system. I don’t remember about the other brands.
It also depends on country. For example you would have hard time getting Kindle in central/eastern Europe, or PocketBook in USA.
You can click on a word and highlight it on Kindle. I don’t think you can draw free lines. (I use an older Kindle though, so not sure if newer one’s also let you use a pen. My impression is that e-reader, where you can draw on, will cost more.)
If you want to read mangas on an e-reader, you will definitely need a larger screen. (At least I found the standard sized Kindle too small to read mangas well. Had the impression larger ones also tended to be more likely to be e-readers, which let you take scribble on. (Sure not all, but I often thought, I don’t need to scribble on it necessarily, just wanting a nice big e-ink screen to read mangas easier.)
Saw a Remarkable in real life, it sure looked nice and it felt good to scribble on it.
I’m using an Onyx Boox Air 3. I convert the majority of my manga into pdf format and scribble on it using the built-in pdf reader function. They convert into an additional PDF ‘layer’ when viewed on a PC.
For novels/prose I find a text hooker/hover lookup system more useful, so I convert everything to epub and read via ttsu using KiwiBrowser. I do wish you could make notes more easily, but instant lookups is more useful to me so I just make notes externally.
Thanks for all the answers so far!
Jintor, that’s exactly what I’m looking to do, so it’s great to see I’m not alone in having tried that out.
You make a good point for lookups, I wish you could do the two easily. I’ve been reading some LN pdfs on my PC with KanjiTomo for OCR, but found out that I don’t memorize well if I can just instantly get a word’s definition. But yeah, ideally, I’d have both…
My current thinking is if I just stuff myself with familiarity by seeing a word a lot, even with instant lookups it will eventually stick. For the more stubborn candidates, there’s always SRS. Generally, I think I just want to read loads at speed and trust that I’ll get better the more words I read. But we’ll see where it lands.
You made a note about expense - I’m afraid this is a costly exercise to be honest. eReader tablets are quite expensive and there was a lot of too and fro on my part before pulling the trigger. I’ve found it worth it, especially for my eyes, but it’s a pretty eye-watering sum compared to eg entry model Kindles or Kobos.
The Onyx Air 3 seems to be around 500€, right?
That’s definitely in my price range, so that’s fine (thanks, tech jobs). Could you elaborate a bit on what’s difficult about taking notes with your epub reading method?
Well, you can’t do it at all (at least tying it to the epub), at least if you want lookups I think. That may just be with my method - basically what I do is I use Ttsu reader to load the ePub into a android browser that supports extensions (https://kiwibrowser.com/) and run Yomitan from there [oddly this works offline too, though I’m not sure it’s supposed to - must be running locally]. Ttsu, unfortunately, doesn’t support highlighting or notes, as far as I understand.
There might be alternate ways to load an ePub into a reader that also allows for highlighting and instant lookups – I tried eg the Kindle Android app for my smallish Amazon library, but the UX is pretty awful imho
By the way, if I was doing this for the first time again I would probably get a eInk colour variant - it would be pretty crap for colour manga but I think it would be useful for note-taking.
The kindle scribe is the cheapest option that comes with a pen, however, both remarkable and boox are better devices. Not sure about the DRM situation on the scribe though. There’s also the Supernote Nomad if you’re looking for a smaller device, though it’s around remarkable price:)
To add, I own the Note Air 3C, the color version of Note Air 3, and if I could switch it out I would get a black and white one, as the color portion makes the screen a bit too gray.
Oh, interesting - it is definitely perfect for black and white manga, I just wish my note colours would pop a bit more. But if the screen darkening is an issue still…
Oh nice, good to know the Onyx works for mangas well, because I sure want an e-book read where I can read mangas on. And the standard Kindle is sure too small for it.
How heavy is the Onyx? I just wonder, because I mostly enjoy reading on an e-reader while holding it like a book, but if it is too heavy, this might not be fun. (Like iPad feels already too heavy to just hold like a book over a longer time.)
Ah sad to hear. But yeah this is why I feel hesitant so far with colour e-ink reader. I kinda want one, because it would be cool to read comics too. On an e-reader.
I wonder how the colour Remarkable is, it looks at least nice from the pictures. But no idea how nice the colour screen is actually.
From what I can read online, this greyish tendency tends to disappear when using the backlight.
On photos it looks perfectly decent, I think I’ll still get the color one despite being a heavy manga reader. The appeal of coding your notes in color is just too much.
