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  • Foliate: Clean, Smooth, and Intuitive

I was thrilled when Foliate was added to the Solus repository with this update. I was hoping that it might be able to open my Nook books - it's said to open Kindle books, after all - but no, Nook's DRM still does its thing. However, that's but a small disappointment.

This ebook reader is easily the best I've ever seen for an all-purpose application of its kind. Out of the box, it comes with several sources of ebooks that it will open, and the selections are extensive, as you can see in the image above.

So, I still need to rely on my tablets to read my Nook books, but I'm looking forward to exploring all the offerings available in Foliate. I have some nice sci-fi in mind for starters. πŸ˜ƒ

I think I've read all the Sherlock Holmes stories over the years, but I had no idea that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a prolific author of other genres as well. Since I installed Foliate this weekend, I've been reading "Lost World," and enjoying it immensely. I'm about to start chapter 7 in this sci-fi/fantasy today, and really enjoying Doyle's writing style, as it's applied to something other than a detective story.

    WetGeek
    My favorite Holmes line : "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
    that is genius.
    Wifeypoo and I found the two Robert Downey Holmes movies at a thrift shop for a buck. She loved them, I thought they sucked. I love RDJ but they were too cute for their own good.

    PS--I've never bought an ebook because I still love killing treesπŸ˜‰---you think the book cover metadata is bundled into the book you bought? or, like a music library app, does it go online and fetch the cover art? Curious.
    edit: added the word 'art'

      brent I still love killing trees

      You'll never know how cool ebooks are until you try one. Of course, whether there's front matter or back matter there depends on the publisher, but I've never seen an ebook that was missing anything in that regard. And yes, of course there's a cover photo. Those are what you see in the image of my original post, above.

      My usual way of reading Nook ebooks is a 10" Android tablet. I have two of those. I believe my collection at Barnes and Noble is up to several thousand books now (many I've read, some I still plan to read), and at any given time I have I have the most recent couple hundred or so that I've read or am currently reading stored on my current tablet. Ebooks take up no room on my bookshelves. I gave all of those books away to friends or to Goodwill years ago.

      A good many of the books I've read cost me nothing. Some came from the Gutenberg Press, and are of historical value. Others are the first volumes of series from excellent indie authors who make one volume available for free as a sample. Many times I've found favorite authors that way. In one case, I'm eagerly waiting for the 18th book in a favorite series of mysteries to be released. I've paid for the previous 17.

      And I'd never be able to afford to read all the books I have if I had to pay $25 or $30 for each of them. Ebooks are very inexpensive to produce, and their costs reflect that. That 18th book I'm waiting on will cost me $4.95, and of course zero for shipping. I recently bought the first volume in that series as a paperback in an effort to get my wife interested in it (she's a Luddite, like you) and it cost me $14.95 plus shipping.

      The ebooks, being so portable (1s and 0s don't weigh much) are easy to take with me when I go somewhere I need to wait. I recently had to sit in our dentist's waiting room while my wife had an appointment to get a filling. I finished two chapters in my current book before she was ready to go home. And I think I've mentioned that my answer to insomnia is to read a chapter or two when I go to bed. I set the tablet to a warm background color and turn the brightness way down so it doesn't keep me awake, and it works great - with no sleeping pills needed. After 20 minutes or so, I'm usually ready to put the tablet and my reading glasses down, turn over, and fall asleep in a minute or two. No clumsy book to deal with, and I don't need a light on in order to see what I'm reading, so I don't keep my wife awake.

      Not only does an ebook reader keep track of the page you're on when you turn it off, so it knows where to start the next time, but I have two of these generic tablets, one upstairs by the bed and one downstairs near a comfortable chair. They're both connected to the same wi-fi network. When I start to read one of them, it tells me if it's found a later page in the same book on another reader at a different location on the network, and asks whether I'd like to change to that page or to stay where I am on that tablet. No more trips up the stairs to fetch the book I'm currently reading if I'm not ready for bed at the moment, or remembering to take it upstairs with me if I am.

      There are probably another 20 or so perfectly good reasons to read ebooks, if I thought about it for a while, but if I haven't convinced you to give them a try, that's your problem, not mine. The tablets I use came from Walmart, cost very little, and have worked quite well for years. The Nook reader software is free, and last I saw, they have 60,000 or so free ebooks of all genres. Many are the first volumes in a series from best-selling authors. And of course, there are other sources, such as are freely available from Foliate if you'd like to give ebooks a try without any initial investment at all.

        "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

        That is a fantastic line built off of Occam's razor, "other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones".

        It is much older than Holmes; as early as 1375. It's philosophical foundations go back further to Aristotle.

          Foliate: Clean, Smooth, and Intuitive

          Was expecting a shampoo review.

          diagnostics0 Occam's back to 1375? I am surprised. I thought it was more contemporary. Aristotle worked this in between logos pathos and ethos, ehπŸ˜‰. Always knew Doyle was very studied.

          WetGeek

          WetGeek Not only does an ebook reader keep track of the page you're on when you turn it off, so it knows where to start the next time, but I have two of these generic tablets, one upstairs by the bed and one downstairs near a comfortable chair. They're both connected to the same wi-fi network. When I start to read one of them, it tells me if it's found a later page in the same book on another reader at a different location on the network, and asks whether I'd like to change to that page or to stay where I am on that tablet. No more trips up the stairs to fetch the book I'm currently reading if I'm not ready for bed at the moment, or remembering to take it upstairs with me if I am.

          that is incredible.

          WetGeek And I think I've mentioned that my answer to insomnia is to read a chapter or two when I go to bed. I set the tablet to a warm background color and turn the brightness way down so it doesn't keep me awake, and it works great - with no sleeping pills needed.

          I get insomnia streaky. Every day for weeks and sometimes fall asleep right away for weeks and neither state has to do with restful or unrestful sleep, that's a whole other animal. All to say it's been a long time since I fell asleep with a book. Seems a good way to go to sleep since you blocked out the majority of the things on your mind just by getting into a novel. The warm tones always work best for me end-of-evening.
          Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

            brent that is incredible.

            To be clear, it's the Nook app that does that. I haven't tried it with Foliate yet, but I'll do that soon.


            Sadly, no joy there. Foliate apparently doesn't know how to do that, at least not automatically. I haven't looked for a command to tell it to check for another open instance of the same book, but I'm not very hopeful.

            Foliate is one of those apps that make me love the GNOME ecosystem ^^

              Gwen Foliate is one of those apps that make me love the GNOME ecosystem

              Indeed. And it's kind enough to run on two of my KDE Plasma machines, as well.