There Is No Perfect E-reader

Lately, when I use AI tools to assist my programming, I often run into the same issue: I have nothing to do while I wait. Anyone who has tried "vibe coding" probably knows the feeling — once you lay out the task, there is a long wait.

I decided to use those waiting gaps to read.

Recently I have been reading Howard Spodek's The World's History — an A4-sized tome that weighs about 3.5 kg. The content is engaging, but the reading experience is frankly poor; no matter how I place it, it is uncomfortable and inconvenient. So I downloaded the PDF.

I already had a 7-inch e-ink e-reader, but reading this PDF on it was a strain. I tried a 10.3-inch e-ink device; the display was crisp, but page turns left ghosting, and the included EMR stylus made handwriting notes a chore.

A 10.3-inch e-ink device is not cheap; for about the same money I could get a decent 12-inch tablet, so I looked at tablets. Their advantages are obvious: sharp display, smooth page turns. But juggling different e-book formats is a pain — one app renders this format well but not that one — and highlighting or annotating is less convenient than I imagined; I still had to keep a notes app open and switch back and forth.

I poured time and money into finding the "right" device and ended up not reading much at all. That is the charm of consumerism. I recently heard the idea of "creating consumers" on a podcast; I suppose I became one of them.

I do not actually need to squeeze every minute. The breaks in coding can be used to think through other aspects of a project, or simply to rest. The side effect of "squeezing every minute" is constant context-switching, which makes everything worse. A hefty book that requires note-taking was never meant for fragmented time anyway.

Do not try to exploit fragmented time; learn to let it go. When I try to squeeze value from fragments, those fragments end up slicing me apart.

I am good at letting go. In the end I gave up e-ink devices, tablets, and even paper (it is simply too heavy), and I also gave up reading in fragmented time. There is no perfect e-reader; for me, the best way is to read and take notes on my laptop.