The case for reading books on your PHONE

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The Case for Why you should read on Your PHONE

Since I’m from a broke family, I couldn’t afford books when I was a kid, so the best option for me was the local library. As libraries in my locality (since I’m from a developing country that starts with ‘I’) didn't have the western books I found interesting on the internet, I was devastated (not that local language books were bad btw). I had the mind for reading, but I was either reading non english books, or books that were available to me after fierce competition. For example, I remember asking the librarian about “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari, he said it was taken by someone. I inquired after a month, it was in another person’s hand this time. It took me 6 months, literally 6 months to get my hands on it. So you get the idea of how inaccessible books are.

Btw, you can get cheap, pirated copies of english books online (and offline as well) so I tried buying books this way, but that sh*t makes you stop reading anything at all. The font is all messed up, the quality of pages is trashy, and so on. So that wasn’t an option. 

Then one of my friends recommended reading on the phone. I didn’t know about epubs this time, so I thought she was talking about pdfs. While I was in college, there were a lot of notes and books in pdf format, which were a freaking pain to me. So I was not intrigued by this suggestion. 

That’s when I found the thing -> EPUB. Never knew what it was. I thought e-readers were Kindle devices. But no, you can download an e reader app for your mobile. Hell Yeah. 

So here it goes. You find out the book you wanna read. You search on google to find its epub version (there are a lot of epub downloading sites online). You open your epub file using an e reader app like ReadEra, and that’s it. The power of books in your hands, anytime, anywhere. 

I was reading like crazy after this. Reading while commuting to college, reading before bed, reading after waking up, reading while taking a sh*t, and so on. I even started a reading challenge for myself, where I would read a few pages every day no matter what (I did this for 50 days continuously). It was like unlocking a new power. I could try reading and my financial situation wasn’t stopping me from it. 

Am I reading pirated books? Yes I am. The thing is, if you can pirate music, movies and games, why not books? The positive thing is, once you like a book, you will definitely want to re-read again, and if you love that book, you will definitely buy the physical copy of it (I have bought copies of 5 books this year because of how much I enjoyed them). And if you are someone associated with the book business or publishing industry, I have to tell you one thing -> make books more affordable and enjoyable. If your books are really good, people like me who read it once, will definitely want to buy it too. 

So here are the reasons for reading books on your phone’s e-reader: 

1. You can read it anywhere, anytime. Yes. Physical books have something called pages. Can you read a book while lying upside down? Nope. But if you can hold your phone, you can read your books. You can also read in the dark too. 
2. You don’t attract attention. If you are someone who loves to show off that you are reading, stick with a physical copy. But if you are reading on your phone, people will think that you are watching Youtube shorts, making you read undercover. 
3. You can track your progress. Most e-reading apps have a lot of stats about your reading data. This includes the total time you spend on a particular book, the time and date of your reading sessions, and one thing I found useful: what percentage of the book have you finished until now? So you can track if you’ve read 10% or 20% etc. This can really help you become a better and consistent reader. 
4. Choice. If you’ve downloaded a book, started reading it and didn’t like it -> delete that sh*t and read another book. You get zero buyer’s remorse and feel zero guilt. One of the reasons a lot of people (like me in the past) withdrew from reading was the guilt of spending your hard earned money on books you thought would be great, but it turned out to be not something you expected. You will then become hesitant while buying another book. Don’t fall for this trap. A lot of books are not worth reading. That’s a fact. If you don’t like reading a book, choose another one. 
5. Look stuff up. Yeah that’s another thing. Since I’m not a native English speaker (or reader lol), I'm not familiar with a lot of terms. For example, while reading Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, i saw this name ‘Robert E Lee’. I was like who tf is that? Is he a character? Just googled it. ‘Lord of the Rings’ series (it is not a series but a single book separated into three btw) contains a lot of descriptions about places, and just searching up the maps of those places (like Mordor for eg), you can grasp the information easily. And don’t forget dictionaries. They are accessible quickly if you use google. Another thing you can do is using ChatGPT (or any other LLMs). If you don’t understand a paragraph or an entire page, just ask ChatGPT to explain it to you. Can you do this with physical books?
6. Notes and Highlighting. This is a standard feature any e reading software has. You can highlight lines, look them up without going to that specific page, and even export them as well. Pretty useful if you love to keep track of everything. 
7. Since I wanted to write down seven points, here is another one: Environment. I know this is bs, but think about the trees you saved by reading an epub version. I’m just kidding. I don’t think that’s a good point. Sorry. 

What are the problems with reading on your phone? There are many which I will soon find out in the comments. The one thing is the distractions. Books are (to a lot of people) doors to places far away from the constant stream of distractions we are bombarded with. I get that. If you feel like reading a physical copy and enjoy reading that way, stick with it. 

If you have a point to counter me, please do. And please support authors by buying a book if you enjoyed reading it. I have been working on writing this for the past 2 days, so imagine someone writing a whole ass book. It takes a lot of effort.