Introduction
As I approach my third week of shelter-in-place, and confront the (albeit still nascent) need to stave off boredom, one of
the activities I miss the most is going to the library. So during a couple of
days off from work I dove in to learn what electronic resources my library has
to offer. This post documents that effort, and frankly that struggle. Don’t
worry, it’s not as dull as it sounds. (Trigger warning: this post contains lots
of profanity.)
Virtual book club
My book club moved its meeting to Zoom, following in the
footsteps of my world-famous, game-changing Virtual Pub Night. This worked out very well. At the end, we chose the book for next time,
which presented a problem for me.
My standard book club protocol is to go to my library’s
website the very moment the next book is announced, to put it on hold (possibly
ahead of my fellow members in case few copies are available). I’m a cheap bastard,
and though I love buying books, I only buy cannot-lose titles I know that a)
I’ll read more than once, b) I’ll want to loan out, and c) I’ll keep forever. Plus,
I prefer to buy from library sales where books are only a buck or two. No
disrespect to my book club, but our selections seldom meet these high standards.
Now, with the library option no longer available, I had to buy Picking Cotton and had to figure out where.
The obvious solution would be Amazon, who has it for just
$7.51. But can we really do that to our local booksellers, when they’re already
suffering, while Amazon’s business is booming more than ever? My book club
agreed we couldn’t. And yet, our local bookseller wants $17.99 for the book,
plus $3 shipping, so with tax it’s almost triple the price. I’d still do it,
except that it’s not at all clear how quickly this local outfit could fill the
order right now. Actually, that’s the total BS rationale I contrived to feel
better about myself. The truth is, I’m just a cheap bastard.
The Kobo
Fortunately, I have in my tech arsenal a little e-reader
called the Kobo. What, you haven’t heard of it? Well, neither had my book club.
In fact, I myself had no idea what this thing was when I inherited it from my late father a couple years back. I also have no idea why he bought it. I powered the
thing up some months ago out of curiosity, and found that it only had one book
one it, which was actually just a teaser excerpt of Heart of Darkness which was totally not my dad’s style.
Via a quick trip to kobo.com I learned they could sell me Picking Cotton for $12 all-in. Would it
be worth setting up an account, signing up for endless spam no matter how many
times I opt out, forking out the money, and learning the ins and outs of this
weird Kobo thing?
I stared at the dumb little reader. Obviously it’s not
best-in-breed because nobody has heard of it, and if my dad didn’t get any
mileage out of it, why should I think I would? But that’s a loaded question. My
dad, though an even cheaper bastard than I, often bought stuff he never ended
up using, like a $2700 tricycle (featured here, but you’re too late, somebody already bought it).
Toward the very end of his life, when my dad was already
riddled with cancer, he planned a cross-country solo road trip, dragging a
little teardrop trailer behind his tiny car over remote highways. I talked him
into getting a mobile phone in case he encountered trouble. He bought an
Android phone and a prepaid plan and the guy at the phone store got him up and
running, but my dad never used the phone. He literally never placed a single
call, nor, apparently, did he even turn it on. It just sat there in its box. I
suspect he was intimidated by the technology, particularly because he knew it
was designed for anyone, even a dumb teenager or technophobe blue-hair, to easily grasp.
Paradoxically, this increased the intimidation factor because my dad—an actual
rocket scientist who programmed computers back in the ‘70s when they were the
size of refrigerators—feared the intense embarrassment of being stymied by this
basic consumer product.
Pondering this as I gazed upon the little Kobo, I realized I
really had no choice but to engage with it. In fact, as tired as I was after
book club, I knew I had to figure this thing out immediately. You see, another idiosyncrasy of my father’s was that
he loved to put stuff off. A common rant from my poor mother, before they
divorced, was “‘Someday’ … it’s always ‘someday’!”
Sure, he’d fix the garage door … someday. He’d get that VW Beetle running …
someday. So frequent was our mom’s rant, my brothers and I used to compete for
who could do the most accurate rendition of her “‘Someday’ … it’s always ‘someday’!” So given my knee-jerk
reaction to the very notion of procrastination, I stayed up late and had that
Kobo up and running before I turned in.
Kobo vs. proper book –
Volume I
So how did the Kobo work out? Well, nine years ago I blogged about the Kindle, giving ten reasons why I wanted to hate it. The Kindle was synonymous with
e-readers back then, there having been no real competition. I conceded then
that ideally I would have read an entire e-book before advancing an opinion on
them. Now I have.
I had to install the Kobo app on my PC, create an account, and
give over my credit card info. The device itself was fairly self-explanatory
but I had to expunge my dad’s account info from it, which was just a little
weird, like exorcising a ghost. It wasn’t clear how to do this so I pried the
back off and stuck a paper-clip through a tiny hole to do a factory reset. When
reconfiguring the Kobo I noticed the WiFi was extremely flaky: it’d find
wireless networks I’ve never seen before on any of my other devices, but would fail
to find the access point on my desk, less than five feet away. (It did pretty
well when I leaned it right against the access point but really, should any
device be that finicky?) Eventually I got Picking
Cotton loaded on the Kobo and over the next few days worked my way through reading
it. Now I’m able to give you the pros and cons of this e-reader.
Overall, in the “pro” category I’ll say this:
- The screen was pretty easy on my eyes;
- I like how an e-reader doesn’t interrupt and distract me the way a smartphone does via all the content being pushed to it by apps, friends, and colleagues;
- Unlike a smartphone, I don’t have to unlock it (which isn’t that hard, but still)
- Battery life was excellent;
- The Kobo sits flat on a table (unlike a book) so I could easily read while eating lunch;
- It’s lighter weight than a book, so if I were to read it
while lying on the sofa I’d probably appreciate that (vs., say, a hardback of Anna Karenina)
- My wife didn’t bristle to see me peering into the Kobo, at least when she realized it wasn’t my phone;
- It gave me some interesting stats at the end (e.g., it took me 4.4 hours to read Picking Cotton)
In the “con” category I’ll just say at least 7 out my 10
original misgivings about e-books still apply. Looking at #5, “I can’t buy used titles at a great discount,”
I figured it’s been a long time … maybe the market has changed. Since this may
not be the first time I need an alternative to my local library, I figured I
should see if the Kobo folks might have some great deals.
I searched a couple random titles to see how the prices
were. Started Early, Took My Dog (2011)
is ten bucks. That’s no bargain. Maybe an older book would be cheaper? Nope … The God of Small Things (2008) is $14.
What about much older? I found Lolita (from
1955) for $13, which is a rip, but As I
Lay Dying from 1930 is available for only a buck. If I searched on price,
what else might I turn up?
Wow! They’ve got a lot! Check out these free titles:
Wow … “She’s stumbled into a lair of desperate dragons—and
she’s just the thing they need.” No wonder my dad bought this Kobo! (Wink.) Now,
if you’re not into the romance genre, there are also lots of free nonfiction
titles for cheap… here are a few.
Remarkable, isn’t it, that Saundra’s sweet revenge actually
happened, and that there really was a bike path killer? Fascinating. Now, if
I’m willing to pay just a bit more, here’s a priceless book:
But seriously, this was getting me nowhere. The bigger
question is, what could I get from the library for free to read on my Kobo?
Digital content from
the library
I’ve long known that the Berkeley Public Library has lots of alternatives to bound paper books, CDs, and DVDs. Almost too many
options, really … the full list is a bit intimidating:
- Kanopy (streaming movies & music)
- Hoopla (digital books, audiobooks, music, and movies)
- Naxos (music)
- Alexander Street (music)
- In-branch albertnet via guest WiFi (wow, cool!)
- Overdrive (e-books, audiobooks)
- RBdigital (digital magazines)
- Flipster (kids’ magazines)
I tried out Hoopla for an audiobook and it’s really easy, once
you’ve downloaded the smartphone app. It’s great for road trips if your phone can sync with your car stereo.
I’ve also been using Kanopy for a while, and in fact I just set my wife’s PC up
on it the other day, in less than five minutes. Kanopy’s digital streaming works
great (no jitter or buffering) and it’s easy to connect your laptop to a modern
TV.
All this being the case, I was emboldened to seek better
return on the time I’d already invested in my Kobo. I asked my older daughter
to research this for me, since she was on spring break and stuck mooning around
the house anyway. She tapped away for a minute or two and said, “You have to do
it through Overdrive.” And thus was my next tech journey launched.
Kobo vs. proper book –
Volume II
So here’s where things get
complicated. The library can’t just buy the online rights to a book and make it
available to all its readers at once … that would be injurious to publishers,
like Napster was to the music industry. The library must buy individual
licenses for each title it wants, so only a finite number of library
cardholders can check out the e-book at once. This is trickier than buying a
finite number of physical books, because each library customer must be able to
view the same title on more than one device. So when I check out the e-book,
I’m downloading a license file with the content, and that file has to travel
with the content. How does this work when there are at least 18 companies
making e-readers?
The answer is, you have to download
software called Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) and install it on your computer,
and create a login for that. This software is how you manage the digital
licenses. Then you have to authorize your computer, and also your e-reader,
with your Adobe account. Now your ADE app will enable content on your e-reader for
your login, but no other. You also have to set up Overdrive with your library,
to check out the material. You download the content and license, and then use the
ADE interface to copy these files over to your e-reader. So you’re getting a
crash course in three platforms: Kobo, Adobe, and Overdrive.
So how hard is this, really? In
principle it’s not that bad; getting the devices authorized wasn’t too hard. I
was able to get an e-book working with my laptop pretty quickly, and then I
loaded an e-book on the Kobo, ejected it from the PC, fired it up, and clicked
the icon for the new e-book. And then?
This is super annoying on so many
levels. It’s bad enough that loading the library book on the Kobo just plain
didn’t work, after all that time and effort. Second, no error message should
ever say “Oops!” That’s like hearing your dentist say “Oops!” when he’s
drilling in your mouth. Meanwhile, the info this error message gives on how
“this document is protected by Adobe Digital Rights Management (DRM)” is
nothing you don’t already know, and the idea that you didn’t sign with the
authorized ID is pure BS. The software wouldn’t let you copy the content over to the e-reader if it wasn’t
authorized and you weren’t signed in. Clearly, I followed the process … it just
didn’t work. And then, to get the dialog box to go away, I had to click “OK”
when obviously this is not OK.
I found a help article about how to
de-authorize your devices, delete all copies of the content and licenses, start
over, re-authorize, and try again. This accomplished nothing. I also got
nowhere cussing up a blue streak … it didn’t even help me feel better. At one
point I got an error message about the license having actually expired, so I
tried loading some very recently published books, but this too was a bum steer.
The Kobo error message should have
said, “Oh, SHIT! I’m really sorry, my software is all jacked up so I can’t
access this content, but you’ve done
nothing wrong. Really—it’s not you, it’s me. See how easily you can read
that book on your laptop? I know. That’s because the laptop works like it’s
supposed to. I just can’t get it done. I suck. This is why nobody has heard of
Kobo. I’m a loser, so why don’t you kill me.” And the “OK” button say either
“FUCK ME” or “Make this dialog go away, and go get on with your life, I’m a
lost cause.”
Oh well, I thought, at least I can
still buy titles for the Kobo if I need to, like if this COVID-19
shelter-in-place goes on indefinitely. I mindlessly clicked on the Picking Cotton icon, just to remind myself
the Kobo wasn’t without value, and was shocked to get another error:
Whoa. Let me get this straight, Kobo:
because I tried to load a library book on you, and you couldn’t parse the
digital license properly, now the totally separate title I paid for also can’t be accessed anymore? How is this okay in any
universe?
Figuring I could at least start
over, I deleted the e-book content and license files from Overdrive,
de-authorized the Kobo, re-synced it with the Kobo PC app, and tried again.
Still no dice … I just kept getting that stupid error message. So then, based
on the advice from a knowledge base article from Overdrive, I de-authorized the
Adobe account from my laptop, created a new Overdrive account for the Adobe app,
re-authorized the laptop and the Kobo using the Overdrive credentials, and
tried again with another library e-book. Still no dice. The Kobo still wouldn’t
display the library content, and still wouldn’t even display the content I’d
paid for.
Whoever wrote this second error
message should be taken out and shot. Beyond the annoying recurrence of “Oops!”
there’s the weak statement, “There might be a problem with the file.” Might be a problem? Like, this might not be working? Gee, you think? It
should say, “I have clearly failed you.”
And then we get “Try updating your
library.” Try?! Haven’t they heard
Yoda’s words of wisdom? “Do or do not. There is no try.” I mean, I’m facing an
obvious software problem and the Kobo coders are telling me what I might try? How about, “Try sticking your thumb
up your ass and whistling Dixie”?
And don’t they realize the word
“library” is meaningless here, since they could mean my library folder on the
Kobo, or a device software library, or the Berkley Public Library I checked out
the (apparently devastating) content from? Perhaps the worst part is referring
me to “Customer Care” at Kobo, because Kobo actually does not have a technical support department … just a bunch of
useless static content giving you a bunch more dumb suggestions.
(Full disclosure: after much
searching, I did finally find a link for “Contact Customer Care” on the Kobo
website but here’s where it led.)
Of course I tried rebooting my
Kobo, many times. Finally, as a last resort and knowing this would mean starting
from scratch and reconfiguring the device entirely, I went for the factory
reset, prying the back off again and using a paper-clip through the hole in the
back. In the process, because the back is so hard to pry off, I actually drew
blood. (From me, not the Kobo, unfortunately.) This time, however, the device
would not reset. The factory reset process is apparently as stymied as the rest
of the device. All I kept getting was the stupid little smiley face as it
rebooted again to its fucked-up state.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, you
worthless little shit!” I boomed idiotically at it. You know, with this
coronavirus pandemic I think we’re all a little on edge, and I find I actually
have less patience than ever for anything that I’m supposed to have control
over but suddenly do not. In this light I’m very proud of myself for managing,
upon seeing that stupid little Kobo smirking at me over and over, to not just
pound the stupid thing to rubble with my fist. It’s reduced itself to a
paperweight, and a useless one at that because for its own safety, it really
needs to be kept out of my sight. Perhaps my dad was wise not to tangle with it
(though in that case he was foolish indeed to shell out $80 for it in the first
place).
Silver
lining
Okay, so the Kobo is a bust. Item
#9 on my list of reasons to avoid e-books was certainly prescient: “I fight
with PCs and other electronic devices all day, and books are my respite. I
don’t care how foolproof the [device] claims to be: it has an OS that can have
bugs, and it has WiFi of which it can be out of range, and it has a battery
that can die … all potential headaches.” But I shouldn’t have lost sight of a
larger misgiving, #5: “If I end up loving it, embracing its format, and
becoming addicted to its convenience and cool features, my literary world will
shrink from ‘anything any library or bookstore anywhere has’ down to ‘anything
that’s available on the [platform].’” If I can’t buy the Pevear/Volokhonsky
translation of Anna Karenina from
kobo.com (and I can’t), but they’re offering me romance novels about “the
brooding, sexy captain of the NHL’s Chicago Blaze” or a sexy young woman being
“pinned to the floor by a billionaire playboy,” should I really be spending any
time on this platform anyway?
On the plus side, I can still read
the one Kobo title I paid for, albeit on my smartphone via the Kobo app. I’ve
also discovered that Overdrive e-books can be read on my smartphone, via yet
another app called Libby, which has a pretty nice user interface.
So, even if this shelter-in-place
has me stranded for weeks or months, I know I’ve got options. I just have to relax
… take a deep breath … step away from the Kobo … count to ten …
More reading on the pandemic
- Shelter-in-Place FAQ
- Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
- The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
- More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
- When Will the Pandemic End?
- What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
- How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
- Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
- Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- COVID Wristbands
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