Enter The Kobo: An E-Reader That Might Just Change My Life

I read a lot, so I've been in the market for an e-reader for some time now. The only problem is that I don't have two nickels to rub together. For a while I tried downloading e-books to my iPod Touch, but that turned out to be as nightmarish as you would expect it to be. The back lighting is murder on the eyes and the size of the device makes it difficult to read for any length of time.

I was in a quandary. So I did what anybody would do, I went to my old friend and spiritual advisor, the great Dr. Reverend. He has the answers to pretty much everything.

"Of course I know what you should do," he roared contemptuously. "You should buy an iPad. I have one and it changed my life. Just imagine what it'll do for a pathetic existence like yours!"

"I can only imagine," I said in reply. "Unfortunately, I don't have $900 to throw around on toys."

"It's not a toy", he cried out as he began waving a chair in the vicinity of my head. "It's a tool that is changing the way we fucking live, you clod! Do I have to explain everything to you godless Christians? Christ, it's easier explaining something to my dog."

He continued, "What about that girlfriend of yours? She must want to spend a grand on you. When you fuck a woman more than once, she should want to drop a bunch of money in your honor. It's in the bible."

"I'm sure it is, but she doesn't have that kind of money either."

"Are all you Christians in the fucking poorhouse?"

"I think it's just me and my girlfriend. Besides, I'm an atheist."

"You're also an asshole! Get out of my fucking sight! And read your fucking bible!"

And that, I thought, was that. I would never get a proper e-reader and my life would stay miserably the same.

That changed on Christmas Eve, when my lovely girlfriend handed me a present. I unwrapped it and there, lo and behold, was a Kobo e-reader. For the first time, I knew that somebody loved me. Not enough to let me fuck other women on the side, mind you, but it was a pretty special feeling and I now understand why people are fond of it.

The Kobo doesn't have all the bells and whistles of a Kindle or an iPad, but I don't really need them. I have the iPod touch for all that noise. I need something that will hold a shitload of books so I don't have to carry them around with me when I want to make a point in an especially annoying way.

The only major problem I had was getting my existing ebooks onto the Kobo, mostly because I'm not very smart. I'm used to Apple products, which make importing media the easiest thing in the world. As it happens, Kobo would very much like you to buy products from their bookstore. But I'm poor, so fuck that noise.

A quick download of the Calibre e-book management software fixed that in a hurry. If, like me, you haven't got a pot to piss in, you download a lot of books from Demonoid. I don't consider it stealing (even though it is) because I already own a good number of the books I download, mostly in hardcover. If I really like a book, I usually end up buying it anyway. I just want portable copies so I'm not carrying around six hardcover books at a time.

The problem with downloading stolen books is formatting. A truly ugly percentage of them are PDFs, which suck. No problem. Calibre can convert those files into EPUB or MOBI, exactly like you would get at the Kindle, Kobo or Apple stores. It also collects newspaper feeds, which somehow manages to bypass subscription services.

Right now I have about 300 books (including the 101 that the Kobo comes loaded with) and about a half dozen newspaper feeds loaded into the Kobo. Most importantly, it keeps them all in one compact unit, roughly the size of a trade paperback. The great Dr. Reverend took a look at it last week and seemed impressed with what it does, particularly for it's price range.

As I write this, I'm reading my first book on the Kobo, David Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, a book that I bought in hardcover about a year ago and never got around to reading. It's an incredibly interesting read, made more so by my new toy. If I'm not too lazy, I might get around to reviewing it.

If you want a Kobo, you can pick one up at Chapters-Indigo and Wall Mart in Canada, and Borders in the U.S. At $140, it really can't be beat. And I'd like to again thank my beautiful girlfriend for giving it to me. Daddy loves you.


Oh, and a very nice PR-marketing company sent me a free Tassimo coffee maker just before Christmas. And I can tell you honestly, that you should really pick one up. Those things rock the motherfucking casbah. I'm not just saying that because mine was free, either. Although, if you want to send me free shit, it's more than a little likely that I'll say nice things about you.