Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Hawkmoon on April 29, 2021, 06:34:27 PM
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I'm looking for a freeware e-book reader app for an Android tablet. I'm primarily interested in being able to read free books sourced from The Guttenberg Project, so I think taht means EPUB format rather than Kindle formet, but if there's a good free app that handles both, that would certainly be a plus.
Does anyone know of a good one they can recommend?
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FBReader
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FBReader has built-in access to Project Gutenberg, Smashwords, Manybooks Catalog, Free Books Hub, and lots of other online catalogs. I've only ever used the Gutenberg link. The reader is free, very configurable, and I've never had any performance issues with it on my Android devices. It can read mobi, epub, pdf, and I don't know what else. It doesn't have ads, just an occasional reminder that they'd like you to show your appreciation by throwing a couple of bucks their way. Check it out: fbreader.org (http://fbreader.org).
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Sounds good. FBReader was one of the ones I had flagged for further investigation when I started searching for Android readers.
Thanks, Gents. I'll give it a try.
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It looks good, and it works well. I like it. But I don't see a link to The Guttenbeg Project, and that's what I want -- I'm looking for the John Carter on Mars series, and I think most (or all) of them are on Guttenberg.
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On my Android phone, I click in the center of the screen when viewing a book, then click on the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner, then choose "Network library." Mine shows "Search," "FBReader book network," and "Project Gutenberg" as the first three options, and there are many more below those. I've been using FBReader for many years and across at least 4 phones so I may have set it up a long time ago.
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"I'm looking for the John Carter on Mars series, and I think most (or all) of them are on Guttenberg."
I've got the original hard cover Mars series that my dad bought when he was a young man. I've read them many times as did he and my brother. About half of them are falling apart now and the other half are still fairly well preserved.
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On my Android phone, I click in the center of the screen when viewing a book, then click on the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner, then choose "Network library." Mine shows "Search," "FBReader book network," and "Project Gutenberg" as the first three options, and there are many more below those. I've been using FBReader for many years and across at least 4 phones so I may have set it up a long time ago.
I get "Library," "Network Library," and "Pick File"
When I open "Network Library" I get "Search," "FBReader book network," "Feedbooks OPDS Catalog," "ManyBooks Catalog," "Smashwords," "ePubBud catalog," "Qumran EN," "Free Books Hub," "All catalogs" -- no Project Guttenberg.
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On my Android phone, I click in the center of the screen when viewing a book, then click on the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner, then choose "Network library." Mine shows "Search," "FBReader book network," and "Project Gutenberg" as the first three options, and there are many more below those. I've been using FBReader for many years and across at least 4 phones so I may have set it up a long time ago.
That was the clue. I was able to set up The Gutenberg Project as a source, and I found a half dozen or so of the John Carter books. It's not all of them, but it's a start.
Thanks.
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Interesting. The U.S. Project Gutenberg site only has five of the John Carter books available. From my computer, I was able to access the Australian Project Gutenberg site, where they have eleven of the twelve, in HTML, Kindle, and EPUB formats. Now I just have to figure out how to get them from my home NAS into the tablet and accessible to FBReader.
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Interesting. The U.S. Project Gutenberg site only has five of the John Carter books available. From my computer, I was able to access the Australian Project Gutenberg site, where they have eleven of the twelve, in HTML, Kindle, and EPUB formats. Now I just have to figure out how to get them from my home NAS into the tablet and accessible to FBReader.
IIRC, the US has much more stringent copyright and public domain laws than most other countries. I seem to recall a few years ago, something happened that finally created a flood of stuff into the public domain. I think some critical date was hit.
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IIRC, the US has much more stringent copyright and public domain laws than most other countries. I seem to recall a few years ago, something happened that finally created a flood of stuff into the public domain. I think some critical date was hit.
U.S. copyrights extend 70 years after the death of the author. ERB died in 1950, so copyrights should have expired in 2020. Maybe Project Gutenberg just hasn't caught up. ERB has a LOT of books, but at the moment I'm not interested in the Tarzan books, the Pellucidar books, the Venus books, or any of those. I'm on a John Carter of Mars mission.
I have a bunch of these books on my Western Digital MyCloud, which is on my home network. The tablet connects to the same network by WiFi. Is there a way to get FBReader to access the MyCloud and snag the books off that? Or, how can I connect FBReader to the Aussie Project Gutenberg site?
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U.S. copyrights extend 70 years after the death of the author. ERB died in 1950, so copyrights should have expired in 2020. Maybe Project Gutenberg just hasn't caught up. ERB has a LOT of books, but at the moment I'm not interested in the Tarzan books, the Pellucidar books, the Venus books, or any of those. I'm on a John Carter of Mars mission.
I have a bunch of these books on my Western Digital MyCloud, which is on my home network. The tablet connects to the same network by WiFi. Is there a way to get FBReader to access the MyCloud and snag the books off that? Or, how can I connect FBReader to the Aussie Project Gutenberg site?
https://9to5google.com/2017/07/06/google-releases-android-samba-client-app-for-mounting-smb-file-shares-in-files-app/ (https://9to5google.com/2017/07/06/google-releases-android-samba-client-app-for-mounting-smb-file-shares-in-files-app/)
assuming your WD Myclod being "on my homie network" means network accessable, it's probably via SMB (standard windows networking).
Other ways too, almost certainly. Just not something I've ever tried to do.