If I’m being honest, there’s no other experience I’d want to get back in this tiresome routine than to just lay back and read a good old paperback book that I can finish in a couple of sittings.
The overwhelming stimulus from scrolling social media and texting six different friends, two group chats, and three comments on posts sure keep us occupied enough to ever get drawn towards the once-a-heaven experience of reading.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t read books now. This is my review from a couple of years back when a friend introduced me to the heaven of e-books, no seriously, every damn book that I wanted to read was there. (Not sure if “every” book is there but good luck!)
I have read…I lost count, but yeah, I don’t remember how many books I have finished since my friend introduced me to the platform and I also don’t remember how many people I have recommended this to and now this is your turn.
Download Free E-books and Read Offline
Z-library is the one that I must talk about here. You’re going to love this one. Using the website is pretty simple and you can download books without even making an account, but you can only download five of them without an account. If you make a free account, you can download more than five. So, there’s no reason you shouldn’t sign up (also no reason to download ten books) but yeah sometimes I have a list that I have made and I download all of that in one sitting.
Not only books but you can also download articles (not sure why though). Anyways, click the website, choose the option “Books”, search for your book, open it, choose the format, and voila! You have downloaded the book.
This is Better Than PDFs (bear the technicalities with me)
Yeah no, no thanks. I don’t like PDFs, so I’d skip this one.
Ayo hold up! I haven’t met a person who likes reading PDF books (I would rather not read at all).
This is why we have the EPUB format of those books. Make sure you have the iBooks app installed and ready before downloading if you have an iPhone. If you have an Android, download Google Books and set It up beforehand.
Now, when you download the book from Z-library, make sure it’s in EPUB format. Upon downloading it’ll show an “open in books” option if you’re on an iPhone and if you are on Android, you can just go into your Google Books app and you’ll find it there. For iPhone, you must click “open in books” for the book to end up in your iBooks app.
Now when you open the iBooks you’ll be able to see your downloaded book and once you open it…this is where the fun part starts.
Customize Your E-Books
Yup, you can do that in iBooks. All you need to do once opening a book is to click the “aA” on top and you’ll find different settings like…
- Brightness Slider
- Font Size
- Font Type
- Background Color of Pages
- Auto-Night Theme (Turns the pages darker automatically once you’re in low light)
- Scrolling View (it has a turning-page book-like animation but you can also put it on scroll)
If you click on the search option it will bring anything you want from the book, say for example, you remember an argument or quote you want to go back to. Besides the search option, you can click the bookmark option and save the page to be later reviewed. Where can you review it? Click the top three lines and you’ll be able to see three sections containing Book Content, Bookmarks, and Notes.
Speaking of Notes, you can long press on a word and it’ll show you options hovering over it to either speak the work, copy it, look it up, highlight it-click the next arrow and there’s more you can put a note on it, search it on the web, share it, and lastly, spell it for you.
If that’s not something that gets you excited (absolutely free) then I don’t know if anything else can. All these features that you won’t be able to get in a paper book. You carry your phone in your pocket all day and there’s a whole library in it. Even if you don’t mind carrying a book with you, you can’t possibly carry the number of books that you can otherwise on your smartphone.
My Reading Guide
I, by no means, qualify to give the best reading advice since my reading routine is a roller coaster ride, but that’s exactly what makes it worth sharing. We all are too busy for the books and I know as much as we want to go back to some time in our lives when all we did was read, that day is not today. Does that mean to stop reading? Heck no! Put a few books in your whatever you prefer and the more diverse genre the better.
Don’t Put “Reading in Schedule”, Put “Schedule in Reading”
If you are too busy for reading, chances are, you are right. If you try to put reading between chores, it’s a hassle and reading loses priority. What I do is; try to put a schedule in reading. But what exactly does that mean? Think of your chores or routine as an unavoidable break that you have to take from reading and other productive work.
We know the deep work you have to work only on yourself, is actually what matters, it’s not even about your job. Scatter your reading in your routine and find ways to open the books app whenever you can. This adds up. Trust me on this, when you sit down to cool off, take a coffee break from work, or wait in a line. Pull out your device and read.
As soon as you feel you’re done with a chore, read a couple of pages before you go back to working on…whatever.
At last, we all just wish we had more time to read and that’s just our perception of finding ways to avoid reading. No matter how busy your day is, you always go to bed at some point, filling in free time with a couple of pages won’t take the energy that think it would. It’s a snooze button instead. In the end you’re going to the same bed, the same exhausted. But at least, a book is finished.
