does anyone have an ereader and read lots of poetry and/or pdfs on it and if so which ereader would you recommend

What e reader did you buy? Do you recommend it?

I was waiting to answer this when I stopped being sick so I could maybe be coherent but at this point idk when that's going to happen so we're just going to go w it and hope this makes sense sorry

I bought a kobo clara 2e. I wanted the smallest ereader I could find that was a reasonable price and also waterproof because I like to read in the bathtub and I am not immune to dropping things in the water. have ruined more than one book that way, have also ruined a nintendo switch that way.

the kobo ecosystem is not bad in terms of ereaders if you exclusively buy your ebooks from the kobo store. the kobo store is better than the amazon ebook store imo bc it lets you download drm-free versions of your purchases without having to go through any conversions, which I don't think is true of the kindle store.

kobo also lets you upload your own epubs and pdfs to the ereader from your computer pretty easily (you can add them like you would to a flash drive or you can use something like calibre to manage your library for you). there have been a few times when I've plugged my kobo into my computer and it hasn't automatically connected so I had to disconnect and reconnect it but then it worked fine. so it can be finicky but ultimately you should be able to get it.

the software that actually opens the ebooks and that you read with is actually different based on whether it's an epub in the kobo format (the filename will end with .kepub.epub) or literally anything else. kepubs will support more features, like annotations and faster page flips and easy word lookups in dictionaries (especially useful for reading the locked tomb which is Full of vocab words). you can also actually make changes the the font type and size. whereas anything else it just displays and doesn't let you highlight, annotate, or select text text. you can zoom in on things, but that's about it.

the good news is there are a lot of tools that let you turn things into kepubs. I currently use a plugin you can get for calibre, but I'm thinking about trying kepubify bc some of the epubs I've downloaded have turned into funky formatting with the calibre plugin.

right now my kobo clara 2e downsides are 1) device is still bigger than I'd like*, 2) kepub vs other file formats thing is mildly annoying, 3) can't buy ebooks from kobo store via app on my phone, have to either buy from kobo website or from my ereader, 4) screen is often less sensitive than I'm used to with other touch screen devices (this may just be an ereader thing), 5) I can't send books to my kobo wirelessly unless I've purchased them in the kobo store (idk if this is something I could do for other ereader systems, I haven't looked).

*there aren't really any devices from any of the major ereader brands with screens smaller than 6in (which is what the clara 2e has). I also looked at the xiaomi inkpalm 5, which does appear to be an ideal size for me, but you have to do some annoying command line shit to get it running in english and it doesn't appear to be waterproof. I may look into it again if I get sick enough of not having my ereader actually fit in my pants pockets. you could also get an eink phone and use it as an ereader, but they're phone prices instead of ereader prices, and most of them have the same language support issues the xiaomi has. the other thing I looked at is the open book project and the m5 paper which are both diy ereader kits and I'm more inclined to fuck with one of those than the xiaomi if I decide to do something more fun in the future, but I don't have the bandwidth for that right now.

kobo also supports integration with overdrive so you can check out library books, but I have recently discovered my library card is expired and bc I'm sick I haven't gone in to get a new one yet so I have no idea what that looks like and whether or not reading library ebooks uses the good reader (like with kepubs) or the no features reader.

one last annoying thing is the kobo store on the reader keeps trying to tell me to subscribe to kobo plus, which is basically like spotify premium but for ebooks and/or audiobooks. but not all titles ever are included so I haven't really looked into it v much bc rn I've found what I wanted to read through other methods (shout out to standardebooks.org)

anyway overall I would say I'd recommend it if your use case is exactly the same as mine, which is I wanted something small to read in the bath and carry around to hopefully replace my doomscrolling habit with reading like I used to when I was a kid, and it so far has been mildly successful. I did start wearing a fanny pack on a regular basis so that way I could actually carry it around everywhere like my phone, but even with a fanny pack I don't think you could fit something much bigger than 6-7in screen, so I'm not sure anything else would work. if you wanted a bigger ereader, I know someone else who has one of the larger kobos (not sure which one, we don't talk super often) and seems p happy w it. I briefly entertained the idea of getting one from kobo w a stylus and using that to take notes in class bc I saw some people in the ereader subreddit say they liked using it for that, and then I remembered I have an ipad and apple pencil to do that exact thing already and I'm already really happy w that setup.