Jailbreaking my Kindle and using RSS

Back in 2015, when I went to Japan for three months, I realized there that I wouldn't be able to just walk into a book store and buy a book to read. Sure, there are books in English (and French), but they'd be a bit harder to find and probably a lot more expensive.

At that time, Amazon was pushing the Kindle in Japan and giving a huge rebate. So I bought one - my first e-reader ever. I loved it. It was fantastic and I loaded it up with books. I carried it everywhere in Japan and read everywhere. A few years ago, it was basically dead. The battery was shot. I had to get a new one so I got a cheaper Paperwhite this time around (11th generation). I still loved it but I loved it a bit less by then. The UI was pretty clumsy and it was slow to do anything.

Fast forward to the start of this year and my rebellion against American big tech. Now, I've been using Calibre for a decade - well before I got pissed off at Amazon. Calibre let me organize my books in such a fantastic way. It lets me keep them ordered and more, and converts formats. It's basically what everyone needs if they use digital books on any reader, computer, or mobile device. And it's free. So, if you don't have it, go get it.

What I also finally installed nearly a year ago was my own calibre book library (calibre-web) on a server of mine. The fantastic thing about having that is that you can have access to your whole Calibre library on the web and read or download as needed. It's also free. Go get it.

Now, what I really wanted was to be able to access that online library from my reader. That way, I wouldn't have to side-load books with a cable. Not that I was doing it all that often, but it's nice to be able to browse your entire library and download what you want directly from your e-reader.

That's where I hit a snag: The Kindle (obviously), doesn't let you really do this. So it was time. It was time that I ditch the Kindle and use something else.

Now, there are two ways you can do this:

1. Get a new e-reader. But I had just bought this one a couple of years ago and it's still going strong. That seemed like a waste of money to me for no real good reason.
   
2. Ditch the Amazon software on the Kindle.
   

Yes, you can do that.

Using the following site (Kindle Modding Wiki), you can (in just about five or ten minutes and no fiddling), jailbreak your Kindle. My jailbreak went flawlessly. They have full step-by-step instructions on how to do it and, as I said, it literally took just a couple of minutes. Now, my Kindle is not only jailbroken, but Amazon can't "update" me with new "features" which dial home on every key press, or block what I want to do with my e-reader. So now, I had a Kindle which no longer dials home and can't have the firmware "updated" against my will.

Great. Let's get rid of this outdated and slow UI now.

In comes KOReader - one of the best things since sliced bread. The modding wiki has instructions on how to install it after you've used a jailbreak (it's in the "What's Next?" section after you're done with your jailbreak on the step-by-step wizard). All it took was typing in one line into search and letting it download and install automatically.

KOReader is amazing. Really amazing. Gone are your limits imposed by Amazon. You can now install plugins for your bookshelf viewing, analyze your reading patterns and times, lay out the book however you want (including sideways orientation and so much more), organize things so much easier and faster, and even download books from other servers via Wifi. It's really fantastic. The amount of things you can do with it are loads more than you could ever even dream of doing with Amazon.

You can also read RSS feeds with it.

Enter: Tabaway!

Yes, that's right! With the power of Nucleon Energy! since this morning, I can now sub to Tabaway boards and groups. I use FreshRSS every morning to go through my subs and anything that I want to read gets sent by me to Tabaway. From there, I put links in different groups. Well, some of those links are very long form articles (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, etc…), and even very long blog posts. Well, now each board and group has a feed URL you can subscribe to. I can now put articles I want to read on my e-reader into a special group or board, and then sub to it directly on my e-reader.

Note: If you're going to pull articles from paywalled sites, make sure to use the "Archive to Tabaway" function from your browser when sending to Tabaway, so that the site has a full copy to pull.

Now, I can sit back in my ergo chair, have a mug of tea, put my feet up, and read those wonderful long articles on a very comfortable and convenient e-reader.

Notice that I'm not going to be calling it a "Kindle" much anymore. It's not. It's an e-reader. I broke away 100% from Amazon's UI and servers. I have no need for them. They're dead to me. They're sleeping with the fishes.

Anyway: If you do have a Kindle, I highly recommend doing that if you want to get away from Amazon. Now, I realise a lot of people can't, so I'm not saying that everyone must do that. But in my case, and probably the case of many others, it's ideal. I feel like I've breathed new life in my e-reader. It's so much more responsive and fast. I can do so much more with it. I honestly can't imagine wanting to go back to the Amazon way of reading stuff.

– N.