De Pan

Nook eReader

Picked up one of those fancy eReaders as a present to myself. After doing some research on the topic, I decided to go with a model that isn't available for retail sale here in Canada, the Barnes & Noble Nook. I was able to find a virtually unused version on Ebay and scored a deal. Didn't like that Amazon has a version called the Kindle that uses an exlcusive proprietary format so instead went for one that uses a more universal format called the EPUB.

There are so many free books online available on sites like ManyBooks.net, Archive.org and Gutenberg.org that I've gotten back into reading some fantastic canoeing classics.

Below is a shot of one of the pages in Thomas Sedgwick Steele's 1880 paddling adventure, Canoe and camera: a two hundred mile tour through the Maine forests


This .epub format is just a different version of the HTML language that is used on websites, so basically material on the net can be downloaded and read on the device. With this great online tool called Instapaper, you can quickly save webpages into a condensed epub file and transfer it for hours of offline reading. Using this nice little application, I downloaded the fantastic 1948 article on the WCHA site entitled "Canoe from the Penobscot River". Here's another shot below showing the crisp black and white graphics.

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So far the batteries lasted over a week before a quick recharge was needed. I'm planning on making a leather case for this thing and am seriously considering bringing this handy, lightweight eReader on future paddling trips (with some waterproof protection of course).