I used my Kobo e-reader for two things: reading library books (synced from OverDrive); and downloading free public domain classics from Standard Ebooks.

The library sync feature works fine. I actually bought the Kobo vs. other e-readers because of its supposedly superior library sync functionality. (It’s hard for me to comprehend that I’m currently experiencing the best of the best, but perhaps that’s beside the point.)

Downloading new ebooks

I used to download Standard Ebooks via an annoying but predictable hack. Kobo has a beta feature that allows you to search the web. I’d literally search for “standard ebooks tess of the d’ubervilles” or whatever book I wanted to download; click the search result page, and download the book directly to the device. Yes, the search was painfully slow to both type in the text and load, but whatever. Predictable. Sometime in the last year this just stopped working. I could still type in a query but the search just hung and never loaded the search results page. Is my device too old? Did the feature just stop being supported? Unclear from my non-extensive sleuthing.

After procrastinating on this issue for months, unable to download any new ebooks via my old method, I finally went for the nuclear option: plugging my e-reader into my computer.

This preliminary step itself was an ordeal. I had to plug-and-unplug a few times for my laptop to even pick up the Kobo connection. I went to the Standard Ebooks site, downloaded my desired books (The Enchanted April and The Clever Woman of the Family) to my computer, then dragged and dropped them to Kobo Drive.

Initially I turned off the Kobo completely and then unplugged, as instructed to do by the initial popup. I turned it back on, no books. Synced, no books. I plugged it into my computer again. Plugged in again; the two books were still there sitting in the kobo reader drive, but somehow could not make it onto my actual device. I did plug-and-unplug dance again and literally just let it stay connected for a bit, then right-clicked to eject .(The initial “you’re connected” popup gave turning out and formally ejecting as equivalent options, when in practice they do not seem like equivalent options at all.)

Cleaning up my books archive

While I was doing this annoying task, I figured I should clean out my books archive. Re: my two uses cases, I download a lot of library books on my device. When I return the book, the entire book is now longer accessible, but a preview of the book (useless, I’m never going to read a preview of a book I already read in its entirety) remains on my device. I can remove the preview from My Books, but it inevitably comes back every time I sync the device. The only way to actually archive the expired library books in such a way so that they wouldn’t come back and pollute my finely-curated library is to log into my Kobo account in my browser (actually and perhaps surprisingly it doesn’t even matter if the device is plugged in; sync handles it) and manually, one by one (three clicks per book, in fact) archive them.

When you let your books pile up like I did…. this is a very long and frustrating process. Even after you’ve executed the three clicks necessary to relegate a book to the annals of the archive, page snaps back to the top so you always have to scroll.

Feels ironic how much I have to fight with tech to just… read a book.