What is the best way to read e-books?

[Corrupted Unicorn]

By "e-books", I PDF file with the book you want to read, not necessarily the physical device. But we'll sure talk about that kind of e-books too! 

So, say you get your hands on a nice digital book, but your mind hasn't quite bridged the gap between "screen" and "physical" yet. What do you do?

By that, in my case, I mean I'm frequently more used to read in short bursts when I'm in front of a screen. Blame social media and all sorts of fragmented-attention-span-makers that crawl the digital space, but it is what it is  I just find it way easier to focus on reading a book when it is... well, an actual book! But I can't collect as many physical books as I can, even if I prefer flipping pages to scrolling them down 

How do you clear the space in front of a screen to make way for reflective reading? Do you use Adobe Acrobat or any other program? Have you modified these programs to make it more comfortable to you and help your attention even a smidge? I'm fond of the "virtual flipbook" style of archive.org, but what do you do when that's not an option? Do you prefer your computer, a mobile phone, a tablet or do you use an actual e-book? My aunt once gifted me one of those, back before tablets were popular, but I didn't like it at all and barely used it before it got lost somewhere. Maybe it was because it demanded .epub files. Or because it felt flimsy. Or because it made a horrible scratchy noise when I scrolled down with the touchpen that came with it. Or the screen didn't light up well... many things 

Do you even... print books?  Terribly expensive I know, and morally questionable too. I've done it for one I had printing permission for, one of those RPG rulebooks you purchase the digital file of and then get permission of reproductions for you and your RPing buddies.

(I apologize if this thread starter is very scatter-minded  )

[Melooon]

There's a e-reader thread where I describe my thoughts on e-ink readers like a kindle. But For this thread - genuinely, making the PDF full screen, going to your display settings and rotating your laptop screen 90degres and then holding your laptop like a huge book is something I have done and really helped when I needed to read a PDF text book in collage 

[asillycalicokitty]

Personally I use an e-reader to read e-books. I think there's something beneficial about having a specific device to read e-books on, something about having a specific "place" to get you in the right mindset for reading makes it a lot easier to just read, rather than starting to read and then getting distracted by notifications as you get them. The glare-free e-ink screen is nice as well, especially at night before I go to sleep, or when I have some downtime in a car or bus to read a chapter or two.

If I don't have access to my e-reader, (for some reason? I don't know why I wouldn't) I would likely fall back on my computer to read an e-book, using either Arianna or Okular: software designed for my favored Linux desktop environment. I've tried using my phone in the past for e-book reading, and it doesn't work for me. The screen isn't that great, it's too small, and it gets too hot very easily.

Do you even... print books?  Terribly expensive I know, and morally questionable too. I've done it for one I had printing permission for, one of those RPG rulebooks you purchase the digital file of and then get permission of reproductions for you and your RPing buddies.

I've definitely done this before for RPG rulebooks too! They're very useful to have on hand so you don't need to have your phone or other device constantly out to refer to after any action. This does also depend on the length of the rulebook, though. I tend to mostly play solo TTRPGs where the rulebooks are relatively short. If I were to play something with a longer rulebook, I would probably opt for the PDF and hope it's formatted well enough for digital navigation.