Chava Rosenfarb in Lodz and E-reader as Impulse Buy

The Year of Chava Rosenfarb

Łódź (pronounced more or less like “woodge” in English), located almost smack dab in the center of Poland has been, like Turin, home to an abundance of literary figures (see my post on trying to find Italo Calvino’s home a few months ago). I’ll get to a couple other big names a little farther down in the post, but for now my focus is on Chava Rosenfarb, a Yiddish Pole born in the city, which has declared 2023 the Year of Chava Rosenfarb on the centennial of her birth. The honor bestowed on Chava Rosenfarb by the city first came to my attention when I saw this Washington Post article, published last month.

Chava Rosenfarb, along with her family, was in the Łódź ghetto for years before it was liquidated in 1944. She was then shipped to different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, but was liberated from the camp in Bergen Belsen by the British in 1945. Although the writings she did when she was younger have been lost, she continued to write after she emigrated to Montreal, and there is quite a body of her work to discover. Sadly, most of it has not been published in English (yet).

Tree of Life

The Washington Post article came out the day before we were leaving on a road trip to Poland for a family visit. In all truth, I had not heard of Chava Rosenfarb, but various reviews and references calling her epic Tree of Life, A Trilogy of Life in the Łódź Ghetto the “Yiddish War and Peace” intrigued me. As luck would have it, Łódź is situated along the very road we had already planned to travel from southern Poland as we headed north to the Baltic Sea. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend there – that will have to wait for a future visit – but I was able to locate the author’s childhood home and make a couple of other stops as well while we were in the city.

Bibliotekarka Mural

First stop: one of the many murals located around the city, part of an initiative started in 2008 by the Urban Forms Foundation. The Bibliotekarka (“Librarian”) mural, at Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie 28, was a perfect find, since it features, of course, books. It was also around the corner from Chava Rosenfarb’s family home. We found it easily, on a peaceful street where we were able to park for a few minutes with no difficulty. I love the book pages in her hair!

Chava Rosenfarb’s Childhood Home

Next stop: after admiring the Bibliotekarka, we drove around the corner (what can I say? We had all of our things in the backseat of the car and didn’t want to leave them while we walked to our second stop.) to the address I had located online, Stefana Żeromskiego 75, which now houses one of the ubiquitous Żabka convenience stores. It was difficult to find what might have actually been Chava Rosenfarb’s childhood home, given the fact that there is not even a plaque to mark the spot. That and the fact that it’s now a Żabka were a little bit depressing. I’ve included what I think are buildings that are all part of the same address.

Two Other Big Names in Łódź

Julian Tuwim

There are too many other writers from the city to name here, but I did want to mention two other big names in Łódź. The first is the poet Julian Tuwim (who has his own statue in the city but, unfortunately, we didn’t have time to take a look). My husband found this book from his childhood, and his mother immediately began reciting Lokomotywa by heart, with him joining in. I always think it’s incredible when someone can recite lines of poetry at the drop of a hat and it was truly amazing to hear many, many lines unspooled so easily, without even so much as a glance at the book! If you want to hear what the poem sounds like, you can listen to a recording by Polish actor Piotr Fronczewski here. I liked the page with Kotek so I’m including that one, too.

Andrzej Sapkowski

The second is Andrzej Sapkowski, famous for his Witcher books, which have been made into various TV versions (in case you’ve been living under a rock somewhere). I’ve only read one of his books (start with the one I linked to) and I did enjoy it, much more than the one and only episode of the new Witcher series I’ve watched. Although I liked Henry Cavill as Geralt, the title character, the episode seemed to be a series of random incidents rather than an actual sorry. What do you think? Should I give the series another shot? Are you Team Cavill or Team Hemsworth?

With all the attention the books and shows have gotten, we had to make our third and final stop the Witcher mural, the largest mural in Poland and one of the largest in the world. If you navigate to this (paid) parking lot, you’ll be directly in front of the mural itself. My first thought when we got there was, wow, the colors seem quite…dull. The photo makes them appear much brighter than what they actually were, or so it seemed to me. Still, it was impressive to see Geralt up there on the building like that and anything that might get people to read more books works for me.

Impulse Buy of an E-reader

Another of the adventures I had this summer was my impulse buy of an e-reader. I first saw a cute PocketBook e-reader when we were in Vienna last month at one of the bookstores in the old historical center of town, where we were escaping the unbearable heat for a miraculous half an hour. What caught my eye right away was the size of the e-reader, which just about fit in the palm of my hand. I made a note of the name and decided to revisit the issue when we were in Poland, where I had more time to think. Having more time to think doesn’t mean I used it, though, and here I am.

And Where Would that Be?

And where would that be, you might be asking. Well, I now own a PocketBook Color e-reader. I will go into more detail on this below, but for those of you who just want the bare-bones information, I will answer two questions. Am I happy with my purchase? and Would I buy this e-reader again? The answers are: Yes, keeping in mind the limitations, and…maybe. A third question might come to mind, namely: What were you thinking? Hmmm. I said it was an impulse purchase. A more important question might be: Would you buy an e-reader again? And the answer to that is a definite yes, and I would most definitely buy a PocketBook e-reader again.

Who is PocketBook?

Wait a minute. Who is PocketBook? The name may not be familiar to you if you’re in the United States, but here in Europe it’s a well-known name in the world of e-readers. A Ukrainian company that moved its operations to Switzerland in 2012, it has a presence in more than forty countries. It is one of the largest producers in the world of e-readers that use E Ink technology, and has received a lot of excellent reviews related to this technology, as well as its general overall quality. While their e-readers are not widely marketed in the U.S., they are available for purchase.

Books Scattered Across the Digital Landscape

Let’s look at my thoughts on what led me to my purchase. Like many avid readers, I have books I’ve purchased scattered across the digital landscape. I have books in a lot of formats, too. Mobi, epub, pdf, all kinds of stuff. (I am an adamant supporter of authors and non-pirated materials but digital books are not all in one standard format.) And when I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. Booksio, Fable, Glose, Gumroad, Kindle, MyMustReads (which is now Booksio), Nook…. And that doesn’t include audiobooks on Libro.fm or places like Kindle and Nook. Or books I can borrow through internet library services like Hoopla. So the first question I had was: Can I somehow consolidate and have access to everything all on one device?

Other Reasons for Buying an E-reader

Aside from consolidation, other reasons for buying an e-reader which I thought could justify the purchase price (and having yet another device) were: (a) being able to ditch a heavy tablet when I travel and (b) giving my eyes a break from some of the phone and other device screens. I just got back from a trip where I hauled around two phones, said heavy tablet, and a laptop, so being able to cut down on some of the poundage/bulk seemed like a good idea. My current tablet is a Samsung Galaxy A, which weighs almost one pound. It’s also got a 10” screen so it takes up a lot of space. By way of comparison, the e-reader I bought weighs almost exactly the same as one of my phones, and it has a 6” screen (it’s like a very small paperback in terms of shape).

Giving my eyes a break also seems to be more of an issue lately. We spend so much time on screens, with lots of glare. One of the things that attracted me to the e-reader was the fact that the screen is matte, not glossy, so it’s more like reading an actual book. I don’t know all the technical details, but I think e-readers, while still emitting blue light, emit less than their tablet counterparts. If anyone knows more about this, please let me know in the comments below.

Types of E-readers

Granted, I did everything in a kind of quick and dirty way, but from what I could tell, it seemed like e-readers broke down like this:

• Color/black and white
• Waterproof/not
• WiFi and Bluetooth/not
• Size (small, medium, large)

Difference in Price Point

The biggest differences in price point that I could see were related to e-readers being waterproof. The bigger, the more expensive, too. Since I already knew that I wanted something on the small size, that narrowed my options down a lot. Looking at the prices, I was also able to eliminate most of the PocketBook products since the ones like the Touch HD were more than I wanted to spend (not to single out PocketBook because I think it would have been the same if I had been looking at other manufacturers). The PocketBook website says a new e-reader, the Verse, is on its way, but I don’t know what the prices are going to be. As I said above, I chose the PocketBook Color, which is 6 inches and, of course, color. It is not waterproof.

Setting Up My E-reader

Day 1

After a few days I had my e-reader in my hand, ensconced in the cover I had ordered for it. It was small and light, and looked good. All positives. The set-up — or, should I say, turning it on — was pretty straightforward. I turned it on and it ran through some basics. The first thing it asked was which language I wanted to use. It then had me set up the PocketBook shop account. I found out later that it chose the .de (German) account for some reason, but the PocketBook customer service was fast and they had that switched in less than one day. It then ran some system/software updates, which took a few minutes.

The next thing I did was install the PocketBook app onto my various phones and tablet. I immediately saw a couple of e-books I had purchased and downloaded through something like Read Era pop up on the screens of those devices. And one of the titles also popped up on my e-reader without my having to do anything at all. However, I still have one other title that has not ever shown up, and I haven’t been able to figure out why.

There is also a PocketBook cloud account. Honestly, I didn’t understand the in’s and out’s of all of these things, so I set everything aside until the next day. Since I was in Poland, it’s highly likely that some pierogi were calling my name. Or ham. There’s always ham.

Day 2

I watched some tutorials and reviews to try to get a handle on what was going on. Everyone seemed really pleased and seemed to think it was so easy to set up their e-readers, but I felt like I was missing something. I tried to search for a few books in the PocketBook shop but got totally frustrated when it kept showing me books in German, English, and Ukrainian, despite having set the store filters to English and English content.

Day 3

I had better luck trying to search through the PocketBook app, but when I tried to buy something through the PocketBook shop on the e-reader itself, it told me “content unavailable.” Later this same day I found a comment on the e-reader subreddit (which has really useful information) where the person said they have the PocketBook app on their phone. They then buy books through Google Play Books and upload them to the PocketBook cloud. Hmmm…. This sounded intriguing so I tried it with a free graphic novel and it worked! There is a direct link to Google Books on the e-reader, so that was really easy. It took a few tries of clicking on sync and it was a little slow, but it finally downloaded the book and I was able to read it.

So what I realized (I know, sometimes it takes me a while) is that the PocketBook Cloud account is exactly what it sounds like. You can use this account to download books on your e-reader that you might have somewhere else, for instance on your PocketBook app, or elsewhere on other devices. Or…that you buy through Google Books on your phone (for example) and then download into your PocketBook Cloud account on your e-reader.

Day 4

I started checking Google Books for other things I have been wanting. Mainstream titles seemed to be available, including pre-orders of upcoming books I had heard about. One book I looked for in the PocketBook shop was unavailable there, but was available in Google Books. Actually, one of the main complaints I’ve read online about the PocketBook shop is that the selections are quite limited. And, wouldn’t buying books through the PocketBook shop just put me back in the same place I was already in, with limits placed on where I can access the books and having yet another place where my books are located? Rather than fiddling with that shop anymore I decided to buy a “test” book through Google Books (I know, what a sacrifice, buying a book!). Purchasing was quick and this time the book downloaded painlessly. This seems to be the way to go, at least for now.

Adobe Digital Editions

A few days in to this process I also installed Adobe Digital Editions after I created an Adobe account. I authorized my computer (which basically means you sign in with that Adobe password you just created) and am apparently ready to go from this standpoint. According to the Adobe website, “With ADE 4.5.12, when a consumer fulfills a book on one device, the book will be automatically downloaded to all the other devices that belong to this consumer (activated using the same user ID).” This point is something I don’t understand completely but I haven’t run across it yet (or at least not that I know of).

Is it Possible to Access Everything in One Place?

So…is it possible to access everything in one place? That was the jackpot question. Unfortunately, no. While I believe some devices may allow you to install apps that you could then use to “sideload” books and other materials, this is not possible with the PocketBook Color. This was one of the issues that I didn’t clearly understand before I clicked on the “purchase” button. While my e-reader does have “apps” installed on it, and it also has access to internet browsing, I can’t install any additional apps on it. This crosses things like Hoopla and Fable off the consolidation list. This was a disappointment when I realized it, although I hadn’t really counted on being able to do it, especially not with Fable, so it wasn’t a huge disappointment.

On the upside, in theory I should be able to send the files from my Libro.fm audiobooks to my e-reader to listen to them there. This is something I haven’t had a chance to do yet because, let’s face it, I already have the Libro.fm app on my phone, so why bother? But it’s always good to have options and one great thing about Libro.fm is that you OWN the audiobooks you buy from this indie seller.

Quick Note on Hoopla

A quick note on Hoopla: while there is access to the internet on my e-reader, and I have been able to log in to my account and even see the books I have borrowed, it is NOT possible to read them there. I get a message that says “This title is not playable from this browser. Please download our app to play this title.” And, like I said, it isn’t possible to download the app to the e-reader. That’s pretty frustrating but it is what it is.

Washed Out is Better than Washed Up

You will NOT get the same kind of vibrant color that you are used to on your phone or tablet, so if vibrant colors are critical to your reading experience (lots of graphic novels, etc.), you should probably stick to your tablet or phone. There is a lot of information out there about the technology behind the E Ink color and why it appears this way, but let me put it this way: the marketing pitch about how you can now read comics in color, while technically true, is probably not going to be pleasing to someone who reads a lot of comics on a tablet. But, hey, washed out is better than washed up and I’m happy I bought the color version.

Pairing with Bluetooth

About 10 days after all of the above, I finally paired my e-reader with my Bluetooth headphones to see how that would work. The e-reader comes with the function of text-to-voice so I thought maybe I could listen to my copy of A Song of Fire and Ice, since we’re reading it now in my Doorstoppers Epic Reads Book Club. Alas, the voice was too robotic and, more importantly, it didn’t follow any kind of natural reading rhythm, so that is not a good option at this point. But it does work, so maybe people wanting to use this function for very factual information would find it useful.

Library Thing

A Giant Ordeal

Whew! That all sounds like a giant ordeal that I created for myself. All in all, though, I am pleased with my purchase of the PocketBook Color e-reader. I don’t think it’s possible to get everything that you want from one e-reader, but I’m happy with what I’m able to do with mine. One thing I haven’t mentioned so far is battery life. Unlike a phone or tablet, which needs to be recharged relatively quickly (sometimes every day), I’ve been using my e-reader for more than three weeks now and it’s still on about 50% of the battery. This is a big positive because while I’m traveling I most likely won’t have to worry about it dying while I’m on the road. If I were to do it over, I might buy the black-and-white version and save a little bit of money, but it is nice to have some color on the screen, especially since I don’t need it for reading graphic novels. Until the prices come down, I won’t be springing for anything waterproof.

In the Land of the Postscript

And how about Chava Rosenfarb? Since my e-reader purchase I have successfully found and bought a volume of her short stories, In the Land of the Postscript, The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb from the Yiddish Book Center and the book is now downloaded onto my new e-reader! If and when her epic Tree of Life becomes available as e-books, I’ll get those, too (or when the number of physical copies around here somehow miraculously decreases).

Do you have an e-reader? What has your experience been? Let me know in the comments below.

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