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The Kindle isn't working well? Good. Let it burn in Hell.

As a reader who is losing vision and the ability to read, the Kindle and US copyright bullshit seriously pisses me off. I no longer "read" books, but instead convert them to audio-books which I play at around 500 words per minute, using the totally awesome Eloquence TTS (the old ViaVoice speech synthesiser). I don't mind paying for the e-books, but Amazon and friends are leaving me high and dry. Their built-in voice in Kindle is completely useless, because it wont play fast and wouldn't be understandable even if it were, and it's not even enabled for many books. It's torture having to listen to it.

Fortunately, the Microsoft Reader format has been broken, with converlit program. I buy all my e-books from ebooks.com, and then convert them with some Linux utilities, and enjoy listening to them on my phone. However, I'm a big slashdot sort of geek, and this sort of hacking is natural for me. The vast majority of visually impaired individuals are stuck with no good solutions.

Every freaking building in the US that serves the public has to put a ramp to its door for the disabled. Why does Amazon get to slam the door in our face? FUCK AMAZON.

You can use this to dismantle lit files and get the actual html text (and graphics) out for use with other programs: http://www.convertlit.com/download.php

Just last night I once again visited the Top 100 Sci-Fi List of Books and checked their list for any new books that moved up and their Major Series list to decided on what I will be reading next on my month long visit in Europe. After that I hit Google to look for eBook torrents for the books and series that I am interested in and I came across this Top 100 Sci-Fi Books Torrent with most of the books from the list and many of them as complete series.

The books are in Microsoft Reader's LIT format so if you have a compatible PDA device that you use for reading then you're set or you can always convert them out to HTML with Covert Lit utility (GNU licensed and open source to boot) that runs on a number of OS's and takes care of the work. Also I would recommend the Haali Reader for Pocket PC platform if you want a good full featured reader that can read text files directly inside .zip files without uncompressing and it saves your place in many books even on phone resets in case you have a PDA type phone that you can read on like I do.

I am exactly in the same boat as you, I also read the Hyperion Cantos but I couldn't get through the first book the first three times I tried to read, because the story lines were so diluted and all-over-the-place, that if it wasn't for the single story about the village of people and the Crucifix of Resurrection I would have dropped this book like a stone and missed out on the rest of the great series. That first books almost soured me to the Top 100 Sci-Fi List because it was one of the books there that was highly recommended, and there should be a warning placed on it.

Also, I personally prefer to read books as eBooks but I also like to own the best ones as mass print paperbacks so I usually buy them en mass as complete series from Barnes & Nobel since they seem to be a less sleazy company than Amazon. Also, just as a reminder don't bother with the Amazon Kindle eBook reader since you can't put your books on it without uploading them to Amazon and anything you buy to put on the reader is only licensed to you and you do not own the books you buy.

Writing up a reply to this question makes me look at all the books on my shelf with fond memories of the adventures that I read about. If you haven't already read these then check out the Dune series for deep sci-fi, and the Dune prequel books by Herbert's son if you like lighter fiction in the same universe, Ender's Game series, Vorkosigan Saga for action packed episodic sci-fi, and the other series mentioned in the links above.

Enjoy your reading.

Check out the files available for download :)

As long as they are DRM free I can buy them! It's such a bitch to use clit everytime I buy and ebook. Do you guys know if there is a cracker for Mobipocket and PDF as well? The problem with Lit is that you have to have Windows to download books, which I don't have.. :-)

If you purchase .LIT files, you can strip the DRM using Convert LIT http://www.convertlit.com/, and convert them to Sony's format with libprs500. https://libprs500.kovidgoyal.net/

I'm uncertain of the legality of doing this (for personal use) in the US... see the DMCA exception on the convertlit legal page. Outside the US, check your local laws.

A good source of information is http://www.mobileread.com/.

For what it's worth, you can get Make Room Make Room in a variety of formats now, including eReader (which, while restricted, is fairly reasonable if you don't mind its reader program) and Microsoft Reader (which can be easily cracked into HTML).

LIT files are just html -- use a tool like http://www.convertlit.com/index.php. That's why I actually prefer Microsoft e-books to. say, Adobe, even though I don't even use Microsoft Reader on my PDA (I use uBook)

I had one of those for a couple years before I upgraded to an M500. The M500 is similar, but has an SD slot, and slightly better scroll buttons that actually make it a lot easier to use for reading books. I use Plucker to read books, and Convert LITto convert those pesky Microsoft LIT files to HTML.

iSilo is by far the best reader I've found. It has the best functionality I've seen and on my Clie the resolution is perfectly acceptable. The way I get my books is to buy them from Amazon, or Simon Says at MS Reader format and use that ConvertLIT program to render them as HTML. iSiloX then converts them into the appropriate format form the Clie and I'm good to go. Plus I've then got the book in HTML format so I'm assured that I can convert it into a different format if a better one comes along. I know I'm violating the DMCA buy removing the encryption from the original LIT file, but I have to go with what works.