I’ve been a lifelong reader, which has proved a fragile habit in our era of endless trivial distraction. While books and e-ink readers solve the problem of competition for attention, they can’t compete with a phone for convenience. That tiny device in my pocket has made reading both easier and more vulnerable to displacement whenever a notification pops up.

A few days ago, I learned for the first time about a recent generation of tiny e-ink readers. Since they’re cheap, it was easy to give into curiosity: I bought an Xteink X3 . Not only is it astonishingly tiny, I could immediately install the delightful open-source CrossPoint firmware. I was very quickly able to install a few books. I also appreciated being able to install custom fonts, though I was a little surprised by their indifferent rendering ( foreshadowing… ).

CrossPoint is very configurable out of the box, so I converted a photo to a dithered black and white bitmap as my “device sleep” screen, and was pleased with how pretty this looked.…