I’m using a combination of:

• The Boox Palma reader, though they have larger tablets if you prefer. I’m not sure about the others, but the Palma runs Android with the Play Store.
• Kavita to host my ebooks online.
• FolderSync with SFTP to sync all of my books ahead of time to my SD card.
• Moon Reader to add my Kavita server’s OPDS feed as an online catalog if I need to grab something manually.
• Calibre to manage and embed metadata.

I use a pocketbook since years now.

• crisp display
• eats every format you throw at it
• also bluetooth on board for listening to audiobooks or music. Means no mobile necesarry when going to the beach
• water resistant models, read in the bathtube
• send to pocketbook to receive ebooks via mail
• KOReader compatible with calibre to connect to your selfhosted server
• connection to onleihe or libby

I have a Kobo Clara which I installed (free, open source) KOReader on. I also have Calibre installed on a desktop machine with the db for that located on my server (which is in my home, not a VPS). Having the db there means it can also serve the Calibre-web install which is also on the server.

When I first set this up I used Calibre on my desktop to connect over wifi to my Kobo and pushed everything I had straight onto it in one go. Now, as I add new individual books to Calibre, I use the OPDS connection on my Kobo to connect to Calibre-web and pull the new book to my Kobo from there. This means I can access my collection wherever I am in the world.

I’ve owned nearly every version of the nook, and haven’t had a problem getting stuff onto it.

For hosting my collection, I use https://vaemendis.net/ubooquity/ it has a built in reader that saves states, but I primarily download to my nook and read with moon reader +.

There’s a docker compose and env file in https://github.com/zedd00/Boater-HAT/blob/master/docker-compose.yml that have my entire setup.

Kobo devices are easy to install KOReader on.

You should also ask yourself what kind of books you want to read. Black and white comic books, for instance, can be read on an e-reader, as long as the screen is big enough.

I have done this with calibre and a Kindle, worked fine.

Nowadays I prefer reading on my phone, and loading ePubs on any eBook reader is a non brainer.

I have a Boox tablet (an older Note3) for the actual reading, I run readarr as a downloader/manager and use Ubooquity as the server. If you arent a massive nerd I’d probably suggest a kobo reader over an android reader.

I dont tend to “stream” the books from the server, because there is no point, they are tiny files, so i use the ubooquity webui to download the file to the device when needed. though even that is unnecessary as I can just vpn into the server itself and pull the files, or have them all sync automatically when on wifi since it is just an android device so i can run whatever apps I want to do that, I just use ubooquity as I used to use its web ui reader to keep in sync between multiple devices but stopped reading on my phone as I preferred the e-ink display. could also just dump them to a usb-c disk and move them manually.

I might soon replace ubooquity alltogether and just have Readarr put the files into nextcloud or something directly and have that sync with the tablet when on wifi.

The source for the titles themselves is the usual suspects, public trackers, usenet etc.

I’ve used calibre in the past to convert and de-drm books for a kindle I used previously, but I never actually needed any of its other features like re-formatting or editing metadata so I stopped using it as soon as I replaced the kindle with the Boox reader.