Catholic reading book for e-ink tablets

Morning Quiet. Thirty-one days of Psalm and Gospel, with room for the pen.

Each day prints one Psalm and one Gospel passage from the Douay-Rheims Bible on the page, followed by four steps of lectio divina with lines for your pen and an evening examen with three questions.

Download the free sample, days 1 to 7 Buy Book 1 on Etsy 4.90 €

Sample: PDF, 51 pages, 0.62 MB, no account, no e-mail. Book 1: three PDF files of 213 pages, delivered by Etsy as a digital download.

Day 1, morning page of Morning Quiet: the date line, Our Father, Psalm 1 (1) from the Douay-Rheims Bible with verse numbers, and a ruled margin on the right for notes with the pen — Day 1, morning: page 7 of the e-ink file, exactly as it is in the PDF. Text 13 pt, a 39 mm margin beside the reading for the pen.

213 pages, 31 days: one day is 5 to 10 pages, with a morning page, the reading, the four steps and an evening page. Counted in the build manifest.
592 internal links, 71 targets, 0 broken, measured in the finished e-ink PDF by our check script, not promised.
Douay-Rheims text, public domain: Challoner revision, American edition of 1899, from the digital edition of eBible.org, with 12 obvious transcription errors corrected and listed on the last page.

What a day looks like

Morning: the reading and four steps. Evening: three questions.

The book is undated. Days are numbered 1 to 31, with a line for your own date, and days 7, 14, 21 and 28 are written for Sunday, the Lord's Day, each with a page for the week.

The morning page begins with the Our Father, then the Psalm and the Gospel passage, printed in full at 13 pt with verse numbers. Psalms carry both numbers, for example Psalm 23 (22): the Hebrew number first, the Douay-Rheims and Vulgate number in brackets. Beside the reading is a 39 mm margin for the pen.

After the reading come the four steps of lectio divina, in the order Guigo II set down in the twelfth century: Lectio (read), Meditatio (reflect), with three ruled lines, Oratio (respond), with the rest of the page ruled 8 mm apart, and Contemplatio (rest).

The evening page is an examen with three questions and ruled lines: what am I thankful for today, where did I meet God and where did I turn away, what do I want to do differently tomorrow. Its last link opens the next day.

Book 1 covers Psalms 1 to 31 in the Hebrew numbering, with Psalm 18 over two days and Psalms 9 and 10 on one day because the Vulgate counts them as one, and Matthew 1 to 12.

What you get

Three files of the same 213 pages, one for the screen and two for paper.

File	Page	Pages	Size	For
Morning-Quiet-Book-1-eink.pdf	157 x 210 mm (3:4)	213	1.81 MB	reMarkable 2 and Paper Pro, Kindle Scribe, Boox Note Air, Supernote A5 X2; no page numbers
Morning-Quiet-Book-1-A4.pdf	210 x 297 mm	213	1.87 MB	printing on A4, with page numbers
Morning-Quiet-Book-1-Letter.pdf	215.9 x 279.4 mm	213	1.86 MB	printing on US Letter, with page numbers
Morning-Quiet-Sample-Days-1-7.pdf	157 x 210 mm (3:4)	51	0.62 MB	free, on this page: days 1 to 7 with 139 links, to try on your device first

All three book files hold the same 139 x 194 mm page block, so the pages, the page order and the links are identical; A4 and US Letter centre that block on the sheet and add a page number. The e-ink page is the 3:4 shape of a 10.3 inch screen, so it fills the display without bars at the sides. Nothing smaller than 10 pt anywhere in the file.

The navigation buttons sit in a centred bar at the bottom of each page, at least 29 mm from the left and right edges and 15 mm from the bottom edge, measured in the PDF, away from the edge zones that some e-ink readers reserve for gestures. On e-ink tablets links are usually tapped with a finger, not the pen.

To get it on your device, download the PDF on a computer or phone and copy it to your reader the way you normally add a book: the reMarkable desktop or mobile app, Send to Kindle for the Scribe, a USB cable and the device folder for Boox, or the upload page of a Supernote. Nothing is installed and no account of ours is needed.

What is not verified

No physical device has been tested.

Every number on this page comes from the finished PDF or from the build manifest: pages, links, link targets, the distance of the buttons from the edges of the page. What we have not done is open the file on a reMarkable, a Kindle Scribe, a Boox or a Supernote and tap the links there. Readers differ in how they treat internal links in a PDF and in which edge zones they keep for gestures.

That is what the free sample is for. It has the same page size and the same kind of links as the book; if a link does not respond on your device, you know before you pay. The ruled lines are 0.3 pt grey; whether they are visible enough on a 226 dots per inch screen is also untested.

Questions

Before you buy.

Which devices is it made for?

The e-ink file is 157 x 210 mm, the 3:4 ratio of the reMarkable 2, reMarkable Paper Pro, Kindle Scribe, Boox Note Air and Supernote A5 X2. We have not tested it on a physical device: download the free sample of days 1 to 7 and try the links on yours before you buy. A4 and US Letter files are included for printing.

Is the Bible text in the book, or do I need my own Bible?

The text of each Psalm and Gospel passage is printed on the page, from the Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner revision, American edition of 1899, which is in the public domain. Book 1 covers Psalms 1 to 31 in the Hebrew numbering and Matthew 1 to 12.

Why do the Psalms carry two numbers?

A heading such as Psalm 23 (22) gives the Hebrew number first, the one most Bibles use today, and the Douay-Rheims and Vulgate number in brackets. From Psalm 10 to Psalm 147 they usually differ by one.

Is it dated?

No. The days are numbered 1 to 31, with a line for your own date on each morning page. Days 7, 14, 21 and 28 are written for Sunday; start on a Monday if you want them to fall on Sundays, or on any other day.

Is this an approved liturgical book?

No. It is a private aid to prayer with lectio divina and an examen. It does not replace the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours or spiritual direction, and no ecclesiastical approval is claimed.

Text source

Where the words come from.

Scripture: Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner revision (1749 to 1752), American edition of 1899, public domain, from the digital edition of eBible.org (ID engDRA), unchanged apart from the removal of markup. Twelve obvious transcription errors of that digital edition, for example Manesses for Manasses in Matthew 1:10, are corrected where two other transcriptions of the same printed text agree; the list is on the last page of the book.

The framework text, that is the headings, instructions and questions, is editorial text of ARLing prepared with AI assistance and approved by the publisher. The Our Father, the Glory Be and Come, O Holy Ghost are given in their traditional English wording, which is in the public domain. The book is typeset by our own program.

AI was used to create the background scene of the first listing image on Etsy. Every page shown on this page and in the listing is a real page from the file.