byzantine

I recently got one of these- it may be over speced for what you want but its a reasonable price and it can even read ebook files into a spoken form.
I am fairly sure you can use it to do what you want...although like you I disabled some of the aps as they are intrusive and unnecessary.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007687942778.html?
Otherwise just use a laptop on linux and an ebook reader program?

Solomonsatoshi

tech

I haven't used an ereader device for years. Now that I'm going to buy one again, I was surprised by the options of current ereaders. They all have smart phone functionality, without making calls.

I only want to read without all the nonsense and don't want to use remote services like dropbox, Google drive, etc. I only want to read it offline, from an sdcard or copy it to inte internal memory.

What would you recommend? 