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?