The kind of long-form reading you can do right now, on your computer or mobile phone, at the speed of a Google search, involves animated advertisements, multi-page articles smooshed into strange margins, and lots of attention-grabbing links to outside material. The kind of reading you want to do gives the material undivided attention, puts you in touch with your thoughts, and is much easier on your eyes.

There are, thankfully, tools to bridge the divide between the gratification of the web and the illumination of actual reading.

Strip down and simplify your text

The inconvenience and distraction of web reading has been addressed by a few different web geeks and entrepreneurs in a mostly similar fashion. If you don’t mind reading on a screen, but want that screen far less cluttered, these are the tools to turn to:

Instapaper: The king of clean text and convenience. First you drag Marco Arment‘s “Read Later” tool into your browser’s favorites/bookmarks collection. Then, whenever you see an article you want to read click the button. This will save your stories at the Instapaper website (which requires registration), and allow it be to read anytime via an iPhone or iPad app, or on your Kindle. One tip: view the article in a single page or printer-friendly version before you tap the Read Later button.

The king of clean text and convenience. First you drag Marco Arment‘s “Read Later” tool into your browser’s favorites/bookmarks collection. Then, whenever you see an article you want to read click the button. This will save your stories at the Instapaper website (which requires registration), and allow it be to read anytime via an iPhone or iPad app, or on your Kindle. One tip: view the article in a single page or printer-friendly version before you tap the Read Later button. Readability: As a pure text-and-images reading tool, Readability does a good job, and it’s easy to install on most browsers. To read articles later, though, and feel better about stripping out advertising, Readability asks for a minimum of $5 per month from readers, which it’s trying as hard as it can to send to great content creators–publications, bloggers, whomever. If you’re using the latest version of Safari, some of Readability’s features are built into a new “Reader” mode.

As a pure text-and-images reading tool, Readability does a good job, and it’s easy to install on most browsers. To read articles later, though, and feel better about stripping out advertising, Readability asks for a minimum of $5 per month from readers, which it’s trying as hard as it can to send to great content creators–publications, bloggers, whomever. If you’re using the latest version of Safari, some of Readability’s features are built into a new “Reader” mode. Read It Later: A simple app that lets you do what it says, on nearly any device you have with a screen.

Send good reads right to your Kindle

Got a Kindle? Thinking about getting one of those sleek new Kindle Fire tablets? Do some quality reading on your thin little screen, both hand-picked and expertly curated. Delivereads takes compelling content from around the web and pushes it wirelessly to your Kindle, with no effort on your part. Tinderizer makes it a one-click process to send web articles to your Kindle, where email and Wikipedia and Twitter won’t be able to find you for a while.