I’m voting for manjaro here too, it’s been working great for me for years. But noobs should 100% go for mint

When windows XP went away I got 12 more years of updates on my old dell laptop - with Linux of course. The laptop died before 32 bit support did.

So I had an e-reader once but left it in the drawer because I found reading on my phone (dark mode) was so much more convenient.

I use librera which has tts and I alternate between reading with my eyes and listening to the robot voice narration (eg while driving). Those language packs have come a long way!