If having statistics on your reading is something that you want then you will need to use the Kobo software. (Personally I never bothered compiling them when reading paper or ebooks and don't see where they would be useful, for me. Now for Kobo and Google Analyitics they seem to be just the thing.) But there are alternative reading programs that can be added to the Kobo readers, including Koreader which some feel is a much better PDF reader.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=226456
Luck;
Ken