Reading with one hand tied behind my back

Well, maybe my hand is not exactly behind my back, but it is occupied with keeping the bottle in the right place. That leaves me one hand with which to read. In the dark, no less. And it's the iPhone to the rescue.

As far as the user interface goes, Classics is simply top notch. The formatting for poetry isn't the best, but it's still very readable and easy to use. The books are limited only to what they provide, but Classics offers a growing library of great classic texts.

I've tried out most of the other iPhone e-readers as well. The other e-reader I use all the time is Amazon's Kindle app, and it probably gets even more use than Classics. The free copies of the ESV and TNIV translations of the Bible that were available helped solidify it as my main e-reader on the iPhone. In addition to the $10 books there is a huge library of cheap and free texts.

Stanza has a huge library with lots of free stuff, but even though I downloaded a dozen or so books I never read a single one. Strange. The program itself looked very good, it just never got any love with Kindle and Classics around. I ended up deleting it from my iPhone.

And then there's the new kid on the block, the Barnes & Noble eReader. Of course I downloaded it, if only to see how it compared to the Kindle and Stanza. It felt a little sluggish to me, and I was disappointed in their free bonus offerings for installing it. (They offer up not one but TWO Jane Austen books AND Little Women. Seriously? They couldn't let the use pick from a dozen or so classics?) And then shortly after I installed it The Last of the Mohicans disappeared from my eBook library. Given that that was the one book I didn't have in any other of my readers and actually would have read, I deleted the app.

That all being said, I'm really not the target audience for eBook consumption. If I'm going to read for an extended period of time (HA!) I want paper and ink. But if I want something to read for half an hour or less, I'm reaching for my iPhone. I've got enough free classics on there to keep me occupied for many, many moons.

Comments

[Neelan Choksi]

You may want to revisit Stanza. Our latest release has some significant UI improvements such as very pretty graphical page turning. I would encourage you to provide feedback if this changes your opinion on Stanza / encourages you to read in Stanza.

Thanks,
Neelan Choksi
CEO, Lexcycle (the makers of Stanza)

[James D.]

It wasn't anything to do with the interface (which in some ways is better than the Kindle app), it was just that I ran into space limitations on the iPhone, and I have a great many books sitting unread in both Classics and Kindle. The combination of those two led to Stanza not getting any use. I'll give it another go, though, and maybe download Paradise Lost (currently reading in Classics) and see how it goes. Thanks!