I’ve been watching all the discussion about e-readers for awhile now. A Kindle? A Sony Reader? The Nook? Something else? I wasn’t all that convinced that I’d like reading digitally, but I found it amusing to listen to the debate, wondering what one I’d prefer should I ever decide to jump into the fray.
Last summer we went camping with our son and daughter-in-law for a few days. Whenever there was a bit of downtime, Joel would pull out his Blackberry or Jen her iTouch and immerse themselves in their current ebook. I could see the appeal, but such a small screen! And I don’t have the best eyes in the world.
However, when Jim and I rewrote our cell phone contract a few weeks ago, we decided to get a pair of iPhones. And as you may know, there’s an app for nearly everything you can imagine, many of which are free or very inexpensive. Including several ebook apps. Well, of course I had to check them out!
I currently have the Kindle app to check out a book I’d heard was on for free this week. I have Stanza, which has a really nice set-up. And I have the E-Reader from Fictionwise/Barnes & Noble.
The Kindle app hooks you up to Safari online to download books, and that really is impossible to read on the small screen. I downloaded the sample chapters with a lot of scrolling back and forth on the magnified screen, and the book is quite readable.
So far I’ve read the most on the E-Reader, because I purchased two novels by Cheryl Wyatt through their site.
I’m actually (surprisingly!) quite loving reading digitally. There are lots of books that I won’t be likely to read more than once or twice, so this works well for that. I can still buy paper if the story demands it. Right now I wish that the book blog tours I’m part of would offer ebooks as an option for reviewing novels. That would be way cool and save the publishers the cost of shipping, as well.
I had lots of time last Sunday to pace the corridor at the hospital and read one of Cheryl’s ebooks while waiting (patiently!) for my daughter to give birth! I am now the proud gramma of a beautiful baby girl, who is going to be known on my blog as SweetPea, at least for now.
Welcome, SweetPea! And Gramma sees there are all kinds of apps for kids’ books, too. We’ll find things to do and books to read. Not to worry. We’re good to go.
