Ever since the kindle came out I’d been having on and off thoughts about getting an ebook reader. I’m still not sure about the kindle. I’m with Philippe Starck, it is a little sad. No, it’s actually pretty ugly, expensive and the wireless all but useless for me. I wonder why ebook reader designers insist on using a one page portrait orientation. I’d prefer a device that shows 2 pages on a screen, landscape — like an actual book.

But ebooks aren’t just for handheld devices. ebook software has existed for a long time, and I can’t believe it took me this long to download ereader. I have the free version now, but the pro version is only $5, which is…nothing.

Car did all the research, cos she’s the one who likes reading on the screen. There are so many places to download ebooks, one of the early favourites is manybooks with they claim almost 20,000 titles, mostly from project gutenberg. The books come in all sorts of formats including: kindle, palm, iPhone, pdf, even newton. Most of the titles are public domain classics and with so many available, it’ll be a long time before anyone is tired of their selection. Here’s how Pride and Prejudice looks on my screen.

For fanfic closer to home, there’s pdafiction, and Susan has converted a number of stories on the muse to ebook format — it was weird downloading my own stuff. Hee.

Ease of reading is very high. I can choose one page, two-pages and full screen. There’s a range of backgrounds, fonts and sizes — these may be pro only features but like I said, $5 is a doddle. I can pageup or down using my arrows. There’s also links, annotations and a dictionary. No complaints here. For $29.95 I can get ereader studio which allows me to create ebooks. Oh boy, I can see days and days of fun.