iBooks

Hello again. After a day of hard core snow shoveling (I really should have posted earlier, but I didn't, so deal with it) I deliver to you a sort of app review. iBooks is relatively old news, but only recently did I realize how cool it really is. After more than two years of reading nothing more than I had to for school, I decided to start pursuing some quality literature of my own choice, so I downloaded a library of almost 1000 books. Since they were in hte .mobi format, which iBooks dislikes, I used Calibre, an eBook management and conversion program, to transmute them into .ePub. Then it's as simple as draging the ePub files into iTunes. Now, as many people as there are who despise iTunes, I really have no problem; since you already have your music, videos, and soul syncing through iTunes, might as well micromanage the books. Reading is pretty nice: you have 2 different font sizes, landscape/portrait reading (of which I prefer the former), black on white/black on sepia (sadly no white on black for night reading),a robust chapter and bookmark navigation system, and extremely realistic page turning effects. My favorite feature, though, is the built in dictionary. If you come across a word you don't know, simply highlight it and click dictionary in the menu. Much better than actually getting up and walking 5 steps to get a physical one. My only gripes are the lack of automatic arrangement of your "Bookshelf" and the fact that it only accepts ePub. Other than that, I much prefer it over the Kindle app, Stanza, or anything else I've used. So start reading and lets make Europe think we not really that dumb!