Reading books on the iPhone

I love to read. I like to get as much knowledge as possible into my system. So far, I have been an “old style” book reader, meaning I actually bought a book in paper form and read it. But in the light of a greener environment and saving trees I wanted to go more into the eReader craze.

There has been a lot of buzz around the Kindle 2 in the last weeks, but I just did not want to carry around another device. Since I already have a iPhone I was looking for a solution for the iPhone itself. After some searching I found Stanza. Stanza is available as a Desktop application and as a iPhone application, also. Since, both applications are free of charge there was actually no need of holding back.

I have to say, that I was highly skeptical, but I have been reading 4 books in the last couple of weeks with the Stanza application on my iPhone and have to say, that i was pleasantly surprised how good the reading experience was.

The application itself is very well made and easily understood. With a tip on the left of the right side you flip pages, with a tip in the middle you get some information about the book. Reading the book in landscape mode is just a move away, and Stanza is enough intelligent to stay on the same page and even move a bit if the pages have more text landscape mode. You can set bookmarks, also.

Reading books was actually very easy on the eyes as you can adjust the size of the test sizes, the same way as you would within Safari. You can change the color, text font and much more. But I have to say, that the default settings were just about perfect for me.

I have to say, that one of the best features must be that you can transfer eBooks from the Desktop application the iPhone with a single click. All you do it enable “sharing” in the Desktop application and within the iPhone you can browse “remote books” and download them to the iPhone. Nothing easier then that. All in all, I have to say, that the Stanza iPhone application must be one of the best iPhone application ever made.

Actually, Stanza must have made a big impression out there, so much that Amazon bought the company behing Stanza the other day. In any way, I hope that Stanza will not get lost into the migration of Amazon, but in the long run, I wonder if Kindle for the iPhone and Stanza for the iPhone, both from the same company really makes sense.