Have you ever run across a solution looking for a problem? Unfortunately, that's my reaction to Perdrix TXT, a new e-reading app for iPhone and iPad. The developer contacted me over the weekend and gave me a promo code for a free review copy, and I gave it a look. Here's what they say about the app on their site: Getting closer to the real book experience… Focused on book immersion, this app features innovative design such as book side views, life-like bookmark and a separate Search screen. Read free e-books and plain text files. At a quick glance that sounds good. The app...

I mentioned earlier that it's been spring cleaning week here. Well, in amongst one of those random boxes of this and that, I unearthed this gem: my first-ever e-book reader! Back when I purchased this puppy for $50 plus shipping off eBay (a fortune!), it was 2005 and I was living in New Zealand for a year, doing a graduate program. The town I lived in was the fourth-largest in the country, but to my jaded North American city girl eyes, it was hardly a bustling metropolis. There were cows five minutes up the road from me. There was a sheep...

The story of Joanna Cabot's DRM-free year continues with the dispatch below, from FEB 2013. JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC It's been a busy month for me, work-wise, so I haven't had that much reading time—I logged just five books this month, which is pathetic. But this doesn't reflect my daily reading. I have a few longer-term books I'm reading (a book of daily essays, some reference books) which should bump my total when they're done, but that won't be for some time. I...

TeleRead was the recipient of a rather flattering honor earlier this week. On Wednesday, we were informed that we'd been featured on the just-published list of 100 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers, which is curated by Masters in English, "a site dedicated to helping students find the right graduate-level English program." "We built this list for our audience of aspiring graduate students in English literature and relevant fields," says MIE's Elizabeth Kelly. "But we think anyone who likes to get lost in a book will find something they love here. The list of 100 Essential Sites is split into five different categories; TeleRead...

Project Gutenberg Adds Dropbox Support (Lifehacker) Sales of Used eBooks Getting Closer (Publisher's Weekly) eBook Challenges in Japan (Good e-Reader) Amazon's Digital Metamorphosis: eBooks Up 70% (The Verge) Kindle Daily Deals: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (and 3 others) ...

I've seen a lot of articles lately about the high cost of textbooks. This one was about site licenses and how they penalize smaller schools. This one is about the use of e-readers in developing countries. This one is an infographic that looks at the issue from a variety of angles. It strikes me as a somewhat American obsession, this textbook habit. When I did my teacher training in New Zealand back in 2005, nobody used textbooks there. There were some resource packets produced by the government for certain curriculum areas, but other than that, you were on your own—it was your job,...

I love DRM-free books! I know that for most people, DRM is an issue they might not think about often; if their books work, they're happy. But for many more experienced e-book users, it's an issue to care about. If you acquire 100 Amazon e-books and then you buy a Kobo, how are you going to read those books? If you spend years as a loyal Sony customer and then buy a Kindle, what will you do with the books you've bought and loved? Unless you are blessed with some technical skills—and either a country whose laws permit format-shifting, or a...

In celebration of Banned Books Week, TIME magazine's Moneyland blog ran a useful post yesterday that pointed readers toward a number of the better-known websites where free e-books live. But aside from simply mentioning the obvious sites (Project Gutenberg; the Internet Archive), the post also mentions a frugal-living blog called MoneyTalksNews.com, which has "helpfully put together a list of where you can track down [free] e-book versions of [19 of the best-known] banned books." Click here to see the list, which includes George Orwell's 1984, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and Nabokov's Lolita. And don't forget: Banned Books Week is currently underway (it ends...

Title From Plato to Michael Hart: The Long Journey of E-books Author P. Divakar Source DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology (32.2; 2012) Abstract Genesis of e-books and the connected social implications have a long bearing on the dissemination of knowledge. The strides in information technology have ushered in new content formats and reading devices. An e-book is superior to a c-book in terms of storage, delivery and accessibility. E-books have tremendous implications on libraries, library users and publishers. Around the world, there have been initiatives towards the ultimate goal of enhancing public access to all recorded knowledge. Internet apart from facilitating self publication of e-books,...

The Guardian has an interesting retrospective on the famed 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1911. This edition of the encyclopedia is one of the most renowned and romanticized, for a number of reasons. The fact that it was the first encyclopedia to be issued all at once, rather than volume by volume, might have something to do with it. But also, it represents one of the last great repositories of knowledge before humanity lost its innocence in the First World War. With the publication of the final volumes of the 11th, in...

Digitization of public-domain works is a good thing, right? Most literature fans would be quick to agree. However, Glyn Moody writes on Techdirt that some of the new public digitization projects have terms and conditions that seem to be right out of the dark ages. The Cambridge University’s Digital Library, for example, places strict limits on what users can do with the books—non-commercial use only, no modification, no passing it on to third parties, and so on. A number of the works in Cambridge’s library date from well before the 1710 Statute of Anne invented modern copyright, suggesting that...

There are several sites where you can read books online. It’s a good idea to try them, and eventually pick up a favorite one, if you don’t want to rely only on reviews, likes and faves. Here are the most popular ones. Amazon There are two ways to read books on Amazon site: Look Inside and Kindle for the Web. Look InsideYou can use this feature no matter which book form you want to buy, print orKindle. Just go to a book page and check whether there is a Look Inside! arrow on top of a cover (like on a picture). Click on it...