Day 6, reading with the iPhone 4

I have a long history with books. Most of my life I have been an avid reader, although the last few years there has been a drop off. While in school I worked in a bookstore. In my house we have well over one thousand books in our library. I am a big fan of the book experience. . I also have to admit I like holding a book, the smell of the pages, the comfort of putting it on the shelf after reading and seeing it there reminding me of the journey we took together. So I have moved slowly in the ebooks arena. Last year I bought my wife a Kindle, and while she enjoyed the experience I watched as she quickly reverted back to using books. This did not help spur me on. Then the iPad hit the market and the demos of interactive books really caught my eye. I thought what a great experience it would be to read that way to my son. Still I held off, for many reasons, like waiting for the next iPad and not wanting my son to lose the experience of owning and reading real books. Along came the iPhone 4. As I have discussed I had a lot of reasons to get it. And along with it came iBooks. I already had a book or two on the Kindle reader for the iPhone on my 3G. I did not read them. I forced myself to pick a good book on iBooks and to really give it a try. What I found has surprised me. I truly thought I was not going to like it, it was too small, there was no feel to it, and it was not going to inspire the suspension of reality that a good book has always done for me. I thought that the plethora of features I held in my hand would detract from the reading experience. I was wrong on all accounts. The reading experience on the iPhone 4 not only captures the experience for me it has added to it. It is small, but the font clarity and the back lighting make reading very comfortable. The page turning gives the feel of turing the page of a real book. The tools, like font resizing, brightness control, search, and bookmarking add to experience of reading. The feel of holding a book is not really missed. I am sure much of this is the same with the Kindle, iPad, and the larger screen Android devices. I will be testing the Kindle reader on the Evo over the next few days. The iPhone 4 makes reading comfortable, fun, and easy. The shopping experience for books on iBooks was of course easy and smooth. I think I will be reading on the iPhone 4 quite a bit. As for reading with my son, I will stick to real books for some time to come