Monday, March 22, 2010

Six Months with the iPhone: The Best Apps for Readers and Book Lovers

While I have reservations regarding the iPhone as a book replacement, there are some apps that are great for people who love reading and books. Here are a few of my favorites (so far):

Poem Flow: This app is from poets.org, and it program that gives you a new poem everyday. The app itself is free, and with the app, you get 20 poems plus a week of poems-of-the-day. For $.99, you get three months of poems, and you can also buy a year's worth of poems for $2.99. This is one of my favorite apps. Besides letting me accumulate a portable poetry library, the app will also show when and where the poem was last read. For instance, when I open a poem, it will tell me the location of the last person to read poem and when this person read it. The app also has literary trivia for the included poems. If you don't have an iPhone or an iPod Touch and you are interested in this app, you can experience it at the Poem Flow website.

101 Classic Novels: If you are anything like me, there are probably a bunch of classics that you read (or were supposed to read) in high school but can't remember anymore. Luckily, this app has 101 classics to help you recapture those halcyon days of AP English. While most of the books are well-known classics (think Emma by Jane Austen and The Last of the Mohicans by Cooper), there are some less famous works as well as a number of children's classics, like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. All in all, this is $.99 well-spent (I actually got mine for free because it was on sale!).

IndieBound: I do have a great appreciation for Barnes and Noble, but living in Boston has also given me a profound love of the independent bookstore. The IndieBound app makes it that much easier to find an independent bookstore near you. However, the real selling point (for me at least) is that the app gives you access to various IndieBound lists, including "Great Reads" and "Notables" for each month.

SnapTell: Although I can recount random pieces of information (like blocking to a play I stage managed 10 years ago), my mind is usually like a sieve. Too often, I see a book in a bookstore, tell myself that I will remember to go back and purchase the book at a later date, and then promptly forget all about it. However, SnapTell lets me take a picture of a book that I am interested in, and it will identify the book and store the information for me. It also gives the online price and the local price for the book in question.

Did I miss something? Do you have other great iPhone app suggestions for people who love to read? If so, please feel free to comment - I'm always interested in finding more apps to download and review.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're sleeping on Pricecheckah. It uses the great RedLaser barcode scanner, but gives you results from Amazon, eBay, walmart, overstock, buy.com as well as Google. It even let's you put in your own stores.

And at only 99c.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=300264101&mt=8

Terri said...

Great suggestion, particularly since saving money is so important these days. The latest version has gotten some good reviews on iTunes (I think that it used to be $4.99, so the $.99 price point is much better).