I read a lot. I also love my iPhone. So, naturally, I spend a lot of time reading on my iPhone. (In fact, as I look back over the 90+ apps I’ve downloaded, my favorites are the reading/writing ones.)
I’ve tried most of the iPhone ebook readers (Eucalyptus, Stanza, Classics, BookZ, eReader, Kindle, Bookshelf, and Shortcovers, with Instapaper covering a slightly different niche). The ones I come back to? Eucalyptus and Instapaper. We’ll throw Stanza in for good measure, since it’s my fallback ePub reader and was my favorite until Eucalyptus showed up.
Eucalyptus
I love love love Eucalyptus. At first I didn’t think I would — I’d convinced myself that Stanza’s page-turning mechanism was best (tap on the right side to page forward, tap on the left side to page back). But it only took thirty seconds before I fell in love with Eucalyptus and pretty much everything about it. Sure, you can only read Project Gutenberg texts that are in English, but that covers most of what I wanted to read anyway — and it’s not like 20,000 books isn’t enough. ;)
Did I mention that Eucalyptus is beautiful?
And here we are turning a page (and this is now my favorite way to turn pages on the iPhone). A still shot doesn’t do it justice, so make sure you go over to the website and watch the video (under “Reads like a book”):
And I love the blue progress pie charts — brilliant:
I can’t think of any real complaints I have about Eucalyptus. It’s awesome. If you have an iPhone and you love books, go buy this app now. It’s worth every cent of the $10.
And what am I reading? Trollope’s autobiography, Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ, and I’m rereading both Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre (both of which I adore).
Stanza
For a long time, Stanza was my shining star for iPhone reading. Now that Eucalyptus has come along and dethroned it, however, I find myself hardly ever opening it. I still keep it around to read any non-Project Gutenberg ePubs I come across, though. (Which hasn’t happened yet.)
I have to say, after using Eucalyptus for several weeks, Stanza feels almost sterile. I seriously love Eucalyptus.
Instapaper
Instapaper doesn’t really compete with Eucalyptus or Stanza because it’s not a fiction reader: it’s a way to read long-form blog posts and other web pages on your phone. (Or on the web.) You set up an account on Instapaper.com and then use a bookmarklet to save pages to your Instapaper account. The iPhone app automatically syncs with your account. It’s perfect at what it does as far as I’m concerned.
And it’s got the über-awesome auto-scroll feature — using the iPhone’s accelerometer, Instapaper can sense when you’re tipping the phone forward or backward and then scroll accordingly. It works really well.
Summary
Reading on the iPhone is great and so convenient it gives me goosebumps. I can read anywhere now, since I always have my phone with me. I’ve read the first third of Trollope’s autobiography on my walk home from work each day, for example. Dead time is dead no longer. (I also use WriteRoom to work on my novel — got a nice page or so written this morning on my way up to work.)
Will something else come along and unseat Eucalyptus? Maybe. It’s hard to imagine something better, but I’m quite open to that possibility. Competition is a very good thing here. :)
Comments
Great review. Thanks for posting that.
Curious. I have Stanza. I really dislike it’s clunky menu system and payment system. Where did you find Project G. books on it? Every book I ever wanted that’s in the PD costs something on Stanza (same with Kindle).
Douglas Cootey
☆ @DouglasCootey on Twitter
✠The Splintered Mind
You just go to Online Catalog->Project Gutenberg. It’s all free there. When I was using Stanza, I really only downloaded books through Feedbooks, though (also available through the Online Catalog and also conveniently free :)).
It stung my heart to read about your cold withdrawal from Stanza. I mean…”sterile”? You are a harsh ex, Mr. Crowder.
Personally, I have two issues with Eucalyptus. The first, lack of non-Gutenberg titles, you already stated is a non-factor for you. For me, however, there are too many books and authors not on Gutenberg that I’d have to do without: Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, any modern psychology book, and this fantastic zombie-vampire book called “The Strain” by Guillermo del Toro (director of Pan’s Labyrinth). Gutenberg is great for classics and Cory Doctorow, but insufficient for my needs.
Second, the price tag. I know, $10 once isn’t that big of a deal. But when I can get something close for free, I have a really hard time justifying the expense. Call me a cheapskate.
One thing I’ll give you is Eucalyptus beats Stanza mercilessly when it comes to aesthetics. The font, the background, the ridiculously cute pie charts…you can’t reproduce the experience in Stanza. I managed to port the font (thanks to your help) and the background into Stanza, so my reading experience is pretty close (I actually prefer tapping to swiping), but hopefully Amazon is paying attention and will give the interface a makeover in a forthcoming update. Regardless, in my book Stanza retains the iPhone throne.
Haha, I’m glad you love Stanza, actually. Passion matters.
I would love to read Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman, etc. on Eucalyptus, no doubt about that. So far, though, I have a hard time getting myself to buy ebooks. (Ironic, considering your second point. :)) If I’m going to buy a book, I want the physical book (and I buy around 20 books a month, so I obviously have no qualms with paying for books). I don’t know. I guess I should try buying some books through Fictionwise/Stanza and see how it goes. (I did buy Lord of the Rings but it turned out that Stanza can’t read it because of the stupid DRM. Sigh.)
I hope Amazon does juice up the aesthetics of Stanza. Any word on when an update might come out? I haven’t heard anything.
I haven’t heard anything, either. The greatest fear when indie developers get bought out by large companies is that their products are left to die (e.g. anything bought out by Microsoft or Google in the last few years, with the exception of GrandCentral). As far as I know, neither Amazon nor Lexcycle have said anything since the acquisition was announced.
Huh, that is ironic. You don’t like to pay for ebooks but you’ll pay for the reader, and I don’t mind paying for ebooks, but I don’t like paying for the reader. I think you win the frugality battle on this point.
Anyway, I think I might happen to have a DRM-free copy of LOTR, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion laying around my computer somewhere. If I remember right, the formatting was a bit funky, but if you like I can lend it to you, as I won’t be using it any time soon (I know it is electronic, but if you can lend out books, why not ebooks?). Let me know if you are interested and I’ll email it to you.
Exactly — when I heard Amazon bought Stanza, it was like a death knell. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course, but considering that Amazon’s baby is the Kindle (including an iPhone app), things don’t look too good for Stanza. I’m hoping I’m wrong.
To my credit, I bought an Orson Scott Card novel yesterday through Stanza/Fictionwise and have started reading it, and I think it might start growing on me. But I still love Eucalyptus the most. :)
Just So Stories!!!!!!!! I love that. I’m happy to see it in your list.
I’ve never read it, but I’m excited to. :)
This is the first time I’ve been tempted to buy an iPhone. And I really want to hear what you think of MacDonald’s Lilith when you’ve read it.
Will do. I’ve read Phantastes and liked it (though it’s not my favorite book ever or anything like that).
“I managed to port the font (thanks to your help) and the background into Stanza, so my reading experience is pretty close”
Could anyone tell me how to do this? I rather like the eucalyptus font, but still want to use stanza for books I can’t get from PG…