Ebook readers have made reading fiction on bits of dead tree so very passé, but a decent reader might cost you a few hundred of your currency of choice, and not everyone has that kind of cash to spend.If you have an iPhone however, you might not need to shell out for a Kindle or the as-yet-mythical Apple Tablet, because the free app Stanza turns your phone into a capable – although not amazing – ebook reader.
Stanza’s interface is simplicity itself, being little more than a menu screen. You library is just a tap of the screen away, and with just a couple more, you’re browsing the web in search of new titles. There’s plenty of choice for you, and while you can buy new titles if you want, there’s also an enormous quantity of free books that have entered the public domain.
Being something of a cheapskate, I grabbed a couple of freebies – Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – and gave them quick read. After I adjusted the font so that I was getting a bit more than three lines on the screen, reading the books on the iPhone was pretty good.
Stanza’s not going to take the place of a decent ebook reader, or even a real book, but if you just want something to read for a few minutes while waiting for a bus, or in a waiting room or something, you could do a lot worse.
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