6 Reasons To Love iBooks

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When digital books first appeared on the market, I was of the crowd that said they would never like them. 

Books are meant to be made of paper, and there's nothing like cracking the spine on a new paperback and inhaling that sweet new book smell, which is, in my opinion, even better than new car smell.

Still, with iBooks on my iPhone and now even better on my iPad, I have grown to appreciate certain aspects of the electronic book format, and here is a list of my favorite features.

1. Highlight a word and click "define" to get an instant dictionary definition, complete with phonetic pronunciation and "use in context" sentences. This has helped me immensely, especially now, reading The Time Machine by HG Wells.

2. Free Books. What's not to love about that? Almost all of the old classics are available, and many more recent novels as well. Often times the free book is the first of a series, but I've gotten into a few series this way, and the subsequent books were cheaper than buying a magazine.

3. Easy access to any book, any time. If you have iBooks, then you either have an iPad, iPhone or iPod, so the great thing is, you can download the Kindle and Kobo apps, and also have access to all of their free content. no more trekking to the book store and hoping it's still in stock.

4. Samples. With most books, you can request a sample, which is usually the first 15 or so pages of the book itself.  This way, there's no risk in trying a new author.  If you don't like the free sample, you just don't buy the book.

5. Lightweight and lit up. As much as I love a good paperback, sometimes my hands would get sore from holding it too long, and sometimes finding an adequate light source proved to be challenging. Now, I can hold my book on my lap or set it on a table, and adjust the brightness settings right from the book I'm reading, so light is now never an issue. Imagine, you can now sit in bed while your hubby sleeps and read without disturbing him.

6. Adjustable fonts.  Have a hard time reading tiny print?  No problem!  You can blow up the font size as much as you want.  This is useful for every one, but especially great for those who have limited eyesight, allowing them to keep reading even though they can't see well enough to read a paperback.

So as you can see, there are many advantages to the e-book format.  Still, it's very hard to display digital books on a shelf.

Much love,
Felicia