Ever since I got my Samsung Captivate, I’ve been using it to read ebooks.
I don’t see my phone and the digital version of books to ever completely replace paper books for me, but the digital version does come in awfully handy.
After trying out different ebook apps, I’ve decided Laputa Pro is my favorite.
Use this QR code along with the scanner I linked to in this Samsung Captivate/Android app post.
This reader costs $2.99 but is well worth the price and though the Nook and Kindle Android apps are free, you have a lot more freedom with Laputa Pro than with those other options. The version I’m running–the most recent version at this time–has four different ebook libraries to choose from:
- Blazer–“Blazer is a library with thousands of public domain books for you to browse and [download].” Their website sucks so I couldn’t find out how many books they actually have in their library but it is massive.
- ManyBooks Mobile Site–Lots of classics. Has more than 29,000 free ebooks.
- Gutenberg Mobile Site–“Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.”[1]
- Avayewn–While I use Blazer a lot, the Avayewn library is where that $2.99 is going to seem like a joke; you’re going to feel like a thief since $2.99 won’t even buy you a bookmark much less all of the books you will have access to. If you’re wanting new books as well as series of contemporary books, this is the digital library for you.
The book that got me started on this post–which was originally going to be a straightforward–was The Demon Girl{link}. I hadn’t ever heard of the book or the author–Penelope Fletcher–but the cover caught my eye and the book was free on Avayewn. If you follow the link you’ll see Amazon wants $2.99 for the book and while that’s a great price for a good book, just go ahead and get Laputa Pro so you have access to all of these other books.
Here’s a tiny sample of what I downloaded–for free–yesterday. I’m linking them all to Amazon so can see what I’m talking about if you’ve never heard of them:
- All of the Anita Blake series–There are a bunch of these books so I only linked to the first four.
- All of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series–Another big series. Link is to the first six books.
- The Dune series
- All of the Harry Potter books
- The whole Merry Gentry series–The link is just for book one.
- All of the Outlander series–If you haven’t read these, you must.
- All of the Percy Jackson books
- The Shopaholic series–Links to just the first book.
- The Southern Vampire series–This what they loosely based HBO’s True Blood upon. The books are better. Books 9 and 10 aren’t included in that box set and book 11 is due out in May.
I stopping because that’s not even close to all of the books I downloaded last night. I’ve read all of them and have most of them in paperback but it’s pretty badass to be able to grab my phone when I’m bored or in the car on a trip and have all of my books right there for me to choose from.
I didn’t do the math–I can barely count–but that’s a lot of box sets. Told you the $2.99 was going to seem like a fantastic deal.
Hence this being Christmas on the cheap. Assuming the gifted person has an Android phone, you’re going to come out of this having spent $2.99 and looking like a book giving rockstar.
