On Monday, Google opened the doors to its eBookstore. Google is just getting started as a ebook seller, but they are already boasting they have “the world’s largest selection of ebooks.” Take that Amazon!
While the Google claim makes for good copy, the truth is that most of their ebooks, over 3 million in fact, are from their trove of public domain classics—Dickens, Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, and all the others you were supposed to have read in high school.
In fact, these free books have been available from Google since 2009. It’s not a big secret that Google has been busily scanning books from partner libraries and making them available on-line.
Sure you can select new books from Google’s growing list. But for me the lure of free books, especially now that they can be read on my Yixin Android gadget, is irresistible.
So I installed the Google Book app onto my Yixin and started searching for free content. Android Market’s Google Book is really a web app that pulls pages and chapters from the cloud. Yeah, I could in theory download an entire book onto my Yixin and instead use Google’s eReader app, but I’ve yet to purchase a separate SD memory chip that would make this possible.
My first gripe: there may be three million titles in their public domain treasure chest, but Google is not making it particularly easy to find—at least through Google Books.
In any case, I went through their more limited list of titles from the “Best of the free” category and wound up with Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Stories. I managed to somehow miss this one over the years.
I am setting out on a grand experiment. In my daily journeys, I will be leaving my MacBook Pro at home, and relying instead on the Yixin 7200. I’ll be using this Android gadget for reading emails, some light web surfing, note taking, and as a refresher course in classic lit.
Will Yixin’s small footprint, Android’s smooth OS, and the basic Google Book app be able to magically simulate a physical reading experience?
Related articles
- Year of the Yixin: Inexpensive, Capable Android (technoverseblog.com)
- Download Over a Million Public Domain Books (blogspot.com)
- Google eBookstore (books.google.com)
