The small screen and the back-lighting did not bother me nearly as much as I thought. The only time my eyes were tired was when I actually read in the dark. It probably helped that the book (Infected by Sigler– review coming soon!) was very engaging. I have already downloaded The Omnivore’s Dilemma so I’ll see if non-fiction reading is any different. The only problem I had was a few thumb cramps from advancing the text when I sat down to read for long periods of time. It would be nice to be able to program different buttons for navigation functions (in Mobipocket Reader on the Blackberry the space key, at the very bottom of the device, is used to advance the text).

I received a response from tech support about Mobipocket Reader not finding the memory card in the phone. Their instructions did not help. It may be that I have the original Pearl model and there are some technical differences between it and the newer ones. A work-around that solves the problem is to manually drag and drop the e-book files from the computer to the correct folder on the memory card. I had to change the settings in the software so it did not automatically transfer new items to the phone because my news feed filled the phone’s main memory. All things considered it is a minor inconvenience but it is still a little frustrating.

One surprise was that the tech support reply came from Amazon. Turns out they own Mobipocket. Between Kindle and Mobipocket, Amazon has a pretty sizable chunk of the e-book market already cornered…hmmm.

And today, in the Monday morning rush, I left my cell phone at home. I NEVER leave my cell phone at home. I am lost without my organizer but the first thing I thought was, “oh no! My book is on there!” Of course I was standing in the middle of a room with 15,000 books when that thought occurred to me

Mr. Doyle

I bought the Collins English Dictionary from the Mobipocket bookstore and installed it on the phone. It is massive, with 500,000 entries. Mobipocket automatically recognized the dictionary and now I can use the word look-up option while reading other books and it will find the word in Collins and display the definition. Pretty slick.

Mr. Doyle

Now I have been using smart phones for about 4 years. Given that I have the memory of a fruitfly the personal organizer part is essential. But aside from the calendar, address book, and phone functions I don’t use my Blackberry Pearl for much. It has a mediocre camera and I have a few games on it but I just don’t get into electronic games. I also do not have a data plan or text messages on my AT&T account so I don’t do any web browsing or e-mail on it. So I am not used to spending more than a few seconds at a time looking at the 1 ½” x 1 ½” screen.

For my first e-reading experience I copied and pasted the 2nd half of the WSJ article onto the primitive text editor in the phone. Surprisingly it was not too uncomfortable reading from the phone. But what about an entire novel? There are plenty of free books available on the Web but copying and pasting chapters into a text editor would be ridiculous. So I looked for an e-book reader for the Blackberry. And just like for the iPhone, there’s an app for that. I found Mobipocket (see review below), a free program, and installed it. For my first book I chose Infected by Scott Sigler. First it is science fiction—totally appropriate for entering a new age of literature, and second I heard about it while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Escapepod, a science fiction story site—doubly appropriate.

The Verdict: I was prepared to hate reading on my phone but I actually enjoy it. Reading a good paperback is great but the convenience of always having a book with me is pretty hard to beat. I find I am reading more often (though some of that is in small increments). If I have a few minutes to spare I always have a book handy, whether it is waiting for a class to arrive in the library, warming up on the stationary bike at the gym, or if I have a few minutes before I need to pick up my son, the book is always there. In that respect it has the Kindle beat. Mobipocket also allows you to subscribe to tons of newsfeeds in many different languages so also have news articles in English and Spanish on my device. And I have not really been that bothered by the small screen. Once you master the navigation the text flows pretty easily. A bigger screen would be better but I really like being able to put my phone in my pocket. I won’t stop reading ink-on-paper books anytime soon but I will be downloading more e-books and continuing to read on my phone.

Next steps:
• Figuring out how to download e-books from the public library to my phone
• Figuring out how I can use e-books to get kids to read more

The app is free, which is another good thing. The books however are not. Current titles are priced like audiobooks, which is to say expensive. A recent release science fiction novel cost me $24.00. There are free downloads of books out of copyright available through one of the Mobipocket stores but modern books are going to cost you.

Navigation is fairly simple and the program responds pretty quickly. That makes reading easier. You can set colors and font size and there are several pre-sets for quickly changing the screen if ambient conditions change.

The Bad:
Navigating the stores could be easier. There is a keyword search but the categories are overly broad and there is no breakdown into sub categories so you may end up having to go through dozens of screens to find what you want.

Menu navigation is not entirely intuitive. Making a book mark is easy but it took a little fiddling to figure out how to get back to it (bookmarks are kept in an “annotations” list).

The Ugly:
The program can’t find the SD card in my phone so it is using main memory which cannot hold much. I have e-mailed support but have not heard anything. If this problem isn’t resolved quickly I will have to find another reader.

By Mr. Doyle