The bookstore a thing that I love to browse through, it is the only place in the universe, or the high street, where I can simply walk from one section to another and not worry about someone shoving me to one side because the aisles are too small for all their stuff. However books that had those wonderful things called pages and, what’s that word again? Oh yes paper. Pages and paper are being replaced by something less tangible. The Ibook, an app (application) on the IPad where books can be bought and read without even touching them. It must be investigated and tested by a man who likes his books unless I have to read them, me.

The Ibook store on the screen resembles a bunch of bookshelves with various titles on display. I’m not a great fan of this sort of thing as usually computer graphic go fuzzy when you do things like click on something. However in this case the covers are perfectly rendered in a picture perfect way by the IPad, as you tap your finger on one book it unfolds and reveals the pages within in equally perfect renderings. Reading the book is easy although I did think I would miss turning the page, until I asked someone how I could actually do that. Simply press your finger on the corner of the book and drag it across. It’s even possible to make the text of the book larger or smaller depending on what you want.

An interesting part of the IPad is that if you turn the screen it will reorientate itself to adjust for the new position it is in, the same applies for the ibooks application. If you want to read it in landscape view then simply turn the IPad and suddenly you’re looking at two pages although I prefer not getting a sneaky peak at the next page so I’d rather have it the other way and apparently you can’t turn it into a single page while in landscape mode. You can even change the font of the book, shock horror, isn’t that blasphemous?

The IPad is very easy to hold so dropping it is not an issue and it means there’s less to play around with, I have read many books and I always say the worst about reading a book is holding it especially if it’s war and peace. The Ibooks app is very easy to use; you can even turn pages by simply tapping your finger on the page. The only problem I have with it is what do I do with my books now? Sell them, tear them up? Make a fire? No that’s too much of a cliché. The idea of having the world’s books at my fingertips sounds amazing and looks fantastic, maybe soon you can simply make a funny graphic, stick on a title and then send your book to Ibooks and they’ll publish it (note to Apple: if you do that it was my idea!)  It sounds good, although I still wish I had something that I flick through while I use it.