With the induction of the iPad on Saturday, the flood gates will certainly open to a whole new generation of book worms and novelists looking at uncharted, digital territory. I get the feeling that reading books and popular stories, rather than quick text content such as status messages and RSS content, will quickly become more popular among teens and young adults. And with all the new content being devoured, some of us data nuts are gonna wanna be-able-ta track our reading stats. Well there’s an iPhone and iPod Touch app for that (at least until you’ve run out of books to read smarty pants).
Welcome to ReadMore, a sophisticated application for the pipe-smoking, fireplace reading book hugging enthusiasts such as yourselves. Having skimmed through a Tom Clancy war story or two, I believe I’m entitled to talk about just how more interesting life would be if I had some stats that reminded me about my general reading progress. ReadMore is definitely the app for the job.
The interface should remind users of a bookshelf, a place where normal people will shelve their books for the maid to dust off. You will be prompted to add a book, which involves providing the Title, Author, and Final Page. You can customize the 2D aesthetics of your book by changing the color or texture.
A big flaw is entering the information for the Final Page. You’re presented with a keypad that displays numbers and a delete button, but how do you get out of it? I can’t tap an area on the screen or slide it down. It drove me crazy that I had to select another text area just so I could leave the Final Page input field. Or perhaps a lack of coffee has jaded my current thought process, and I may end up being corrected in the comments. We will see!
Despite this, the rest of the application is a breeze to use. Basically you can select a book from the stack, start the timer, then set your iPhone aside for a little while as you lay back in your lawn chair under open skies and fly through the pages of Harry Potter you’ve been meaning to crank out its terrible movie debut. If your eyes become too sore, you can pause the timer before reading again, or finish your session.
In finishing your session, you can enter the page you stopped at. If needed, you can also adjust the timer and starting page. ReadMore, however, should keep track of your progress quite nicely, and will pick up where you left off automatically.
Once you’ve had a reading session, ReadMore will estimate a lot of stats about you. It makes predictions about how long it will take you to finish the book, how many reading sessions you’ve had, and more. It’s a pretty nifty feature, though it’s not comforting that it’ll take me 122 sessions over 107 days to finish an imaginary War Games. Man that’s a long book!
If you happen to stick around long enough to actually finish one of those epic love stories, then you can view your completed collection in your archive. Sadly, I only have Huckleberry Finn to my name, which was required reading in Senior High.
For those purely interested in their reading habits, I’m not lying when I say ReadMore is a great application. It’s easy to use, the data it presents is quite awesome (I love the predictability feature), and book nerds are going to love it. Now I’m not picking on anyone who actually enjoys reading. I mean it’s so 2010 and iPad-ish all of the sudden. For those that do, your hard earned two dollars will be well spent in the hands of a digital librarian-super-gypsie like ReadMore. At least if you’re me, you’ll be at least somewhat interested in your reading stats. Preview it here from the iTunes App Store.
