It’s back-to-school season, so put these applications on your smartphone or tablet to help with the important educational matters of free reading, writing, and comic books (yes, comic books).
Free Books, from Digital Press Publishing L.L.C., provides access to an advertised 23,469 classic books. The Apple version is 99 cents, the Android version from the Google Play site is free. You’ll find everything from Alice in Wonderland to the Kama Sutra.
In Free Books, search for a book you’ve been assigned to read, or browse by genre or among the featured selections. When you choose a book, the app can download it to your device, send it to a computer, or save it remotely in your Dropbox folder, which allows you to access it from anywhere.
Touch words to highlight the text, call up a dictionary or note pad, or share your deeper thoughts on Facebook or Twitter.
Wattpad.com, a highly social reading-and-authoring experience with millions of users, has free versions of its Wattpad book and story apps for Android and Apple devices. Sign in with a Facebook account, and select the type of stories you like from a long screen of options such as science fiction, romance, humor, horror, and classics. You may also search for Facebook friends who use Wattpad and follow their activity.
Search Wattpad for books and stories by title, author or keyword, or browse by genre. Easily identify the genre of a listed book by the small attached icons — a unicorn for fantasy, a high-heeled shoe for chick lit, and so forth. You can make comments, share stories, or cast a “vote” if you like something.
Or write your own story or book. Tap the “Create” icon on the bottom of the screen and start creating. The app will even create a book “cover” for you, using the photo you chose for your profile, or you can pick a different photo, or use your device’s camera to snap just the right illustration for your sterling prose.
Serious students of Wolverine, Spider-Man, and other superhero literature may want to check out the app Marvel Comics, free from Marvel Entertainment for Android and Apple. See how it works by reading from the free downloads. Individual paid comics cost $2.99 or $3.99, more for collections.
DC Comics is a strikingly similar app for its roster of superheroes, including Superman and Batman.
On the Marvel app, search the comics store or browse by series, author (here called “creator”), or by “story arcs” — a series of comic books that tell an episodic narrative. Read a comic book panel-by-panel using what the app calls a “guided view” — the best way to read a comic on a phone — or view and navigate traditional comic pages.
Contact Reid Kanaley at rkanaley@phillynews.com, 215-854-5114 or @ReidKan.
Philadelphia Inquirer (PA)
(c)2013 The Philadelphia Inquirer
