Don’t worry you are not alone; most of us initially recoiled in horror at the idea of electronic books. Our favourite paperbacks go on holiday with us, we take them to bed and we line them up on our home bookshelves as a sort of statement of personal literary prowess. Then there’s that whole ‘new book smell’ which is pleasantly woody and natural. Surely e-books and e-readers have no place in respectable libraries?
Well we have been looking for ways to miniaturise text since the microfiche, so you could argue e-books are just another step towards document modernisation. But what has really brought electronic reading material into its own is the tablet computer. Suddenly you can carry not just one, but a hundred or more volumes with you at any one time — and you can download more anywhere you find yourself connected to the Internet. Amazon’s Kindle device set a new bar for dedicated e-book usage and Barnes & Noble’s Nook has also won many converts. Competing devices have also sprung up from manufacturers including Kobo, Sony and Elonex, which all display a page perfectly well.
You might similarly be using a mini-tablet like the Google’s Nexus 7, or a full size iPad, for an e-reader service. So now books can be stored online “in the cloud” and read from more than one device, once you download the appropriate book app to file your new electronic library.
Without going into a huge list of trade offs, e-books have some clear benefits: more shelf space is an obvious boon, you get searchable text controls and can download what you want to read immediately from the web’s massive book libraries. As well as being lighter to carry around, e-books can offer interactive images and video alongside web links for additional information. But above all, no trees were harmed in the production of your e-book.
But OK, so you have to be careful reading in the bath
Kindle
The Kindle device now comes in various sizes with both monochrome or colour options and is fully capable of presenting text in English and most other languages. There are some Unicode font considerations for displaying Arabic in certain file types if you are viewing your own documents, but otherwise you can consider the Kindle a pretty multilingual piece of kit. What you may not realise is that in addition to reading eBooks on your Kindle, you can download the Kindle app and access your library from an iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows Phone or an Android-based device. Amazon’s Whispersync technology automatically synchronises bookmarks, a user’s book annotations and your furthest page read if you are using the Kindle app to read across multiple devices. Amazon says that there are over a million books available on the Kindle store and it’s worth remembering that many of them are free.
Noon Library
The Noon (or Nun) Library claims to be the largest e-book library in the Arab Apple store. Available for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, this app is free to download but books start at less than one US dollar or around Dh4. Interestingly enough, the top 10 books at the time of writing are split 50:50 between English and Arabic. Audiobooks are also available on the Noon Library service and the latest version also includes the option to link to Facebook and Twitter to highlight and share aspects of any book worth some social connection.
e-comics
If you have children or you are just one of those grown ups who has never completely grown up, then you can rest easy as comics and cartoons have also made their way into the e-book reader space. All the major app stores from Google Play, to Apple’s App Store through to the Windows 8 store feature comic strip based materials and much of it is free. Apple devotees can download the Comic Bookie app at no cost and use it to read free comics posted in the public domain on sites such as archive.org for example. Slightly more straightforward is the Windows 8 store’s logically named ‘Comics and Cartoons’, which does exactly what it is supposed to and offers free comics.
Apps for Books
If you absolutely must have a printed book but you want to stay regional and local to the Gulf, then Antoine Online, Jamalon and Souq.com all offer books in both Arabic and English. Jamalon itself claims to be the largest online bookstore in Middle East, with over 9.3 million Arabic and English titles available for home delivery. Book shopping online in the big wide world of cyberspace, yet slightly closer to home on these sites with prices shown in dirhams and riyals in some cases could well lead you to purchases that help you understand more about the culture and geography of the Gulf.
Written in Dubai but with a rich appreciation for the Kingdom of Jordan is the thriller Olives by Alexander McNabb, this is a perfect example of a new book available in print or electronic form. It’s also a compelling story and worth a read if you are a UAE resident as many local nuances and idiosyncrasies are referenced throughout.
The writer is a freelance journalist who specialises in software applications, gadgets and games.
