Eucalyptus has recently got lots of coverage round the web, due to its initial senseless and stupid rejection by Apple in their App Store reviews process, and the subsequent reversal of that decision which allowed the app to make its debut a few days ago.

Now it should start getting coverage for much better reasons “ since it ‘s an interesting and worthy new addition to the ranks of iPhone ebook reader apps.  It carries a fairly heavy price tag (in App Store terms) of $9.99 “ but I had heard good things about it and seen a demo of it that made me tempted enough to dive in and see if it was worth the price

What Does It Do?

Eucalyptus uses a tagline of ‘the library, to go ‘ “ and offers access to ‘over 20,000 classic English-language books ‘.  It does this by serving up books from the excellent Project Gutenberg collection of public domain works.

That is the only content you can get via Eucalyptus “ i.e. you cannot purchase books from any other sources from within the app “ but the range of content available via the Gutenberg library is broad and extensive, and should keep you busy for a little while.

Here are some of its features and attributes, per its App Store description:

• Books feel like books, not web pages. Turning pages is so natural, you won ‘t even notice it.
• An ever-changing bookshelf of hand-picked recommendations.
• If you ‘ve already got a book or author in mind, it ‘s easy to search for exactly what you want.
• Resize the text at any time with just a pinch of your fingers.
• High-quality fonts and typesetting routines like those used by paper book publishers mean you can get lost in the story, not frustrated by the text.

Some of those are pretty big-sounding claims.  I ‘ve got some thoughts below on whether they ‘re reasonable ones.

What Does It Do Well?

It really does a great job at presenting things very nicely.  I ‘ve tried out Project Gutenberg books many times in many different apps on the iPhone and elsewhere, and I can ‘t think of any that match Eucalyptus in this area.

Stanza is the another well-know iPhone ebook reader that offers access to free content, and it is probably a more feature rich app right now, but it does not feel as intuitive and comfortable to use as Eucalyptus.

As you navigate around the app, everything just feels very natural.  For instance, when you ‘re on the ‘Get Books ‘ section you ‘re presented with two screens of staff pick recommendations “ and you simply tap on any title to pull up a short Intro / summary of it

From that summary page, it ‘s just one tap to download that title.  There seems to be a decent amount of variety amongst the staff picks as well “ the current list of 8 includes works of fiction from Jules Verne and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as Darwin ‘s ‘On The Origin of Species ‘ and Obama ‘s Inaugural Presidential Address.

The Picks pages even prompt you with an elegant arrow facing in the direction you need to flick if you ‘re not going the right way to see more choices.

I like the page turning method in Eucalyptus a lot.  This is likely a very personal thing “ but for me the sideways flicking action to turn pages forward and backward is very comfortable as I can flick with my thumb and aim anywhere on the page to make it work.  I much prefer this to having to tap at or near the bottom of pages to move forward or back.

And “ though it has no practical benefits “ I even like the nifty animation effect as you slowly turn a page

I also love the ability to change the font size on the fly, just via a simple pinch gesture.  Pinch out to make it larger, and in to make it smaller “ again, very intuitive and comfortable feeling.

Showing your downloaded items in sections for authors, and books by title also works well.

I ‘m also very happy that P.G. Wodehouse was in the initial staff picks “ it reminded me how much fun all the Jeeves stories and books are “ and even brought back good memories of watching Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in the superb ‘Jeeves and Wooster ‘ TV series. 

What ‘s Not So Good?

I ‘ve seen a little slowness in places over the first couple days of using the app.  Nothing terrible, but noticeable, especially in the initial launch of the app, and in loading of the Get Books page.

In terms of wish list items, I would love to see more ways to browse books.  This could be accomplished by offering a greater number of staff picks and / or by also offering some ability to browse by genre, or author.  There ‘s a search ability of course, but I find I ‘m lazy at using that and find browsing a more appealing way to find content most of the time.

The App Store description mentions that the recommendations in the Get Books section are ‘hand picked ‘.  Although I ‘m quite fond of a few of the initial picks, I also wonder whether these picks are tailored at all to each reader.  As in, if I often pick Fitzgerald novels, will it start recommending similar authors.  If not, I hope this sort of feature may be added via a future update.

Overall

Eucalyptus is a very good reader app, offering a wealth of good “ and free “ content.  Although its own price is comparatively high, the access to the huge Gutenberg Project library, and superior presentation of its content, is probably a more than worthwhile trade-off if you ‘re a big reader and a fan of classic literature (though there are non-fiction titles as well).

It has less features than Stanza, but for my taste it offers a more pleasurable reading experience. 

As tempting as it sometimes is to slim down to one app for a particular purpose, I feel like Eucalyptus paired with Kindle for iPhone (for contemporary, paid-for content) is a winning two app solution for me at the moment.  I ‘ll certainly be keeping Eucalyptus around.

You can find Eucalyptus in the App Store, priced at $9.99.  There is also some demo video of the app that is worth checking out, which is HERE.

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