Review: 100 Classic Book Collection

Mike Bantick
Friday, 16 January 2009 15:15

Entertainment

Turn your Nintendo DS into a bookshelf with a collection of classic e-books.  Time for some Moby Dick, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or Little Women during the morning commute.

The Nintendo DS is a remarkable device, stuffing in so much technology and choice into and ever compacting package.  From Pokemon to Brain Training, the hand-held device should claim much of Nintendo’s success in widening the ‘gamer’ demographic.

100 Classic Book Collection
	Developer	Harper Collins ?
	Publisher	Nintendo
	Rating	N/A
DS

Now, here is a chance to stuff some culture into the DS library of software, with a collection of 100 classic tales crammed onto a DS game card.  With this card, the DS becomes an e-book reader.

After a relatively short (and probably unnecessary) tutorial, it is on with setting up your DS e-book.

A choice of DS orientation (normal horizontal, or – my preferred – vertical and book like), font size, choose some background reading music ( from none, through classic, easy listening to the more esoteric Autumn Night, Moving Train and Cafe) and finally we are ready to actually read.

To choose a book, you can either go straight to the actual bookshelf display and choose – boring!  Or, answer a few questions about your likes and have the DS suggest a couple for you.

Actually, the Quiz selection method is a little silly, especially if you are familiar with these titles.  Instead you can use the search facility, with filters based on book length, era, genre and more.

Each book can then be selected from the shelf, and start reading, get a synopsis about the tale or - and this is a great feature – learn a little about the author.

This means finding out about the lives of William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville, Jules Verne, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and many more.