Review: 100 Classic Book Collection

Mike Bantick
Friday, 16 January 2009 15:15

Entertainment

The mechanics of leafing through a classic is pretty straight forward, you can either use the stylus to flip pages one at a time, or scroll bar to move quickly.  I prefer using the control pad however when reading normally.  The pages flip with a pleasant and rapid animation, and the font size choice should be adequate for most book readers.  Layout wise though, pages can feel a little cramped.

Using the DS’s wireless capabilities, the 100 book collection can be transferred to another DS in ‘demo’ form, and currently there are another 10 books to download using the Nintendo Wi-Fi network, this takes only a moment for a standard sized title, with plenty of room left on the card for future releases.

And what of the releases?  Well don’t expect to see Lord of The Rings (dammit!), Frankenstein, The Time Machine or War & Peace just yet, but here is a small sample of the 100 books on the disc.

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice & Sense and Sensibility
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre & The Professor
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
A whole bunch of Charles Dickens: including Oliver Twist,The Pickwick Paper,A Tale of Two Cities
Jack London: The Call of the Wild
Herman Melville: Moby Dick
22 tales from William Shakespeare
Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & Adventures of Tom Sawyer
 Jules Verne: Round the World in Eighty Days& 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Oscar Wilde:The Importance of Being Earnest&The Picture of Dorian Gray
And many more.

Sure it has been done before, but bringing e-books to the Nintendo DS is yet another way to bring a new audience into the fold, and despite a few title shortcomings, this offering is a great way to catch up on literatures great moments in history.

8 Moby Dicks out of 10