Did your reading group pick a rotten book this month, but you still need to be able to talk about it at the next get together?
Amazon’s latest update to its Kindle app for iOS devices (the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch) includes a cool new feature that reading group slackers like you should appreciate, then. On select titles, you can now access character, plot, and series info from within the ebook itself, so even if you couldn’t manage to make it to the last chapter, you can at least fake it on the basics.
This content is pulled from the Amazon-owned website Shelfari.com, which is a book community similar to Goodreads.com. Because Shelfari’s content is crowd-sourced, it may not always be comprehensive or even completely accurate. But it’s free, and I’ve found it especially useful for quickly seeing all related books in a series.
It’s an unobtrusive addition to the app, which is great, but that also means it’s a little hard to find at first. After updating, launch the app and open a book. Then tap the little book icon on the bottom of the screen to open the navigation menu. Not every book has a Shelfari entry, but if one exists, you’ll be able to access it there. (The option will be grayed-out if there’s no entry available.)
Oh, the Kindle app on the iPad now displays a two-page layout, as if you were reading from an open book, when you turn the device on its side. *shrug*
(To update the app, visit the App Store on your device and look under the “Updates” tab.)