Should iCare About iBooks?

In many pundits' minds, the iPad has been seen as a possible replacement for Amazon's Kindle. The Kindle is a straight-up eBook reader; unless you're really into reading books, you probably have no use for the device. The iPad, on the other hand, can do pretty much anything, at least once developers put in enough elbow grease to create an app to do it. In fact, of all that the iPad does, how important is iBooks really? Will it change your reading habits?

One of the first things I did when I got my iPad was to download iBooks and test out its lovely features. The page turning mechanism is strangely captivating, the iBookstore is ultimately familiar to anyone who uses iTunes, and seeing color pictures in the free Winnie the Pooh book was delightful. I loaded up my iPad with a bunch of free books, downloaded some samples, and even purchased a novel that interested me. I started reading it, and I had every intention of finishing it. But it's been bookmarked at the same page for weeks now. In fact, I have seldom even opened iBooks in that time. Is there something wrong with me?

I even consider myself a mild bibliophile. There are five large bookshelves in my home, each filled with books. We recently purchased another bookshelf, and within an hour of constructing it, it was already filled with books (where do they all come from?). But in looking them over, I find that I own far more books than I've actually read. If I manage to ignore my hardbound books, how much easier is it to ignore books buried inside an app?

There are a number of reasons, I surmise, that cause my lack of sustained enthusiasm for iBooks.

First, the selection is not where it needs to be. It seems that every time I go hunting for a book, the iBookstore doesn't carry it. I've looked for various novels, travel books, biographies, and nonfiction titles: iBookstore turned up zero relevant results in my searches. Kindle, on the other hand, carried most of these, but in my continued Apple addiction, I'm still fighting the urge to use Kindle in the hope that Apple will hurry and play catch-up.

Second, how can a device that is filled to the brim with brilliant distractions possibly encourage me to read? When I'm in the mood to read, I don't do it in front of the TV or at my computer desk. I don't turn on music, and I don't want to do it with a bunch of video games staring me in the face, taunting me to give up that silly reading and do something more fun with my time. I read to get away from it all. The iPad isn't away from it all; it's right in the middle of it all. While checking something I don't know much about in Wikipedia is great, I'm going to be tempted to continue web surfing instead of continuing on in the book (unless it's a really good book). Can I resist the urge to check my Twitter feed when trudging through a boring part of a book? Do you see my point?

In the end, I don't think that iBooks has the capacity increase the amount of reading I do. I do feel like when I next want to purchase a book, unless having a bound copy would have sentimental value, I would check first in iBooks. But the iPad definitely has pros and cons for the reading experience. The iPad offers a new venue for reading, but reading is still reading. So yes, I care about iBooks, but perhaps not as much as I though I would.