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James Fuller Fixx (April 23, 1932 – July 20, 1984) was an American who authored the 1977 best-selling book The Complete Book of Running. He is credited with helping start America's fitness revolution, popularizing the sport of running. 1 Life and work; 2 Death; 3 Works; 4 Videos; 5 See also.

Advertisement Google Play has been expanding its reach to all forms of media recently, and Play Books is one section that has noticeably improved and is now a genuine contender to the eReading competition. It’s a solid platform for buying and reading eBooks on Android and the Web. Let’s take a look at Google’s stab at the fast-growing eBook market. Getting Books You can buy books from the Google Play Store either on the Web or on Android.

You can also Google Play Books isn't just for eBooks purchased from Google; you can easily upload your own ePub or PDF eBooks that sync with Play Books., making it a great universal eReader as well. To find books on the Web, visit and click on Shop on the left. From here, you’ll get personal recommendations, but you can also scroll down for more specific sections like “Books on the big screen: Spider-Man, Divergent + more” or “Get your LOLs: Deals on funny book you’ll love.” Buying books on Android is actually done through the Google Play Store, and the will simply redirect you there.

The interface is as simple as one would expect from a Google app, with a tabbed interface along the top, and a similar scrollable view to the Web version. Play Books has actually been a lot better about having popular titles recently, and its collection, while not nearly as large as Amazon’s, will likely have most of the mainstream popular literature out there. Due to the way publishers control their prices, the prices for most eBooks are relatively consistent across online platforms. Reading On Android Having done most of my reading on my or, I wasn’t expecting much from Play Books. The Kindle app is perfect, I thought; I don’t need Play Books. But I was wrong: Play Books is a delight to read on, from the refreshingly simple interface to the customizable and smooth reading experience.

The default Read Now screen shows what you were most recently reading, along with recommended books based on what you’ve been reading and what your friends have +1’d. Any eBooks you uploaded will be accessible under My Library by clicking “All books” and selecting “Uploads.” Items that have been downloaded to your device will have a blue pin in the lower right, identical to the orange visual cues in Google Play Music for Android, Google Play Music is a music streaming service, a local music player, and a podcast player all mashed into one. And it's great. Using these apps together is a visual treat. The screen-turning animation in Play Books is delightful. Tapping on the screen or swiping will give a realistic animation of the page being scrunched up and flipped, as shown above.

It’s surprisingly smooth and not tacky, really helping to immerse you. Play Books has the reading experience in fullscreen mode, of course, but a tap on the center of the screen will show your progress along the bottom, the name of the book and author at the top, a search function, and options. Other eReader apps pop up a lot of clutter, but Play Books keeps it simple while still having more customizations available under Options. You can change the theme from Day, Night, or Sepia; there are several typefaces to choose from; and you can change the text alignment, brightness, font size, and line height. One thing to note, though, is that the margins can’t be changed. Another feature that is hidden in the settings is Read Aloud. Sure, it’s a clunky robotic voice, but the fluidity is enhanced by checking “High-quality voice” in the settings.

This voice is a bit better, and is actually smooth to the point of being tolerable. Be careful, though, because Google warns that it requires a data connection to stream the voice data as you use it. Reading On The Web Any eBooks uploaded to Play Books or bought from the Play Store can also be accessed online and read in the browser, similar to Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader, The Cloud Reader lets you access your entire Kindle library and read any of those books, or any new books you may want to download, from the convenience of any computer or device in the.

If you read online or in the app, your progress will sync just as you’d expect. Find all your books. The Web experience falls short of the Android experience, though. You’re stuck with a white background with black text, and no page turning animation, although you can customize the font, font size, line spacing, and justification.

Keeping to its simple style, there’s the title and author in the top left, options in the top right, and a progress bar along the bottom. Any books that you’ve purchased from the Play Store can be downloaded in ePub or PDF formats for offline viewing. For this, you’ll need a desktop eReading app like, which is a free download. Unfortunately, most of the books you download will be locked down under DRM ( Digital Rights Management is the latest evolution of copy protection. It’s the biggest cause of user frustration today, but is it justified? Is DRM a necessary evil in this digital age, or is the model.), depending on if the publisher decided to enable that feature or not. However, you can’t download any books that you uploaded to Play Books, so you should still keep them backed up somewhere else ( It seems the cloud is hard to escape these days - both in your daily tech life, and on websites such as ours.

Only last week I wrote an article about cloud-based PowerPoint alternatives, the.) if you want to preserve the original ePub or PDF to take to another reading service later. Competitors The Amazon There are many people who aren't keen to buy a Kindle or similar e-book reader simply because they already have a similar multi-purpose device like a tablet or smartphone. You might be one of these., but it only supports books purchased from Amazon that are locked down with Digital Rights Management — even if When you pay Amazon some money for a Kindle eBook, you probably think it’s yours now. I mean, you paid some money, you got some content, and now you have it, just like any other. If you own a.mobi file (Amazon’s proprietary eBook format), say because you created an eBook yourself or downloaded it from, you can’t even read that.mobi file in the Kindle app if you have it saved on your Android device, as you can read ePub and PDFs in Play Books. You have to email the.mobi file to the Kindle email that Amazon created and assigned for your Kindle app (found under Kindle’s ), which will then forward the file to your Kindle app.

It’s frustrating to say the least. Still, if you can live with being trapped in the Amazon ecosystem, it’s a pleasurable reading experience. The app has a Fire OS-like interface while still adhering to Google’s modern design philosophy with the pullout menu on the left. Reading is heavily customizable and books can be read on, from the Web to Desktop to Android to iOS. There are Amazon has its own set of flaws that send readers looking for an alternative that’s just as good. Looking to get away from Amazon, the Kindle, and DRM? Here are some of the best ebook., including the Let's face it: When it comes to eBooks, there is pretty much just one big name that matters.

One ecosystem; one line of apps; one source of books; one maker of devices. If this makes., but for comparison’s sake let’s just look at, which is probably Play Books’ most popular competitor. We As someone who has recently been getting sucked into reading more and more novels, I’ve been on the prowl for the best ebook readers on Android. So far, nothing has matched the sheer power and., but it’s received so many updates since then that it’s a completely different app with a modern interface and abundance of features. Despite its new interface, still doesn’t feel as well put together as Play Books. It’s missing Play Books’ Read Aloud feature, the transition between screens is a boring sideways slide, and ePubs aren’t displayed as well. Bulbul Kannada Movie Songs Free Download Southsongs4u.

See below where Play Books is on the left and Aldiko is on the right. Both apps are set to their default night settings, but only Play Books properly displays the chapter header’s page breaks. While all the font sizes and font types are customizable in both apps, these spacing issues will remain. Regardless, it doesn’t make the books unreadable, and Aldiko can hold its own as a Play Books alternative for simple ePub or PDF reading. In combination with Calibre, a, Aldiko could be your all-in-one eReading app for Android if you don’t want to go the Google route. Keep in mind that the is ad-supported, and the with some additional features is $2.99.

Conclusion Play Books is a solid eReading app, but it still has room for growth. Maybe in the future they could offer some sort of subscription service for Play Store purchases, like, the service often called the “Netflix of Books,” or, the Scribd is getting into the digital book distribution market with the launch of a new subscription service, offering a significant amount of the HarperCollins catalogue to subscribers. In partnership with HarperCollins. You can download Play Books from the. What do you think? Would you consider using Play Books for your eReading, or are you do you prefer a different app? Robots.txt File Block All Search Engines. Let us know in the comments!