In this review I will tell you about the best, in my opinion, programs for reading books on a computer. Despite the fact that most people read literature on phones or tablets, as well as on e-books, I decided to start with programs for PCs, and next time I’ll talk about applications for mobile platforms. New review:
Some of the programs described are quite simple and allow you to easily open a book in FB2, EPUB, Mobi and other formats, adjust colors, fonts and other display options and simply read, leave bookmarks and continue from where you left off last time. Others are not just a reader, but entire managers of electronic literature with convenient options for sorting, creating descriptions, converting or sending books to electronic devices. There are both on the list.
ICE Book Reader Professional
I fell in love with the free program for reading book files ICE Book Reader Professional even when I bought libraries on disks, but it still has not lost its relevance and, I think, is one of the best.
Like almost any other “reader”, ICE Book Reader Professional allows you to conveniently configure display settings, background and text colors, apply design and formatting themes, and automatically insert spaces. Supports automatic scrolling and reading books aloud.
At the same time, being an excellent tool for directly absorbing electronic texts, the program is also one of the most convenient book managers I have encountered. You can add individual books or folders to your library, then organize them in any way convenient for you, find the literature you need in a matter of seconds, add your own descriptions, and much more. At the same time, the controls are intuitive and understanding is not difficult. Everything, of course, is in Russian.
You can download ICE Book Reader Professional from the official website http://www.ice-graphics.com/ICEReader/IndexR.html
Caliber
The next powerful e-reader program is Caliber, which is a source code project that is one of the few that continues to be developed to this day (most PC e-readers have either been abandoned recently or have evolved only towards mobile platforms ).
If we talk about Caliber only as an e-reader (and it is not only that), then it works simply, has various parameters for customizing the interface and opens most common e-book formats. However, it cannot be said that it is very advanced and, probably, the program is much more interesting in its other capabilities.
What else can Caliber do? At the installation stage, you will be asked to indicate your e-books (devices) or the brand and platform of phones and tablets - exporting books to them is one of the program's functions.
The next point is extensive opportunities for managing your text library: you can comfortably manage all your books in almost any format, including FB2, EPUB, PDF, DOC, DOCX - I won’t list it, in almost any, without exaggeration. At the same time, managing books is no less convenient than in the program discussed above.
One last thing: Caliber is also one of the best e-book converters, with which you can easily convert all common formats (to work with DOC and DOCX you need Microsoft Word installed on your computer).
The program is available for download on the official website of the project http://calibre-ebook.com/download_windows (it supports not only Windows, but also Mac OS X, Linux)
AlReader
Another excellent program for reading books on a computer with a Russian-language interface is AlReader, this time without an abundance of additional functions for managing libraries, but with everything a reader needs. Unfortunately, the computer version has not been updated for a long time, but it already has everything you need, and no problems with operation were noticed.
Using AlReader, you can open a downloaded book in the format you need (tested FB2 and EPUB, much more is supported), fine-tune colors, indents, hyphens, select a theme, if desired. Well, then just read without being distracted by extraneous things. It goes without saying that there are bookmarks and the program remembers where you left off.
Once upon a time, I personally read more than a dozen books using AlReader and, if everything was in order with my memory, I was completely satisfied.
Official AlReader download page http://www.alreader.com/
Additionally
I did not include Cool Reader in the article, although it is available in the Windows version, but it can only be included in the list of the best for Android (my personal opinion). I also decided not to write anything about:
- Kindle Reader (since if you buy books for Kindle, you should be familiar with this program) and other branded applications;
- Programs for reading PDF (Foxit Reader, Adobe PDF Reader, built-in program in Windows 8) - you can read about this in the article;
- Programs for reading Djvu - I have a separate article with a review of programs for computers and applications for Android:.
This concludes, next time I will write about e-books in relation to Android and iOS.
