useing ipod for ibooks

What I am looking for is something i can read when i have down time at work and maybe listen to some music. I have never owned an i pod and am not sure if this is the way to go. If it is will 8gb be enough ? Also I love to read in bed and I think it would be great to not have to use a reading light or glasses,

I have recently taken to reading books on my itouch. I have the Kindle app for this and buy books from Amazon.
Personally speaking, I find it perfectly acceptable so far. I already had the iTouch.
I haven't tried reading outside in sunlight yet.
Unless you need all the functionality of the iPad, I think it is too expensive just to use as an e-reader.

First of all, welcome to the forum!

I started reading books from Amazon on my iPod Touch and eventually "upgraded" to an iPad earlier this year so I could read on a larger format.

The main advantage to using an iPod Touch (or an iPad) is that you are not limited to one content provider like you would be if you bought an actual Kindle device from Amazon or a Nook from Barnes & Noble or a Kobo from Borders. With an Apple device, you can download the free apps from all of them (plus other content providers) and buy your reading material from a wide variety of sources.

The other thing to note is that books take up very little room. Another nice feature is that you do not have to keep all of your books on your iPod. Once you buy them from Amazon (or whomever), you can delete them from your iPod when you are finished, but Amazon keeps a record of everything your purchase so if you ever want to read a certain book again, you download it to your iPod as many times as you wish at no extra charge!

There are also sources for tens of thousands of free books that are in the public domain. The biggest source for this is called Project Gutenberg that has something like 33,000 titles. Some of their stuff is really obscure, but they also have a lot of "classics". You know, the stuff you had to read for high school English class!

Good luck!

The one thing to note depending on how large you need to increase the font size to do away with your reading glasses, with the iPod Touch, you could be needing to turn the page every 5-10 words. I can tell you after doing it with my iPhone, that's not all that great an experience. So, you'll probably still need your glasses, or move on up to the iPad. And yes, 8GB for books is a whale of a lot of space.

Easy reading on a tiny screen

iBooks and Calibre

Install and use Calibre on your Computer (free Open Source)
Install and use iBooks on your Device ( iPhone, iPod touch, iPad )

To use iBooks on a 3.5" screen: in the iBooks App:Change the Library display to one book per line (select the little lines instead of the 4 squares, under the word store) Now you can read the titles on a small screen.
Have patients It's slow to set up and display, but does a good job as a reader. Be careful as it changes orientations too easily!

The epub format is best and Calibre will convert if necessary!
Because of the tiny screen navigation is possible with a pdf but something of a pain due to the scrolling around you must do. The conversion to epub by calibrate is usually successful and provides me with a daily fix of news from 2 newspapers and several blogs and magazines. As a added bonus you miss most of the commercials.

I have hundreds of ebooks on my Mac and finally can now also enjoy them on my touch! I have a iPod touch 2nd gen with OS 4.1 And a iMac with 10.5.8

Finally, Stanza is also a great reader and is faster! Happy reading

MY thoughts on iPod touch reading.

When I first got it iBooks appeared too slow. With a few things learned it is GREAT. Remember that this is best viewed on a iPad, but with the following hints it's good on the phone or touch!

1. Get and use Calibre ( a free Open Source iTunes like database application for ebooks ) to manage your e-book on your computer. Ebooks, especially in the pdf format are difficult to page through. The epub format works well, and Calibre can translate pdf, text, and some other formats to epub. Best of all when I sync my iPod touch (2nd generation with system 4) to my computer ( ie plug in the USB cable ) my books and newspapers are automatically updated into iBooks from Calibre.

2. In the iBooks App: Change the Library display to one book per line. The display, otherwise is to tiny to view except on an iPad. This is done by selecting the little lines instead of the 4 tiny squares under the word store on the library page.

3. Have patience, it is a bit slower than Stanza to switch books, but page turning is almost as fast!

My computer: iMac 2.4 GHz 2GB OSX 10.5.8 iTunes 10.1
MY iPod touch 2nd generation: iOS 4.2 16 GB (about 150 apps, several readers and about 5 dedicated readers)

Note: iOS 4.2 appears to increase performance http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/mac_images/images/smilies/Cool.png

And now with the latest update to iBooks, you can create your own "collections" and sort books by author, genre or however you want. But also be aware there is an issue with the way covers are displayed on PDF files with this update so there will most likely be another update in the (hopefully!) near future.

The iBooks app keeps getting better, but the content selection still stinks!