Today’s gadgets and availability of internet has virtually taken away the reading habit from many youngsters. But gradually, the reading habit has started to make a comeback through the same gadgets and online technologies which at one point in time appeared to be a threat to book reading.

Staring-off with a purpose-built gadget, Amazon Kindle is the first reading gadget that comes to mind. Other general purpose tablet PCs, running such as iPad or Android-powered ones, can become very good digital book readers too. Now the question arises, where to get eBooks for these readers?

First, the dedicated eBook devices already come with eBook readers pre-installed and all that’s required is an internet connection to get online and browse through free collections. For other devices such as iPhone, iPod or iPad, there’s an app already installed called iBooks. This app contains free access to classics written by likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas and more. All these books are free for download.

Once the book is loaded, reading is assisted through a table of contents, a search option, brightness control for longer reading time as lowering the brightness increases battery backup time, a fonts resizing option and finally, a book marking option. Though these books are mostly courtesy of Project Gutenberg, which has scanned and digitised a very large number of books and made these available online for free, the iBook app adds a nice collection of navigation features so that reading can be easily managed.

Apart from the above applications, there are sites offering free books for download in multiple formats such as eBooks, PDFs and plain text.

One of the most vibrant and constantly updated site is Gutenberg.org as discussed above, offering more than 39,000 free eBooks. Adding up partner and affiliate sites which are listed for reference, the number of free books available goes as high as 100,000.

In addition to the downloadable versions of eBooks, there are audio books as well which can be listened to say during commutation to and from school, etc., or during travels using a handset or MP3 player where reading a paperback book is not feasible.

In order to help new readers, there’s a list of most popular and most downloaded books along with a list of new books added to the project.

Gutenberg has its Facebook and Twitter presence as well, just in case some avid readers want to stay in touch with latest updates and additions.

Downloads can be started right on the computer or directly on mobile handsets using the QR-Code image — a pattern similar to barcode which reads the link of free eBooks off the computer screen using a QR-Code reader application over handset (available for free). This saves time transferring files from computer to tablet PCs or handsets for mobile reading. A similar site is ManyBooks.net with recommendations and genre-type wise search of books.

Lastly, let’s take a look at some sites that offer recommendations on what to read. The social power of internet is at work at sites like Shelfari.com where New York Times bestsellers and Amazon’s best-selling fiction and non-fiction titles are listed. Next is LibraryThing.com where over 1.5 million book lovers share their book catalogues and get suggestions on what to read. It gives a chance to connect with ‘like-minded book readers’ over what is claimed as world’s largest book club.

Two other similar sites are Goodreads.com and Getglue.com— both unique in the sense that the former relies on thousands of people to create lists of books under various categories, while the later works through the mechanism of ‘Like’ button to identify which types of books other like and recommend. Summaries of books can be viewed at sites such as WikiSummaries.org.

Reading can be a lot of fun once combined with today’s new feature-rich gadgets and online services.

Happy reading and exploring new books!