More on e-reading, and the Pragmatic Bookshelf

I had some ranting the other day on my first experimentation with e-reading, but afterwards I learned something cool to offset the potential downer. I had completely forgotten that I have PDF versions of lots of books from the Pragmatic Bookshelf.

I love the Pragmatic Bookshelf. Not only is it full of awesome books, but books I bought 5 years ago in print+pdf I can now convert and put on my iPad at no additional charge. This is the definition of sweet. All I had to do is log into my account, tell the gerbils which books I wanted in what formats, and waited a minute. There are a couple of old ones that are still only available in PDF - but I can still view those on my iPad, it just isn't as convenient yet. The Pickaxe is a notable example...but I'd say more than 75% of my books had e-reader formats available. Again, iOS 4 for iPad can't come soon enough - in this case for iBooks PDF reading.

At a bare minimum, I know that I can enjoy a good set of books on my iPad going forward. Exciting. Especially since there are still a couple I haven't read yet, and some I intend to re-read soon. There are countless more that I desire...

It's high time I create a bookshelf on this site, come to think of it... I'll put one up in the next week.