If you love reading books, here's a few free apps, from easily accessing Amazon to keeping track of your favorite books!

Free Apps for Book Lovers

Amazon (this link is for iPhone and iPod Touch). Click here for the Android app. I can't believe how long I wrestled with bringing up a browser on my iPhone, typing in "Amazon," and waiting for what seemed forever for the page to open. Should've downloaded the free Amazon app months ago.

iScroll. Available on iPhone and iPad. This is a "reading by listening" app -- you get the text as well as a professional reading of it as well. Great for tired eyes. I wasn't so wild about having to register to use this app (I'm waiting for the unwanted email messages to start rolling in).

The app itself is free, but the books aren't (except for the first, free book they provide). After registering, there's an easy, quick-to-read series of notes on how to use iScroll. There was also one free book in my iScroll library (The Art of War). I started listening to it and really liked the audio and text combination. Settings are intuitive and easy to use.

I was disappointed that there is no easy way to find free iScroll books, but on the other hand, maybe the only free book is that first "starter" one they provide. I did notice there were plenty of .99 books, so that's a plus. There are also some more expensive books in the $27 range. Maybe there's an easier way to search for price ranges, but I haven't found it yet. On the plus side, reviews of the app are positive, with an overall 4+ ranking.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. I love this app. I like having the option to also hear the pronunciation of the word (just tap the speaker button). The free version also offers a word of the day definition, maintains a recent list of words you've looked up, and you don't need an Internet connection to look up words!

There's a premium version for $3.99 for which you must have an Internet connection. It doesn't show ads, which is par for any paid app. It also offers a voice search, graphical illustrations and over 20,000 additional entries.

iReadItNow. Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The notion behind this app is that people often forget what books they've read, but with this app they can maintain a history of books they're currently reading, set bookmarks for where they stopped reading in books, add books to a wishlist of books they'd like to read, share their reading statistics with their reading buddies, even set up automatic tweets to relay to the world what books they're adding, reading or finishing.

Information overload, anyone?

I don't use this app to organize my reading life, nor would I want to. But...this app is on my cool list because it comes in very handy for tracking dozens of books I'm reading for a fiction contest. I love being able to categorize the books, as well as quickly add notes and search through my critiques.

Happy reading! Colleen