A review of an iPad? Gosh, how new and innovative, eh? I bet no one has reviewed one of those yet. I’m not writing one of those desperately happy blogs written while the adrenaline of getting a new gadget is still there; I simply don’t think you can review a product after a day or two’s usage so I’ve waited for two months before writing about it. You’ll also note that this is not a technology blog – however the iPad’s relevance to a blog on writing and reading is that it is huge in terms of potential to make ebooks more mainstream and actually rather useful for writing on the go too.

What has surprised me most is that it hasn’t been addictive in a ‘must use this just because it’s new’ kind of way, in fact, it’s pretty much just slotted into life. It’s been decidedly useful because it’s functional and a good size. Critics argued that it was all hype and we all had a variety of devices that did these things anyway but the iPad does them well and is functional. For instance email – I can boot up the computer, which with XP takes roughly enough time to grow a beard, then load the browser and go check my email or I can flick the iPad on and it is there instantly, just takes a second to check. In fact, once you take work out of the equation, it can do most of the things I use the computer for and it’s lighter and quicker. It’s easy to flick on The Huffington Post or NPR apps and read some articles in a nice format and the newly released Flipboard app seems like it may be the best yet for providing you lots of content in an easy to read way. Yes, I could use bloglines on my computer but why when Flipboard aggregates lots of great content from a variety of content providers and gives me it in a magazine format? I was reading articles about books last night from sites I’ve never even heard of because they were aggregated and just slot right in there. And what of my bible? It’s not been picked up for weeks because I can get all the translations instantly on the iPad and it always remembers right where I left off, I can just pick it up each morning and know that it’ll be at the right place.

So what of iBooks, which seems to have drawn both ire and praise in equal measure? Well, as people will have heard the iPad is not technically an eReader in that it doesn’t use one of those easy on the eye e-ink displays that kindle and others have, but it does have software on it to read books so while the tech world can debate to the layman it is one and the same. I think the thing that’s immediately noticeable about an iPad running iBooks is that it’s a much nicer aesthetic experience than any other eReader I’ve seen. The display is colour for a start and the bookshelf interface – like coverflow did for music – is a great way of choosing books.  People might dismiss this as periphery but it’s important – the tactile and aesthetic experience is something people notice, using an eReader is not going to be the same as picking up a book but it should still be a pleasing experience in it’s own right. The negative side of viewing books on a bright, high resolution display is that prolonged reading may be a strain on the eyes – it’s here that eInk has an advantage because it’s easier on the eye. However it’s not such an advantage as you might think; I love reading books and print books are how I usually do that, the times when an eReader is going to be most useful is when I’m not going to be reading a real book; for me that is things like when I’m a passenger on a late drive or a bus, or when I’m sat on a warm evening in the park but the light is fading, or any other number of times when I may not have a book. It’s perfect for that. Traditional eReaders do not have back-lit screens so can’t do that at all. For all those who say it’s impossible to read from a back-lit screen at length I’d point to Gogol. I mean, I don’t suppose Gogol had an iPad for his bored moments but I did read the whole of Taras Bulba by Gogol on a night journey and it wasn’t a strain on the eyes at all. There are brightness controls built into the app so no need to go to your settings if you want to change them while reading. It’s also great because, living in a town without a bookstore, it can sometimes be impossible to get a new book when you want – but with both the iBook store and Gutenberg offering free classics in ePub format that need never be a problem again. The appearance works too – the way you turn pages and open books feels nice, and that matters to people. If aesthetics and interactivity didn’t matter we’d still be using DOS based computer systems.

This is turning into a lengthy review but I’ve yet to mention the use of Pages as a word processor. I’ve been using it to work on a short story and it’s comfortable to type on, formatting options are limited but I don’t generally worry about formatting until later anyway so for writing it has what you need and has the battery life to last all day, unlike the laptop which is about ready to die after two hours of life. With the iPad I can type on the metro, use it in a coffee shop while in the city and still know that I’ve got plenty of battery if I need it later or if I want to type for a longer writing session.

All of this is before we even get to the music, video, photo and multimedia possibilities – it’s served as a television while I’ve been working several times and it’s great for viewing photos. In short the iPad has ingratiated itself entirely into my lifestyle; instead of being maddeningly addictive it’s just extremely useful. It’s portability saves me carrying a computer around all day and it comes in so handy for all kinds of tasks. I guess that is the genius of it as a device – it’s not that it does things that people couldn’t do already, but rather that it does them very well and mixes that with lightweight and beautiful design and a battery that lasts upwards of ten hours. I apologise for sounding like an apple fanboy here – I do have issues with some of the things apple does, the fact that my 3G iPhone has been rendered painfully slow by their latest ‘upgrade’ being one of them – but what they do well is produce great products with the mix of functionality and aesthetic form that makes people want to use them.

You may notice that there are two books on the shelves of your local bookstore (unless your bookseller has good taste in which case there may remain only one) entitled The Third Man. To avoid any confusion as to which you should read I thought I would publish a brief guide here on my blog. In one book the protagonist is a vile, egomaniacal sleaze who will do anything and tread on anyone to serve his own purpose save his own skin, the other protagonist is black marketer Harry Lime.

Yes, Peter Mandelson, the man who revels in the nickname ‘The Prince of Darkness’, has decided to call his memoir The Third Man. Quite what the late, great, Graham Greene – a man we must recall who won the Jerusalem Prize for his commitment to the freedom of the individual in society – would think of a man like Mr. Mandelson appropriating the title of his screenplay and novella is hard to say but I don’t think he’d universally approve of it; perhaps, of course, Greene would realise that Mr. Mandelson’s career so accurately holds a harsh light to the realities and immoralities of modern politics that it will do far more than a roman-a-clef could ever manage.

Greene’s novella was written while writing the screenplay for the film, arguably one of the greatest films of all time, and while Harry Lime may be a murderer and a racketeer he’s far more likeable as a character than the leering prince of darkness presented by  Mr. Mandelson. Greene is a fantastic writer and his style is great to read.

In an ideal world I’d love to see a facebook campaign get the Graham Greene novel to top the bestseller lists instead of the memoir but, logically speaking, while its easy to get people to buy a 79p song to get it to chart it’s somewhat more difficult to do the same with a £7.99 book. Still, this summer I encourage everyone who considers Mandelson’s memoirs to pick up a copy of The Third Man by Graham Greene instead.

It’s been a little quiet on the blog front of late. For this I blame the fact that I’ve been really rather busy editing The Blue Rose of Vitebsk; those who know me will know that editing is probably life’s most painful experience. There are three drafts knocking about these parts that I started but never finished however I can’t find much relevance presently in Orlando Figes, Anti-semitism or the whole death of the novel debate so I suspect they will remain unfinished. Instead I shall break through the silence and leave a picture of a few of the books I’m looking forward to reading, which I picked up recently at The Keel Row Bookstore.  Also on my to-read pile is Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, which promises to be a really good read. (I mean, it didn’t actually promise – my books do not talk to me. That would be somewhat eccentric.)