BookReader

Nowadays, you can find all sorts of interesting books on various online repositories, completely free, so it is not surprising that many are moving away from printed books, instead preferring their digital counterparts.

If you don’t have an eBook reader device, an application like BookReader can come in very handy. It enables you to organize your EPUB files, read books, set bookmarks and keep track of various statistics.

At first glance, it is clear that the developer had a minimalistic layout in mind when designing the user interface, as there aren’t a lot of UI elements to clutter the main window, so everything looks very clean.

It is pleasing to see just how many color themes were included, as users should have no problem finding one that is to their liking. These include white, black, gray, sepia and solarized.

In order to load your favorite books, you need to place them in your books folder, which can be accessed easily from the app’s UI. Only EPUB files are supported, but this format is popular enough for that not to be an issue.

Once added, you can open any of the books in your library easily, set bookmarks, track how much time you have spent reading and even view more detailed information about them.

There are multiple fonts to choose from, and you can also customize the text size, line spacing and margin dimensions. A small preview is even displayed in the Settings panel to help you fine-tune your configurations.

However, there is no option to switch between the single-page and dual-page viewing modes. The application switches between them automatically when increasing the main window’s dimensions, but users cannot select one of them manually.

In a nutshell, BookReader is a decent choice for users who don’t want to pay for an eBook reader and prefer an open-source alternative. It is not really packed with features, and it doesn’t allow you to switch between viewing modes, but it is easy enough to use and includes an impressive number of color themes.