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The Only Chinese ebook Reader App You’ll Ever Need

Let me preface this by saying everything included in the app, including the app itself, is 100% free. This is important because, once you see all the features I’m about to lay out below, you’ll find out why I am so excited about this.

As I had written about before, Cbook Lite was my Chinese ebook reader of choice, with direct connection to the Haodoo website. Its name does, of course, admit that it is a lite app and it certainly is; no frills, gets the job done. All in all a solid program, no real complaints, and I still recommend trying it out.

Now let’s meet ShuBook(書僕). I had seen it linked on the Haodoo website and decided to take a look. The website describes ShuBook as:

ShuBook — 100,000+ books at your fingertips

ShuBook is an advanced free and open ebook reading platform with rich book sources. It is powerful, flexible and easy to use.

ShuBook is designed for both iPhone and iPad, and provides native support to iPhone 4 Retina display.

And ShuBook delivers 100%. The program is clean and easy to use, it offers conversion from Simplified to Traditional (zh-HK, zh-TW), preset ebook websites to download from (less searching on your part, and it auto downloads into the app), great display options, etc.

Book viewing options are amazing. My personal favorite is this style, and once I saw it it was the reason I downloaded it to begin with:

(Source: ShuBook website)

I feel it is easy to read, organizes the text in nice rows, and gives a nice traditional feel as well.

To be sure, though, the best feature is the preset book sources which give you a handful of websites to start right off the bat with. I already got the entire Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, and am on the look out for more. You can add custom ones as well. This means less digging around and running between a few different websites, trying to get it into the app, dealing with different formats (since ShuBook reads most major formats), etc.

So, really, give the website a good read and try it out. I think you’ll love it!

5 thoughts on “The Only Chinese ebook Reader App You’ll Ever Need”

  1. That’s really great! I have yet to get into reading in Chinese.. but I guess this way I don’t even have to buy anything to give it a try!

    Thanks!

    1. No problem! If there’s any materials you want to read, the best way to do it is search it on Wikipedia then switch the language to Chinese for the article (if available). There, you may want to check the Mainland/HK/Taiwan titles since they can be different between regions. Hope it helps! 🙂

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  4. Hello! 🙂
    Could you please tell me how you got the books into the App? Have you used your computer to download them or have you downloaded them within the App? I tried to download them within the App but it did not work 🙁 As I am a clChinese and Japanese learner, I am hungry for books in these languages, especially Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings (as you did! 🙂 ). I am out of ideas how to get them and how to get them into the App. I would be very happy if you could help me!
    Thank you very much for sharing this App, I think it can help a lot especially for language learners!

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