Hoopla

I’ve been off twitter for a few days now, and I won’t lie, I miss not having an untweeted thought, but now I go entire days without getting aggravated, and I’m getting more reading done.

To fill my newly expanded reading hours, I finally got around to trying out the Hoopla app to eborrow from my local library.

I haven’t tried the music, videos, or audibooks, just the comics and ebooks. The one comic I tried seemed like it was scanned at too low resolution, I had some discomfort reading the lettering, and it was blurry when I magnified it.

Hoopla is a decent ebook reader, though, with the basic features I’m accustomed to on my Barnes and Noble nook app, including the ability to select a word and look up its definition.

It’s not quite as slick as the nook books, though. In particular, I take care to preview books on the nook reader to make sure it has a nice font I can read easily (there’s also an option to override the original font), but Hoopla has no preview feature (maybe not a high priority since you’re not actually buying the book), and all the books I’ve read so far are displayed by default in my iPad’s San Francisco font.

It’s not a great font for books, but I haven’t tried changing it except increasing the size (ebook readers should have a convenient big print setting!).

I’ve found the Wimpy Kid series the most readable ebooks, as they feature hand lettering and at a higher fidelity than the comics. Also, they’re a lot of fun. This sequence is particularly topical.