Customer Reviews

100 Classic Books

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this "game" yesterday for my 12 year old son. I don't feel I am able to review this with complete accuracy, as I havn't used it yet and can't attest to user friendliness. However, my son was up past midnight last night reading "The Wizard of Oz" and any device that can do that gets five stars in my book. As I am the first review, I will list the books followed by Author. I will admit there are a few here I haven't heard of, but what a steal at 20 bucks!
Little Women-Alcott; Emma, Pride and Predjudice-Austen; Wizard of Oz-Baum; Lorna Doone-Blackmore; Jane Eyre-C.Bronte; Wuthering Heights-E Bronte;Little Lord Fountlery,The Secret Garden-Burnett; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass-Carroll; Don Quixote-Cervantes; The Man Who Was Thursday, The Napolen of Notting Hill-Chesterson; The Awakening-Chopin; The Moonston, Woman in White-Collins; Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim-Conrad; The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans-Cooper; The Red Badge of Courage-Crane; Molly Flanders, Robinson Carusoe-Defoe; Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities-Dickens; The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment-Dostoyevsky; Sherlock Holmes, Hound of Baskervilles-Doyle; The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask-Dumas; Middlemarch, Silas Marner-Eliot; The Diary of A Nobody-Grossmith; Allan Quatermain, King Solomon's Mines-Haggard; Far From the Maddening Crowd, Tess of the D'Urbervilles-Hardy; The Scarlet Letter, Tanglewood Tales, A Wonder-Book-Hawthorne; The Four Million-O'Henry; The Odyssey-Homer; The Prisoner of Zender-Hope; The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables-Hugo; The Scketch Book-Irving; The Aspern Papers,The Turn of the Screw-James; The Jungle Book, Kim, The Man Who Would Be King-Kipling; The Phantom of the Opera-Leroux; The Call of the Wild, White Fang-London; The Princess and the Curdie, The Princess and the Goblin-Macdonald; The Prince-Machiavelli;Moby Dick-Melville; Utopia-More;Rights of Man-Paine; Tales of Mystery and Imagination-Poe; Ivanhoe, Waverly-Scott; Black Beauty-Sewell; king Lear, MacBeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, The Moor Of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of The Shrew, The Tempest-Shakespeare; Frankenstein-Shelley; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped-Stevenson; Dracula-Bram Stoker, Uncle Tom's Cabin-Stowe; Gulliver's Travels-Swift; Vanity Fair-Thackery; Walden-Thoreau; Anna Karenina, War and Peace-Tolstoy; Barchester Towers-Trollope; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee-Twain; Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-Verne; The Time Machine-Wells; The Age of Innocence-Wharton, The Improtance of Being Ernest, The Picture of Dorian Gray-Wilde. I hope this helps!

I saw this on the computer a few weeks ago and couldn't wait for it to come out. My original plan was to buy the DS XL to have more reading area, but my DS Lite shows them just fine until I can afford the upgrade. I wish I could read more than 3-4 sentences at a time on my small screen before turning the "page." It's very user friendly. There's even a quiz to help you pick the age group, genre, author gender, time when it was written, and other criteria that you want. At the end the cute little owl on the screen suggests a book. The bookshelf is very nice, and there are plenty of ways to maneuver around the bookshelf, the menu, and the books themselves.
My only problem so far is that if you're reading, say, The Wizard of Oz, and want to start The Odyssey, it informs you that the bookmark in The Wizard of Oz will be lost. I like to read more than one book at a time, so that isn't good for me. However, I can read summaries of other books without losing my bookmark. The second time I turned on my DS, the first screen the game showed was, "would you like to continue from page 28 in The Wizard of Oz?" and yes or no, which is a great alternative to going through the menu to the bookmarked book. As the other reviewer stated, it's quite a steal at 20 bucks!

I give this a five star....... I like the books on it, easy to read and use....great grand daughter 8 is reading Alice in Wonderland...I am reading White Fang and I am 75....I find it easy to read and turn the pages......perfect for reading in bed or in the daytime while waiting for someone

I first heared of this software through my Nintendo Newsletter. I love to read and as soon as I saw this, I knew I had to have it! I bought it and immediatly started using it. I'm hooked! I just can't get off it! I'm currently reading Sherlock Holmes (which is a great book by the way!). Let me go over some of the features. On the packageing, it will show images of this software being used for the DSi XL. DON'T WORRY!!!! It works just fine on any other model. The bookshelf is where you find the books. You can access it by touching the "Start Reading" button in the Main Menu. You can browse through 100 great classics. In the menu, you will find the options search and sort. Search lets you narrow the books down by using different filters. Sort sorts the books either by Author, Title, or Genre. You can choose a book by going to the "Book Guide" in the Main Menu. You can choose a book by taking the short Quiz or by looking at the ranking by either ratings or desriptions. DS Wireless is another cool feature accessable through the Main Menu. This allows you to do the following: Download new books, exchange books with other 100 Classic Book owners or send a demo version to non-owners. REMEMBER: These features are only accessable with a Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection! Lastly, the settings give you the options to assign Background Music varrying from some classic tunes to the load noises of the Airport. You can change the font size and the menu design. It gives you the potions to configure the button settings in "Reading Mode" and change the DS Orientation from Left to Right Handed. This is a great deal and I highly reccomend it to anybody. It's great for the whole family and a steal for $20! To browse the library of books, follow this link[...]

As an avid fan of words in general, I decided, upon learning of its existence, to purchase 100 Classic Books for the Nintendo DS.

First things first: all of the books included in the software are now out of copyright, so some people will invariably scoff at the idea of paying actual money for them, particularly since they can be had legally for free on places like [...]. This is certainly a valid point. My feelings on the matter are thus: I like to read, but I am not terribly fond of reading books on the computer. Had I an e-reader such as the Kindle or the Nook, there might be little reason for me to purchase a title such as this. However, decent e-readers are still relatively expensive, and then there's the cost of a cover or case to help protect the thing, and possibly the optional protection plan, etc. Without having used one at any length, I'm not sure whether or not it would be worth it to me to drop the coin required for such a purchase.

Since I already have a DS, making a small purchase like 100 Classic Books is a much easier pill to swallow in order to dip my toe in the waters of e-book reading.

When the title starts up, there is a pleasant and soothing tune playing, as an owl flies across a row of books and settles on the non-touch screen to watch you. The owl also serves another feature. If the thought of choosing what to read from the 100 books available is somewhat daunting, you can ask the owl for a recommendation. He'll ask you a few questions about what you want to read (length, genre, reading level, etc.) and make a suggestion based on your answers.

You can also get recommendations through the online rankings. Once you connect to the Nintendo WFC, you can update the rankings on the books, and there will be stickers applied to various books that are the highest rated in several categories (most romantic, most humorous, most scary, best overall book, etc.). This is a neat little feature, but wholly unnecessary, particularly since most people won't want to keep going online just to update the rankings again and again. Whilst connected to Nintendo WFC, you also have the option to download ten additional books to the software, which immediately integrate themselves into the bookshelf (there's a little "DL" on the bottom of the spine of each book so you can see which ones are hard-coded in the software and which are DLC).

You can recommend books yourself after you've finished reading them (or after you've skipped ahead to the last page and "finished" the book if you're just eager to give a high rating to your favorite book). You get to rate it from 1 to 10 and then pick an adjective that describes it (the adjectives correspond to the categories a book can be stickered in).

There are really only two things that are important in a title such as this, and that's the quality of the books and the quality of the interface.

I've typed up a list of the books at the bottom of this review, and there is quite a large variety available across all genres, which is a plus. With authors ranging from Louisa May Alcott to Oscar Wilde, and the books themselves going from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Wuthering Heights, there is literally something enjoyable here for practically anyone who even remotely likes to read.

The one big problem I had with the books is that there are sporadic typos to be found. As an example, there's a passage in The Jungle Book which erroneously says "hoys" instead of "boys" (on page 376 if you are using the standard font size). They're not everywhere, but I found a couple in the Jungle Book and elsewhere (I've only read a few books in the game). However, they are very off-putting when you find them, and it puts a bit of a taint on what is otherwise a very solid title.

As for the interface, it is so intuitive that practically anyone could figure it out within a matter of seconds. However, there's also a tutorial that plays the first time you start the game (which you can skip if you so desire). You hold the DS sideways (like a book - clever, no?), and you can use either the buttons or the screen to turn the page. The d-pad or face buttons (depending on whether you're a righty or lefty) can be used to turn the page left or right, and you can optionally set the shoulder buttons to change pages as well. On the screen itself, tapping the left or right side of the touch screen will turn the page back or forward. You can also slide the stylus across if you want a more "realistic" page-turning motion.

You can set up to three different bookmarks per book. This is nice if you have a particular passage that you want to refer to later, or if you have multiple people reading off one cartridge. If you want to remove a bookmark, just go to that page and take it out. Or you can simply place it somewhere else in the book and it will move automatically (you don't have to go and pick it up before you can set it down somewhere else, which is nice).

The font size can be changed between two settings, and I found both to be quite easy to read. There's also several background ambient noise choices you can use. Some of them are a little unpleasant (actually, both the music selections of "Classic" and "Easy Listening" sounded a little too harsh and synthesized for me to enjoy reading by), but I found some that were very relaxing and actually enhanced the reading experience ("Summer Night" is my favorite, but "Moving Train" and "Park" are both good too).

It's obvious that a lot of work went into making the interface as smooth and as intuitive as possible, and it really shows. It's extremely well thought out, though it's not perfect. One glaring omission is the lack of a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words (I understand that the Kindle has a built-in dictionary for just such a purpose). With all the books being from 1922 or prior, it is not uncommon to run into many unfamiliar words, particularly from the international authors such as Tolstoy, Kipling, or Hugo. Secondly, there's no search functionality. Unless you've bookmarked the page, you're stuck hopping from page to page looking for whatever phrase or quote you wanted to find. Another feature that would have been nice (though it isn't strictly necessary) is a text-to-speech feature (also included in the latest model of the Kindle). Synthesized speech has made many advances over the past decades, and although it's not perfect, it would be nice to be able to turn on a text-to-speech function if I wanted to listen to a book whilst browsing Amazon, for example.

One of the other interesting things you might notice is a lack of an ESRB rating for this title. Apparently, due to the content being entirely literature-based, this title does not require any age classification. Granted it doesn't affect the software in any way, but it might be a bit of a collector's oddity for this reason.

So, as I mentioned at the top of the review, I basically purchased this as an experiment to see whether I would get any use out of an e-reader before I whip out the wallet and buy one. So how did the experiment go? Well, I just placed my order for a Kindle.

And now, here's a list of books included with the software (Books with an asterisk are not on the cartridge, but are available for download via Nintendo WFC):

Louisa May Alcott: Little Women
Jane Austen: Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
R.D. Blackmore: Lorna Doone
Charlotte Brontė: Jane Eyre
Emily Brontė: Wuthering Heights
Frances Hodgson Burnett: Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden
Richard Burton (Translator): Tales from the Arabian Nights
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Don Quixote of La Mancha
G.K. Chesterton: The Man Who was Thursday, The Napoleon of Notting Hill
Kate Chopin: The Awakening
William 'Wilkie' Collins: The Moonstone, The Woman in White
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent*
James Fenimore Cooper: The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans
Steven Crane: The Red Badge of Courage
Daniel Defoe: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe
Charles Dickens: Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby*, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Three Musketeers*
George Eliot: Middlemarch, Silas Marner
George and Weedon Grossmith: The Diary of a Nobody
Henry Rider Haggard: Allan Quartermain, King Solomon's Mines
Thomas Hardy: Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
O. Henry: The Four Million
Homer: The Odyssey
Anthony Hope: The Prisoner of Zenda
Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Les Misérables
Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Henry James: The Aspern Papers, The Turn of the Screw
Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book, Just So Stories*, Kim, The Man Who Would Be King
Gaston Leroux: The Phantom of the Opera
Jack London: The Call of the Wild, White Fang
George MacDonald: The Princess and Curdie, The Princess and the Goblin
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince
Herman Melville: Moby Dick
Thomas More: Utopia
Thomas Paine: Rights of Man
Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe, Waverley
Anna Sewell: Black Beauty
William Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear, MacBeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, The Moor of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night*
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman*
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, Treasure Island*
Bram Stoker: Dracula
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels
William Makepeach Thackeray: Vanity Fair
Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina, War and Peace
Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Prince and the Pauper*
Jules Verne: Journey to the Center of the Earth, Round the World in Eighty Days*, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
H.G. Wells: The Time Machine
Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence
Oscar Wilde: The Happy Prince and Other Stories*, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray

This list differs significantly from the 100 Classic Book Collection released in the UK. The UK version is a lot more focused on British Authors, and includes quite a few more titles from Jane Austen, the Brontė Sisters, Dickens, and Shakespeare. The US release has a wider variety of authors from many countries, although there is far less variety per author (Dickens and Shakespeare had some titles cut, but they're still fairly well represented).

My 9-yr old daughter was looking to buy another DS game for the Summer when she saw this "100 Classic Books" and wanted it immediately. Ever since our purchase, every time I look in on her she is quietly reading and enjoying the soothing music in the background. She even turned off the TV! What a great Summer gift for those who sincerely enjoy reading.

My only legitimate concern at this time is the Romance Novels...

This "title" -- can't call it a game -- is fantastic if you love classic literature and already own a Nintendo DS. While I wouldn't recommend purchasing a DS just for this title, it's great if you have one but not a Kindle, netbook, or IPad. With "100 Classic Books" I can take these books everywhere in my purse or pocket without buying additional expensive hardware.

The complete list of books on the cartridge is available online and you can download ten more free. The settings menu allows you to adjust the font size to small or large (I prefer small, even on the DS Lite), and a wonderful feature is the ability to have ambient music or sounds while you're reading. Sounds can of course be completely turned off, but listening to the ocean while reading "Moby Dick" would be just plain awesome! Other ambient sounds are a park, a forest, a summer night, a babbling stream, riding on a train, and more.

Turning "pages" with the stylus felt a bit awkward and I found that using the control pad was much easier. Overall, I highly recommend this title and hope many more books are available for the DS this way. Please keep in mind that Nintendo is not saying these are the one hundred best books ever; they are classic titles that are available because they are in the public domain.

Just received this yesterday. For just $20 you get a lot of bang for your buck. At first, I was worried that the font might be too small, since I have a DS Lite. Ends up that even the smaller font was easy to read. You can also trade up to a larger font. A book like The Wizard of Oz takes over 700 pages (small pages) to read on the DS Lite, to give you an idea of size. I have also already downloaded an additional title, although, I must admit, I had to get my husband to plug in all the wireless info (IP address, SID, etc.) before it would work.

The only issue I have, and others have mentioned it, is that you can only bookmark one book at a time. I do hope that in the future Nintendo creates a version where you can bookmark multiple books. If you want to keep track of what page you are on manually--little slip of paper tucked into your DS case--you can read more than one selection, of course.

For me, page turning is easier if I just push the arrow key below the screen. You can also flip using the stylus. Either way is fine, but you can really flip through quickly with the arrow keys.

I really am glad I stumbled across this product. I love that I can read anywhere I am, as long as I pack my DS Lite in my purse. If you love the classics, or want to start reading them, this is a great product. THe best part is that you save space on your bookshelf for your contemporary novels. War and Peace alone would take up the space of several mysteries. Now, it fits in a cartridge the size of a postage stamp. With all the titles that are public domain, Nintendo could easily come out with more books for its DS line. I'll be eagerly waiting.

After receiving this product several days ago I have been using it on a daily basis and have already completed several short novels.

I'm very pleased with it and I am someone who likes to do a lot of research before I make purchases. I own a ds lite and the text is quite readable even with the small font without eye strain. You will be flipping through many pages but this is accomplished with ease with either a button, the stylus or even the touch of a finger. The ds also makes this title perfect for night reading, which is my preferred method. With 100 (technically 110 if you download the 10 extra ones) books to choose from the selection features many classic novels from American, English and other authors from all over the world. This should keep me busy for a while but then hopefully they'll put out new books or make a sequel.

While doing research I believe the list differs a bit from the American and English version, the English version seems to have more Shakespeare, and more books by English authors while I feel the American version holds more variety. There are a wide variety of types of novels to read and the book guide can help you pick if you are unsure, and if you don't like what it picks you can just re-do it to suit your tastes. You can also pick books based off of the rankings of other people and add your rankings after you complete a novel, but you can't review the bonus 10 downloadble books.

100 classic books was an ideal title for me as I like to read and have an appreciation for the classics but have only read a few of them. The price tag of $20 is also very good and if you own a ds you probably aren't going to find a cheaper e-book reader on the market.

I recommend this product to everyone. It's a cheap, easy way to get 100 classic books at your fingertips that you can take anywhere you go with ease. Plus you can sink up the background music to the book you are reading for added effect. I've found while reading Jack London's novels to "living room" (sounds like a sizzling fire) helps me further stir my imagination and immerse myself in the world of Call of the Wild and White Fang.

I applaud Nintendo and Harper Collins for producing this great title and I hope they will produce many more titles like it in the future.

I'm very happy with this title. I nearly imported it from the UK because I didn't think they'd bring it to the US. I'm glad I waited because the price at $20 is a steal compared to what I would've paid to get it over the pond. I like the fact that there are more books to download and would love to see that continued into the future with a few more books added regularly.

There's a little something here for everyone, favorites from childhood and few that I couldn't bring myself to read during high school or college. Now that I'm becoming a 'classic' myself I'm learning to appreciate these great titles.