BookLover (99 cents) may look similar to Apple’s iBooks app, but bibliophiles shouldn’t confuse the iPhone app for an e-reader. Instead, BookLover is a journaling app to help voracious bookworms keep track of books they’ve read, what they’re reading now and what recommendations they have to read in the future.
BookLover has a good aesthetic, and like I said, you’ll be able to sort titles into three shelves: “To read,” “Reading now” and “Have read.” As the shelves fill up, you’ll be able to scroll through them horizontally. You can easily rearrange the shelves by dragging and dropping the covers. Each book features a “Note” section, where you can record thoughts to share at your book club discussion, or to whom you’ve loaned your book. You can also track your page number in the app in case you lose your place. Using the service GoodReads.com, BookLover will provide you with recommendations for other books based on the titles you enter.
Of the titles I entered, the app was able to find cover art for most, even without the author field filled in. However, a bug in the app prevents you from seeing zoomed-in text if you need to make a correction. To get the app to search for covers, you also have to tab through all the fields. If the app is able to find a cover, it will import the book’s synopsis as well.
Since the app doesn’t feature a bar code scanner for fast entry (similar apps offer this), I don’t see myself populating the app with my current library of reads. However, I do think the app would be useful for tracking titles I’d like to search for in used bookstores, but can never remember.
