New as of version 0.8!

Preferences pane! Choose your font, font size, navigation bar auto-hide preference, and much more!

Chapter navigation buttons on the bottom toolbar, at long last! Go forward and back without returning to the browser view.

Human-friendly browser sorting! You can use Chapter 1, Chapter 2... instead of Chapter 001, Chapter 002...
New as of version 0.7!

As many subdirectories within the EBooks folder as you can stand! Books.app now allows you to drill down as deep as you like, and will remember the directory when you quit. (It is recommended that you remove your preferences file before installing this update.)
New as of version 0.6!

Single-tap scrolling! Tap at the bottom of the screen to scroll down one page, tap at the top to scroll up.

Inverted text mode! Great for night reading. Thanks to Chris Born for implementing this.

Several shiny new buttons designed by Chris Born!
New as of version 0.5!

Navbars disappear when reading, to give you a larger "page size"; tap once (or twice, sometimes) to bring them back, scroll to make them vanish again.

Also added plus (+) and minus (-) buttons to bottom navigation bar, to control text size, which is remembered between runs.

Books.app is a simple eBook reader for the iPhone. It reads HTML and text files stored in your Media/EBooks folder, and is smart enough to enter subdirectories, if, for instance, you've broken a book down by chapters.

Eventually, this project will include a simple method of syncing eBooks to your iPhone. At the moment, that's handled by iPHUC and a shell script called copybookdir.sh. As of v. 0.4.2, this script is a separate download.

Books.app is recommended for use with Project Gutenberg texts, in conjunction with GutenMark, a fantastic PG markup tool by Ronald Burkey, which makes pretty HTML out of Gutenberg .txt files, and splits them by chapter using a second tool. I have, for the hell of it, included a copy of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which you can download here and expand into your Media/EBooks directory on your iPhone, so you can easily judge the reading experience. Unlike the earlier copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (which is still available in the Downloads section), this directory and its files will work with copybookdir.sh.

Note: I have heard that people have been having difficulty getting the source code/binaries for GutenMark. I am contacting the author to see about mirroring the code. Please be patient.

Another option is manybooks.net, where you can download HTML-ized Gutenberg and other Creative-Commons licensed texts. The site's maintainer has created a preset for download that will work well with Books.app (thanks, Matt!). Select a book and choose the "iPhone Books.app" option.

Books.app stands on the shoulders of giants, most notably iphonenes, mobileterminal, and Erica Sadun's first "word processor."

An installable package is available in the Downloads area, and the Installation wiki page has some details on installing the package to your iPhone. This is not for the faint of heart. InstallingEBooks explains how to get eBooks onto your phone where Books.app can find them. This is slightly less bothersome.

Books.app is maintained by Zach Brewster-Geisz. You can reach me at zach AT brewstergeisz (dot) cjb DOT net. Primary coders include Zach Brewster-Geisz and Chris Born, with contributions from Stephan White and suggestions from all over the Webernets.

Books.app is not at all related to the book organization software of the same name, which I didn't even know existed until recently!