The top ten iBooks of 2011

While the Kindle continues to solve storage problems for the bibliophile on the go, it is the iPad that is actually changing what books are and stretching our definitions of reading. Here is my selection of the ten best iBooks released for it this year: 

The Waste Land 

To anyone unconvinced about the appeal of iBooks, I can only present this, the greatest edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land that has ever been published. You can use it to read the poem, with or without notes, or to have the poem read to you by the likes of Eliot and Alec Guinness. You can also watch a peerless performance of the text by Fiona Shaw and absorb all manner of supplementary material from experts including Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. The evolution of iBooks is so swift that, by this time next year, this app will no doubt look positively outdated — but, for now, it is the very best e-reading experience available on any device.