An interesting application for reading classic literature with commentary, translation of foreign words and a number of other unusual functions.
The Live Pages application was developed by Samsung as part of the Culture in Your Hands program, and its release was timed to coincide with the year 2015, which was declared the Year of Literature in Russia. With the help of the 'Live Pages' you can not only re-read classic works, but also get a lot of related information on them. By the way, despite the fact that Samsung is the initiator of the development, you can download the program to any smartphone or tablet.
Below I will tell you what the application can do. It is important to understand that at the moment everything written below is true only for one classic work – 'War and Peace' by Tolstoy. Well, let's see what it can do.
Firstly, for all foreign remarks in the book, instant translation into Russian is available, for this you just need to 'tap' the desired text.
Secondly, you can follow the passage of time in the book, and in the real world, as well as compare them in order to better understand what periods and specific years Tolstoy spoke about.
Thirdly, you can view the intersection of the destinies of various characters. When did the first meeting take place? When did they meet again? How do their storylines develop? Together or in parallel?
As a nice bonus, I will single out interesting mini-games, for example, in one of them, you are shown a picture and asked to guess the name of the object drawn in it. To be honest, I didn't know the correct names for most of the things shown there, but this is not a problem, the application itself shows the correct answer after a loss and tells about what this or that object is for and what it is called. The other two games are quizzes with questions about the book.
For reading and playing games, you are awarded special points, apparently the developers wanted to encourage users to read and interact more often with the program. To do this, just log in using social networks.
In terms of settings, the application is certainly inferior to the most functional readers, but the adjustment of the main parameters is present in it.
As for the shortcomings, there is only one here, we are of course talking about the range of books in the program. At the moment, only Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' is available to users, but the developers promise to add other works. It should be understood that adapting the book to the additions described above is not an easy task, and the fact that the creators of the 'Living Pages' started with such a large-scale work cannot but inspire respect. Just imagine – it was necessary not only to translate foreign remarks, but also to mark the appearance of all key characters in all chapters, as well as to compare the chapters of the work with the course of time in the real world. This is a huge work, and it has already been completed, so for now you can read only War and Peace in the Living Pages, but we will wait for other classics to appear.
