Composition No. 1: The Strangest iPad Book You'll Ever See

Imagine a book that comes in a box with 150 loose pages, each without a page or chapter number. Now shuffle those pages any way you want. This is the premise behind Composition No.1, perhaps the strangest piece of literature you’ll ever see on the iPad or in print form. Created by Visual Editions, Composition No. 1 is based on the 1962 “book” by Marc Saporta. It tells a story about a group of Parisians living around the famed Sorbonne. However, you must decide in which order to read the book, and how much (or little) you want to read before you begin the book again. The eBooks works like this: The 150 pages of Composition No. 1 are continuously in motion. To “stop” on a page, you must click on it. This becomes the first page of this particular story. Clicking on the screen again, and you’ll find page two, three, and four, and so forth. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your preference), the only way to read a page (any page, actually) is to hold it at the same time. In other words, let go of the page and the random movement between pages begins again. Other features include:

• Randomized, interactive cover; slide letters around like fridge magnets
• Explore a typographic artwork, using the book's entire text.

Composition No. 1 is a strange beast, and we’re still not sure if that is a good or bad thing. As a concept, the book is absolutely amazing and saying its creators were ‘thinking out of the box” when they crafted it sounds about right. Still, the continuous randomness of the text gets annoying rather quickly. We’d like to see a future app update include the ability to stop on a page completely so that you can enjoy the story without having to actually "touch" it at the same time. Finally, we’re not too crazy about the book's price. For $6.99, Composition No.1 could prove a difficult sale. Still, if you're looking for something unique for your iPad, this is probably a great place to start.

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