iBooks

I've now read a book using iBooks on my iPad.
Overall, it was a positive experience. The text is crisp and I didn't find the backlit screen fatiguing. I liked that I could dim the backlighting when I was reading in bed or adjust the text size. The animations are fun. The landscape mode that splits into to pages is also neat.
I've read a number of reviews that find the lengths iBooks take to look a book distracting at best. I disagree. The two page look of the landscape view is not perfect, but I find it more natural than the wide page display of other e-readers. The neat page flip animation is slick and sort of refreshing. The biggest complaint I've read is that the number of pages in the margin does not change as you get further into the book. While I think that would be a neat trick, I don't find it bothersome. In fact, I like having that margin there. It makes it harder to accidentally change the page.
The controls for reading are also well done. It is easy to move through a book by swiping or touching the margins. The pop-over for the dictionary is excellent. I also like the fact that the controls are on the top of the page. It seems more natural than having them on the bottom of the page.
iBooks is not perfect by a long stretch. I'd like a way to annotate books. I'd like to be able to use library books. I'd like a white text on balk background theme.
Perhaps the most annoying thing I found was that the brightness setting isn't sticky. When you switch out of iBooks, or the iPad goes to sleep, the interface automatically switches back to full brightness. When reading in bed, this can be particularly bad. At full brightness, the screen is blinding.
Now that Stanza is available on the iPad, I have to see how iBooks stands up to my favorite e-reader on the iPhone. I don't think Stanza will do well. iBooks doesn't offer more in terms of functionality, but it does look more polished. I'll report back after a more extensive test drive.