I've done quite a bit of reading on PPCs over the years. First off, you are quite right - MS Reader sucks.
The real issue is what book formats you want to read. .lit is only supported by MS Reader, although there are programs you can use to convert them. Personally, I get on Kazaa and download the pdf, txt or html of the eBook, and then do some quick formatting (like a Find / Replace to remove all < br > tags) and convert it to html. For example I own The Hobbit in print, but I wanted to read it on my PPC. Peronally, I prefer to purchase the real hard-copy of the book (say in paperback, or even second-hand at a used book store) and then download from Kazaa the digital version so I have both formats.
Of all the readers I've tried, (pronounced MicroBook) is my favorite. It supports portrait and landscape, has tons of preferences (including multiple types of font smoothing), can automatically generate table of contents based on text formatting, etc. It can also read inside of zip files. It supports txt and html, which is why I acquire my eBooks in html or convert it myself.
Dan East
