There's a little used folder in your iPod that you might be familiar with, the Notes section. This allows you to directly upload text files (.txt) to your iPod's not sections. However, there is a limit to the amount of characters that can go in each file.
I started using this on my iPod Video to read short stories by Anton Chekhov ( Each time I'd want to read a story, though, I'd have to measure out each part of the story into 600 word chunks and save them as their own separate text file. That's not rational, I know, and there is a better way.
The solution: ManyBooks.net
ManyBooks allows you to find absolutely free books and to save them in a specialized "iPod Notes" format. It makes navigation while reading on your iPod easier, too. At the top of pages will be a "previous" option that allows the user to click the middle of the scroll wheel to see the last page they were on. At the end of the page, there's a similar option to go to the following page.
When I say that you can find "absolutely free books," I really do mean it, I just don't mean the newest ones. Bestsellers like The Da Vinci Code and Freakonomics won't be found on ManyBooks.
Public domain books usually have stories and novels by authors that have been dead 100 years or more, the classics.
A fan of dead Russian authors like myself (Chekhov, for example) will find plenty to read.
I choose my iPod Video to read based on the screen size, it sure beats the hell out of reading with my iPod Mini.
Of course, the newest iPods like the iPhone and iPod Touch have larger, easier to read screens and much more advanced features. For those of you with either of those two, I'd instead recommend you to an application called Stanza, which is widely becoming one of the most common ways to read ebooks, even against such competitors as the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.
Remember folks, make use of what you've got!
