If any of my readers have an iPad or a Nook color tablet, I’d like to recommend that you consider purchasing the enhanced edition of Life is a Gift from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

In addition to my day job and my duties as your friendly blogger, I also run a company called Fresh Ink Foundry that produces e-books. So, this recommendation comes not only from a Tony Bennett fan, but also a professional e-book creator.

This enhanced version is very well done and provides some great additional content to the printed book and the standard Kindle edition. There are additional photographs with longer and interesting captions, video shorts (some from the film The Zen of Bennett but others are original), more color images of Mr. Bennett’s paintings and probably more than I have yet to discover.

My favorite was Mr. Bennett’s separation papers from the Army. Only the Army could say this about Tony Bennett:

Musical Technician: Performed duties overseas in the European Theater of Operations involving radio work. Provided entertainment by means of singing over broadcast station AFN for all the troops in the European Theater. Received recommendation from executive officer of the seventh Army Special Service in his capacity as an entertainer and singer.

It also carries the following warning:

SAVE THIS FORM. IT WILL NOT BE REPLACED IF LOST.

My hat is off to Harper Collins for creating a such a beautiful e-book with the audio and visual enhancements.

Note that the description of the Kindle version states the book is to be read on the Kindle Cloud Reader and the Kindle app on the iPad. On my computer though (iMac running Safari), the videos were not available, though all the other content was.

It’s a wonderful reading experience on the iPad. A big thumbs up from The Year of Tony Bennett and also from Fresh Ink Foundry.

UPDATE: The enhanced version of Life is a Gift is now available from Barnes and Noble for all Nook color tablets: Nook Tablet, Nook Color, and the new Nook HD/HD+.

Tony Bennett posted a video to his Facebook page showing him viewing the book for the first time on the Nook tablet. Click here to view this video! And, if you haven’t “liked” Tony Bennett on Facebook, you should think about doing it. This page offers a lot of great content!

Happy reading, everyone!