Apparently HarperCollins thinks there’s too much Zombie shooting, Mario Kart racing, Tetris blocks falling and puppy petting happening on the DS, and they’d rather you do some fancy book learnin’. Or at least reading. So they’ve teamed up with Nintendo to make classic books available to read on the Nintendo DS. This 100 Classic Book Collection will at first only be available in Britain for £20. Turning pages will be as easy as brushing your finger across the screen.

Depending on the success of the service, Nintendo will expand upon the available choices at readers stylus’. The service will compete with reader devices like the Sony Reader released in September, which holds about 160 book titles. If the service expands to other countries, it is going to be hard to go up against Amazon’s Kindle, which even offers subscriptions to newspapers as well.

One edge they have is that there are already 2 million DS devices already sold in Britain making it easier to distribute the product. The service is set to be released on December 26th.

[Slashgear]