Bob, you might look at the
free ebooks here in our ebooks section at MobileRead. RWood did a great job formatting Thomas Paine's
Common Sense (in volume I of Paine's writings). Note the use of italics, illustrations, etc. My experience is that most of the books that people have put time into formatting for MobileRead are much nicer to read than the ones from Sony. I also have 50 free classics from Sony but have only read one of them and prefer to look here first.
Definitely, if the Sony software seems to hang on you, go back and try again. Happens all the time.
And welcome!