Amen to that - not to dis' other members who are passionate about reading on multi-functional PDA's etc. but since getting a Sony Reader I honestly can say I would never go back. For me it is night and day. Despite some shortcomings, the 'dedicated reader' features - screen, size, bookmarks, battery life etc. really win out. Reading this morning over coffee at a local place, I realized it's almost like a totallly different personalized reading experience. From a marketing standpoint, the hard part (I imagine) is most probably coaxing an
increasingly non-literate public to try e-books.
I recently spoke with a young man (college educated etc.) who actually believes that books in general are absolutely un-necessary. He gets all the information he needs (so he thinks) from other media (internet, video, audio etc.). He is not unintelligent and had well-thought out (and utterly wrong of course
) reasoning for his views. Some days I think he might be representative of his generation and others I think and hope not. I certainly do not believe that e-books alone will entice non-readers back into the reading fold. How sad though, if 20 years from now, absolutely perfect, low-cost digital books and readers appear and no-one around who cares to read anymore. A whole generation lost to video screens. ah well...