welcome to the forum matcat ! ah, dublin, i'd love to visit there someday.
i've got a very romanticised image of it of course, from joyce's
dubliners and the pogues...
that is a lovely present indeed. i know a lot of people are worried they'll miss the tactile aspect of reading when they start using a reader, but let me tell you a little secret : since i got mine, i love it so much, i can barely stand to take a paper book anymore ! the ergonomics are terrible !
like when you're reading in bed, on your side : oh, my poor wrist, propping up all those pages ! and the top of the book is always blocking the light from the page i'm trying to read ! and when i'm reading a nice thick omnibus edition... oh my ! it's so HEAVY ! just try reading that with one hand...
and i LOVE having hundreds of books in my bad wherever i go, without having to carry more than a few grammes.
i'm sure you'll love your sony, if you love reading. and just to give you more reason to love it, don't miss our free ebooks section (click the ebooks link in the blue navigation bar at the top of the page) for thousands of books formatted by our members ! for sony, choose the epub or lrf format. another great site is feedbooks for even more free public domain and creative commons books.
soon you'll have more than you can count, and then calibre (see the calibre forum) will be indispensable for managing your library, doing conversions, and aggregating rss feeds.
don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions, and happy reading !