It’s been about a month and a half since the Sony E-book Reader found its way into my stack of books, and while it has not been the exclusive purveyor of reading material in my life (note as a couple of examples the “Steampunk Anthology” and “Insect Field Guide“) it has been first fiddle, so to speak, based on both sheer novelty and quantity of text. Some of my observations to date:

:> The tech aspects are all fairly solid. The display is clean and easy to read, and I haven’t yet come close to filling the memory — of only because e-books are so darn small. Sony would do well to put a little faster processor in the thing on the next update, but besides that — technically — it does exactly what they say.

:> My reading habits, while not changed, are accommodated much better on this particular device. I find I can read at about twice the speed of the dead-tree versions, and I attribute that to the (still rather) cumbersome ability to flip around. I don’t bother, and I tend to focus much better on the text on the page.

:> Old books, and by this I mean classics, are available for free and I’ve found I’ve discovered a few that (simply because buying the print version from a store is a quasi-justifiable investment) I’ve been able to thumb through at leisure.

:> Less-old books, and by this I mean stuff from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that I can’t be bothered to track down and purchase as worn out, grungy paperbacks, or whatever, are available at discounted rates online. All those old sci-fi classics suddenly are a few clicks away — and I need not break the bank nor kill a tree catching up with my tweenhood faves.

:> Acquired online, that perfectly legal content such as essays, articles, and magazines that I couldn’t be bothered to consume in their freely downloadable or RSS incarnations suddenly appear on my coffee table as ethereal incarnations of text I can read on the couch. This is a good thing.

:> Of course there is the weight of the thing. I’m going to be bopping about the province this summer and suddenly my reading material is both abundant and portable.

:> Backyard coolness has never been so out of reach as for a nerd sitting in a lawn chair reading a digital book. But that’s why I need the trees to grow a little higher: if no one can see you, it’s not shameful.

Books consumed (or in the process of being consumed) to date:

Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
Sherlock Holmes (complete works), by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
The Subtle Knife, by Phillip Pullman
The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison
The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
Howl’s Moving Castle, by Dianna Wyn Jones

…and about 65 more in the hopper. Oi!