A few weeks ago, I hung out with Jerry and Esmer (the half of Jyg and my Friday nights). We weren't going anywhere in particular, but we did land ourselves at two different bookstores (Hastings and Barnes & Noble) and two different Best Buys, Targets and a Wendy's. It was at the first Target where I saw the Sony Reader and its less costly pocket edition.
For quite sometime, I've taken a stand against electronic book readers such as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook because I love holding the hard copy in my hand, being able to flip back to a previous page, make notes (on sticky notes) and basically tear the book apart (in the less literal sense). I was asked by a creative writing professor what I thought of the future of the printed word. My answer was plain: "Books are never going to go away."
To this day, I still see that the printed word is better than the animated one. Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto, wrote a book about the effects that technology has on us. The irony of this, of course, that its avaible in Kindle edition and Nook edition. But there is something special about the Sony Reader that I loved. And it's hard to explain what, though. Is it all the public domain books I can read? The fact that I can store up to 350 books? I really don't know and will probably never understand. In the meanwhile, however, I'm going to stick to hard copies and shelves.
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