The Sony Reader

This is interesting: Sony has come out with kind of an iBook (wait a minute, where have I heard that before?) where you store digital files of books and then read them off a small computer screen (“smaller than many paperbacks”!). It even comes with an iTunes-esque managing system you load onto your computer.

This could just be one of those new-fangled things that scholarly types decry at first (“But I need to feel the well-worn pages in my hands!” "How can I make notes in the margins?”), but then eventually get used to. We store our music on devices the size of a package of gum, so why not books?

Well, I must agree with those elbow-patched intellectuals – it IS nice to feel the pages beneath your calloused hands (don’t you love the mismatched widths of the pages of some hardcovers, jutting out from between the smooth book jacket?). Folding over the top of a page to mark a particularly good piece of prose is an archaic practice, yes; but has not met with any innovations in the last 600 years, save for the hallowed bookmark, which would be rendered obsolete by the Sony Reader. And though I have browsed extensive CD collections in people’s homes, it is not the same as browsing the shelves of tightly packed books, head cocked to the side, scanning spines.

And, somewhat tellingly, the sample text displayed on the Sony Reader is from The Da Vinci Code. This is a device for the masses. And though I have read (and enjoyed) The Da Vinci Code, I do understand Stephen W. Beattie when he says “if my girlfriend ever chose The Da Vinci Code over me, it would be her way of telling me that we were done.”