My husband received a Kindle 2.0 for his birthday this year. For Mother’s Day, I was given one as well. The Kindle is a lightweight reader, which can store up to 200 books.
Not all books are available for the Kindle. However, Princeton UP will be publishing textbooks for the Kindle DX. (The DX is about the size of a magazine.)
I am looking forward to the Norton Anthology of Literature being on the Kindle so that I can carry a lightweight book reader instead of a multipound book.
I love books, but I also like the ease of reading on the Kindle. If the book is available for Kindle, I can be reading it a minute after I pay for it. It sure beats shipping charges and waiting when you’ve got a paper due and a book that turns out to be essential for it.
There are negatives to the Kindle. It’s not open source. It’s owned by Amazon and they pay piddling amounts to the publishers. Amazon jipped my husband out of $500.
But compared to the benefits, the Kindle is the next generation of reading. I can imagine a day when paper books will be just as unusual as vinyl records are now.