The moment I realised my Sony Reader was a keeper was a strange one, as I suddenly found it offered one entirely unexpected benefit: you can read it while you eat.
I was sitting alone in a TexMex restaurant in Helsinki reading The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross on my new device, when my food arrived. Usually this moment prompts the complicated business of continuing to read while also trying to eat.
Now I appreciate this might sound a bit silly. But those who spend a lot of time travelling will know that means eating alone more often than not, and personally I used to find this the most lonely moment of the day. And so I read - as do a lot of the others "singles" I see in hotels and nearby restaurants. And that is easy before the food arrives but when it does? Paperbacks are virtually impossible to keep open with one hand, never mind two. Hardbacks and trade paperbacks might tuck under the plate to keep the page open. They might not. It might sound silly, but for me it's an issue.
But not the Sony Reader. Set it down flat, read the page and then when finished hit the little turn page button. Simple. (The only drawback, it occurred to me was that spilling a glass of wine on it would probably be fatal.)
Simplicity is the key to the success of the whole device. Simple to set up. Simple to download books. Simple to use with an intuitive user interface. Great battery life.
And then there is the reading experience. Clear crisp typeface on a screen without glare in the font size of your choice, which is particularly useful if you have problems with my sight. My mother does and now is beginning to think that the Reader might be the answer to her quest for large type books.
Initially it seemed very odd and novel to be reading a book in this way, but that feeling did not last long, and within 100 pages of The Blue Zone, it felt as natural as holding a book and turning a page.
There are some drawbacks. While the Reader does look pretty good sitting on a shelf, with its smart (mock?) leather cover, it would cost about £4,000 to fill even a small shelf and the effect would not be quite the same as, say, the Everyman PG Wodehouse books I have. There is something indefinably wonderful about a book. (Which is to say that I cannot define it. I'm sure Stephen Fry would be able to). They are romantic in a way that a small metal tablet could never be.
And you can't really lend it to a friend. Or make notes in the margin, or throw it at the wall when the story or the writing is atrcious (memo to self: do not download Dan Brown novels onto reader.) And I suppose if the world ever completely ran out of energy sources it would not be much use beyond perhaps retraining as a beer mat. There is also an availability issue - plenty of titles are not available in the Adobe format Sony uses, although plenty are.
But beyond that I can't really see any downside. It looks good and it works extremely well. I can now take 96 books on holiday, all of them tucked into my jacket pocket, whereas previously there might have been space for perhaps five or six - not enough for a real holiday.
And this is the key for me. If I did not travel as much as I do, I would not have bought a Reader. But it makes taking sufficient books for a four night stay in Helsinki, without having to check a case, very very easy.
I will still read real books. I will still greedily horde them on groaning shelves. I will covet them as I visit bookstores. I love their look and feel, and nothing will ever replace that.
But I love my Reader too.
