Just spent the summer fondling the page fur of Nigel Slater's latest. How is Sony going to replicate that, or the coffee stains on the latest gossip mag, or the dog ears on Vantastic, or the sticky pages on a Nancy Friday ..?

I agree with the above statement. There is no pleasure in holding an electronic device. Where is the smell, the texture of a book?

I remember that when CDs came out, there was much talk about losing the tactile pleasures of vinyl ... the sleeves, the art, the physical records. (And of course the ritual of the needle, although the damage done to the record itself was rarely mentioned.) Today, you could argue that people focus more on the music itself than the carrier that provides it. Maybe the same thing will happen to books? Stories and words could become more important than the paper that carries them.

And when the batteries run out???

Good luck! n/n Islander (huddling over personal library of many thousand real books-)

It seems to me that the fundamental difference between electronic readers and 'real books' is the light source.

Light descends onto the page of a proper book and we can angle it (often unconsciously doing so) to our comfort.

A hand-held reader however, shines out into the eyes and it is this which leads to fatigue of both eye and brain - and therefore limits the use.

I can read the average sized paperback in around 2 hours but not on a hand-held reader. On these I need breaks and eye-ease and to pinch the bridge of my nose to bring my brain back into focus and remind myself I'm supposed to be enjoying this.

So unless they tackle this problem, they won't seduce the serious reader who loves to enjoy the whole literary and tactile experience at some length.

Of course they will sell to those who skim through light literature for about 10-20 mins at a time.