I remember watching local news in Minneapolis back in 1995. The anchor was talking about early versions and ideas about e-books (though that term wasn’t in use back then). He referred to paper as being a three dimensional object and this as being one the major changes. As you can tell, that comment stuck with me. Even though e-books still exist in a piece of hardware that exists “somewhere” (whether on a server somewhere or on your e-reader or personal computer), the distinction always feels like that difference between something exists out there in the “ether” versus a physical book on my shelf.

I should probably admit that I don’t have an e-reader, though I suspect that a present for my upcoming birthday will include a Nook.

I expressly indicated that I would prefer Barnes & Noble’s Nook over the more prevalent Amazon Kindle. My reasoning being that I want to support Barnes & Noble over Amazon. While neither is anything close to an independent bookstore, B&N at least keeps physical bookstores and surely that is worth supporting. In addition, the Kindle uses proprietary technology that essentially locks you into Amazon’s Kindle store. With a Nook, I have hope that I could take advantage, for example, of independent bookstores that are talking about banding together the sell e-books.