My Palm m125 from years and years ago does more. Granted, its screen is less readable, but if they tweaked that, I would be quite happy with a device exactly like my Palm.

To you. To me: dull and pretentious.

And I do give writers a break. But Proulx a writer? Puhleeze. You slander.

Proulx (like John Updike in his BookExpo speech) are interesting and profound writers. They may not be correct on the technological issues, but I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss their thoughts and insights into the nature of reading.

And please, give writers a break. They say a lot of crazy things over a lifetime. The difference between writers and nonwriters is that most of their idiotic thoughts end up on paper or a webpage somewhere. Finding a thing or two they were wrong about 10 years ago is an easy and trivial task. Speculating on the future is a risky venture, but I’d rather people keep speculating than just STFU.

I didn’t like the name either, but after discussing this with someone in marketing, I’m not so sure. It’s two syllables, easy-to-pronounce and has all sorts of connotations. The name is irrelevant of course; the technology and rendering is the key thing.

Well, the bloody NAME is. WTF kind of name is that, anyway?

Listen, Proulx, I wouldn’t read your crap on GOLD PAPER that I could then sell afterwards! Some writers should just STFU. It’s not as if what they say is either 1) True, 2) Sensible, or 3) What they have written and still write is ACTUALLY WORTH THE TIME TO READ.

>>>(I’ve been reading Boswell’s “Life of Johnson” on my iPhone, a device that is expected to be a major outlet for e-books in the coming months.)

LEVY JUST LEAKED! Apple will do ebooks! (For those who have forgotten, Levy wrote the history of the Mac. He knows Apple Insiders! Has probably been under NDA for this too!)

>>>Readers have long complained that new books cost too much; the $9.99 charge for new releases and best sellers is Amazon’s answer.

That answer is not good enough for me. Ebooks must not go beyond $4.99.

>>>(You can also get classics for a song: I downloaded “Bleak House” for $1.99.)

He brags he paid for FREE?

>>>”The idea of authorship will change and become more of a process than a product,” says Ben Vershbow, associate director of the institute.

Yeah, good luck with that notion. I read the products of individual people, not their frikkin FAN CLUB. (You know how absolutely USELESS most posts on an author’s website are?)

>>>”Michael Chabon will have to rethink how he writes for this medium,” he says. Brantley envisions wiki-style collaborations where the author, instead of being the sole authority, is a “superuser,” the lead wolf of a creative pack.

Kill. Me. NOW.

Eh. I’d be surprised if the Kindle went anywhere. That design is fugly. I don’t care that it has wireless and you can search in a text. Most people will look at that array of keys and throw up their hands in disgust. The visceral response will be, Hey, I don’t have to learn anything NEW to read a BOOK!

>>>You can jot down a gloss on the page of the book you’re reading, or capture passages with an electronic version of a highlight pen.

Huh? What?