[Also published at Huffpo<\/a>]<\/p>\n

I just came into possession of an iPod Touch, which is more or less the iPhone without the phone part (my friend Matt<\/a> got an iPhone, so I inherited his Touch). I got the little gadget the night before a trip to San Francisco, and I loaded it up with audiobooks from LibriVox<\/a>, podcasts from earideas<\/a>, TEDTalks videos<\/a>, and a host of public domain texts from Gutenberg<\/a> to keep me busy during the plane ride.<\/p>\n

It’s a beautiful little machine, which we expect from Apple. As an iPod it’s as good as you’d like — with the nice addition, for me, of video. But the biggest shock for me was how pleasing it was to read novels on the thing. I was surprised by how much I liked the elegant ereader application, Stanza<\/a>. I read Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom<\/a>, and I started reading – and continue to read – Tolstoy’s War & Peace<\/a>. I even chose a number of times to read on my iPod in bed, instead of the paperback non-fiction<\/a> & hardback fiction<\/a> books I had brought along. War & Peace<\/em> is, actually, a dream to read on the iPod. (Who would have thought?).<\/p>\n

Reading digital text on a small handheld device is nothing like reading text on a computer (desktop or laptop). A mobile device is much more comfortable, for plenty of reasons. You can lounge and arrange yourself as you like; you can whip the device out while standing in line of passport control, and in the most cramped of subways (always annoying trying to hold a paperback open in a sardine-crowd). There’s an almost unlimited number of books you can pack into it. And the chunk of text displayed seems about exactly right for my own internet-frayed attention span, with the pleasant effect that I am propelled forward from page to page.<\/p>\n

I tried an experiment too, listening to the LibriVox version of War and Peace<\/a> while reading along, which was a relaxing immersive experience on the plane (though after a while, the slow speed of the audio compared with my reading became too distracting). But this could be a wonderful tool for those learning to read, language students, those with learning disabilities, and auditory learners reading dense, difficult texts, Kant<\/a> for instance.<\/p>\n

The iPhone and nifty apps like Stanza have convinced me that there is a real future in ebooks, one that I’ve always thought was more theoretical than actual. I’m a book person, paper and print. I love the smell, feel, texture and experience of reading a book. I always will, and I don’t think that ereaders will ever replace books for me. Ebooks have too many drawbacks.<\/p>\n

The also have plenty of advantages, and now that I know I actually enjoy reading on an iPod, I’m pretty sure that ebooks on handheld mobile devices will continue to be one part of my reading habits.<\/p>\n

Teleread reports<\/a> that Apple is cutting iPhone production, and that will have negative impacts on the uptake of ebooks. They’re probably right, but for me — a former skeptic — the compelling case for ebooks has been made. I like ’em.<\/p>\n

Whether it’s the iPhone in the next year or so, or something else in five years, I’m sold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Also published at Huffpo] I just came into possession of an iPod Touch, which is more or less the iPhone without the phone part (my…<\/p>\n