Of Reading
I don't know where it has come from, but I've been bitten by the reading bug. This month alone, I've read The Game, the majority of Sperm Wars, re-read Stephen King's On Writing, Lay Down with Dogs and about half of my old ethics textbook A Gift of Fire.

This does not count my reading (currently 170 pages) of Making of America. There was good motivation plus timing involved in tackling this tome. The motivation is two-fold. First, I spent $40 on the book, (seems like I bought The Real George Washington, The Real Benjamin Franklin, and The Real Thomas Jefferson along with Making of America at the Constitution Seminar last November for a grand total of $60 all in, but that figure seems low. Either way, I paid good money for the tomes, and by God, I ought to read them so I can get my money's worth out of them.

The other, more pressing motivation is that a co-worker showed me a superb video discussing the Fifth Amendment. This sparked in me a renewed interest to know what my rights are which lead to me reading the book I had purchased (Making of America) that had a brief (220+ page) history and overview of the Constitution and then goes through the document clause by clause for the next 500 pages.

The timing aspect is that I don't currently have my American History textbook and I wanted to read a non-secular tome on the subject so I had a point of reference.

Which leads me to…

e-readers
As much as I've personally kicked against e-readers, I want one. Well, actually two, courtesy of Cranky Geeks.

For a while now, I've wanted to go back and do some follow up blogs on e-readers. I gave my initial take on the iPad (you should compare this to Keith 's [of Scrivener fame!] dissertation on the subject) but I want to say more. I wanted to compare the devices and I also wanted to collect and share my thoughts on e-textbooks. Of course, we all know the rule: now that I've said I should write about it, I won't.

So @strages has been bringing his Kindle 2 to B n' B. Having finally been afforded the opportunity to hold the device courtesy of Target, I'm now very much inclined to get an e-reader, specifically the Kindle. Of course, I want an iPad and would be more than willing to swap value for value for my blogging. But the more that I've thought about the iPad, the more I realize that @strages was right: the iPad and Kindle aren't in the same product class. Granted, my biggest hang up on the Kindle right now is that it isn't backlit, thus requiring light to read off of the device; the iPad does not have this handicap. Of course, the iPad's display is LED, but let's not quarrel over such trifles.

Both Tim Bajarin and Rob Enderle made the point that since they have bought their e-readers that they are reading ten times as much content as they did prior to the e-readers. They then went on to say that studies have shown that this is typical for people who adopt e-reader devices.

My plan all along has been to get an e-reader upon going back to school. This isn't about being cool or reading texts on an e-reader. No, this is is about reading in general and consuming the books I want to read faster and easier. Tomes like The Federalist Papers, Atlas Shrugged, A Patriot's History of the United States and Cryptonomicon.

So yeah, I'd like a nice flashy iPad–otherwise known as a portable computer that also functions as an e-reader. But I'll settle for a Kindle given it's price point. I'm just going to bitch about having an electronic device that doesn't have the option to be backlit so I don't have to have lights on to use the damned thing.