E-readers are being bandied about left, right and centre, and indeed there always seems to be one that will be better/faster/prettier/smaller/smarter just around the corner. As far as I can tell, e-readers haven’t really taken off in Australia beyond the novelty factor (in all my commuting, I’ve only ever seen one used on the train, and even then it could have just been a very big palm pilot). But all that may change, particularly with the Apple Tablet looming.

Jonathan Strahan also makes an interesting point that the arrival of e-books does not necessarily mean the death of the paperback. Rather, they can exist in conjunction for two different purposes. He seconds Bob Stein’s observation that e-readers are largely being used to negate waiting-time (eg. on trains, in shopping queues, before the movies) and argues that this signifies a gradual shift in our reading habits: