Much as I love technology and gadgets, I'm an e-reader refusnik. This includes refusing to read books on my husband's new iPad, which is a glorious device. So glorious that it would obviously be great to get all my work-related papers loaded on to it, and put an end to the heavy, bulging briefcases. However, e-reading is clearly growing in popularity, and I found this Chronicle article in which several academics explain their relationship with e-readers very interesting.

All have some caveats – different ones. The three themes, I think are:

1. Academics want to be able to cut and paste selections into other documents, and the copyright protection mania (I guess) means none of the devices have that functionality;

2. The price point for e-books is set too high currently. My hypothesis is that price will need to be quite a lot lower for these intangible products than for their physical equivalents – with an e-book you're not paying for an asset that will decorate your living room or study as well as an experience of a few hours.

3. The iPad users are more enthusiastic than the Kindle users.

Finally, I think this comment by one of the contributors is spot on:

The truth is, e-books are simply not interesting.

The iPad and the Kindle before it are marvels of engineering and
commerce. They're endpoints on a publishing-and-distribution chain. They
make book-buying quick and easy, and by most accounts, they make
book-reading easy, too. Yet they also reinforce the most conservative of
publishing and reading practices. The iPad is the height of
21st-century consumer technology so far, but the e-books you might read
on it are much less experimental than any paper-and-glue book.

The creative potential of this new medium has yet to be fully explored. When it is, though, e-readers will become far more interesting.