Books and e-Books

Amazon introduced the Kindle yesterday. Amusingly, it's gotten 2 of 5 stars on Amazon's own web site (based on 353 reviews). The reviews I've read so far aren't even that effusive. It seems to have a few minor drawbacks, but with wireless connectivity and access to newspapers and magazines, this could be the wave of the future. Kindle seems to be taking what Sony did with its reader and moving it to the next level. So why am I so ambivalent?

I think it comes down to the format itself. I love the display on the Sony e-book reader too, and the form factor is amazing. What bugged me about the Sony reader was (1) the price, (2) that you couldn't annotate the pages as you read them, (3) the price of the titles. Kindle doesn't seem to address any of these issues. It adds wireless connectivity so I can download the NY Times on my way to work, but I still can't underline articles or make notes in the margins.

I'm a book person at heart, and a paper person generally. I still print things out when I need to proof them carefully, still do much of my thinking with pencil (yes, pencil) and paper. And I still like the feel of books. The e-paper used in e-books is amazing, I like it much better than even LCD screens, but until I can write on it I'm not going to get all worked up about it.