Sony Reader response

For the last couple of weeks I've been using a Sony Reader. In researching it before arrival, I was excited by the possibility of being able to read PDF files and long Word documents in comfort, as if they were books. How many times have I begun reading, abandoned reading, begun reading again and abandoned reading again such matter? Despite warnings of issues with formatting, I was eager to begin reading again ... again.

First impressions upon arrival were deceptive and threatened initial hopes. It seemed rather small. The screen has no backlight and there is no colour, so one's eyes are not drawn let alone delighted. Mark at RSB has said already that he thinks it is cul-de-sac technology and thus ephemeral. It certainly doesn't shout very loud. However, the odd thing is that, for me, it's precisely this sense of a blocked road that will enable e-Readers to survive. The Sony Reader's problem is that perhaps it serves its purpose too well: that is, it enables the reading of books as we read them now, as books.

But what's it like to use? As with most new gadgets, it took some while to get use to the navigation and functionality. First, the ON/OFF button is a slider on a spring so, as one is expecting a click, one's instinct is to slide it across again, thus switching it off before it has awoken. Second, the page-turning buttons are also small and, worse, unsatisfying to the touch, while the other buttons seem to have very limited purpose. Third, the menu screens are utilitarian if not ugly and the speed of formatting and page-turning is surprisingly slow, certainly for one used to broadband. In use, it felt not so much cutting edge as strangely retrograde, the equivalent of expecting an iPod yet receiving a Walkman with a C90 and Fast Forward only instead.

Yet, after a weekend of using the Reader as my only source of reading matter, I realised the expectations set by music and phone gadgets obscure what makes the new technology ideal. After all, it had to take a particular form: the book.

My test run consisted of three documents: a 10,000-word .rtf file, a 33-page PDF file of an essay by Eduardo Cadava on Barthes' Camera Lucida, and a real live eBook of Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions. The latter, I assumed, would test the Reader's ability to cope with a compulsive page-turner.

I read the Word document in a couple of hours. The alternative would have been to read it on screen or to print it. The difference offered by the Reader was a revelation. I did not read the rtf document as a yet another work-in-progress but as a book. While others might lament that there was no means of editing or writing notes on screen, the lack of additional control or interaction with the words meant reading became the sole activity. Patience was required, particularly as 10,000 words equated to 63 Reader pages at the highest level of zoom. However, free of distraction, and because the Reader is comfortable to hold (like a modest hardback), patience came easily. What's more, when the transfer from page to page was slowed to several seconds with the unformatted PDF, patience was enhanced and prompted even more concentrated engagement. And, with 50 pages left of The Book of Illusions, I'm picking up the Reader as if it is a book and, for the same reason, unable to put it down.

Mark has also speculated that the technology might one day find itself "bundled back into mainstream devices (notebook laptops and phones)" which might in turn draw in those who otherwise would not read. Perhaps this will be a good thing. However, it would have less to do with the civilisation of the book than the culture of information: books as tools, books as guides, books as repositories; the movement towards a form of communication that is immediate, transparent, enabling and, ultimately, solipsistic. What the Reader relies upon instead, what it emphasises and encourages, is the face to face engagement with the singular form of the book.