An iPod for books?

[not_the_pope]

I had occasion today to go to the Amazon.com site to get some books (no scruffycritter , I'm not repopulating all the shelves this week. Might take me another week or two.) While there I noticed again the advertising on the home page for the "Amazon Kindle" which appears to me to be pretty much an iPod for books. It's a little different in that the Kindle doesn't have to be connected to a computer in order to download material -- that's actually handier than an iPod in some respects. It holds about 200 books by itself and takes SD cards to expand that to include whatever the SD card will hold. Your reading material is backed up on the Amazon site as well, so that in theory if something happened to the Kindle your reading material would still be available.

This all got me thinking. There would be some advantages to an iPod for books:

• The ability to carry a large amount of reading material in a small space
• More reading material = more variety on demand
• New reading material available basically anywhere cell phone service is available
• Low-ish prices (current books for around $10)

The device will certainly never replace reading an actual book any more than listening to music on an iPod will ever replace hearing a live music performance. Interacting with a book is more than just gathering information certainly. However, as someone with chronically overflowing bookshelves and a life-long reading habit (I blame my parents. Thanks!) it would undoubtedly make taking subsets of my library with me easier on long plane trips, to the store and to those other random places where lines break out. I make it a point to try never to leave home without a book simply because one never knows when one might have time to kill waiting for something. This would seem to make that easier.

I'm just contemplating right now. But I have to admit it's tempting.