Let me tell you about me and ebooks. I love them. Love love them. I remember maybe six or seven years ago my brother was visiting and he braggingly showed me that he had the latest Harry Potter book on his palm pilot. It was like a light bulb went off in my head. He had an entire book in that little thing? And he could just carry it around with him all the time? It was amazing to me. I asked for a PDA for my birthday a few months later so I could carry around hundreds of digital books, too.

I got a Sony Clie and loved it. It wasn’t always easy to find digital books. In fact, I think some sites that I found them on were illegal because often they weren’t there when I went back to download more. Oops. There were a few different file formats and I had to download programs to convert files to a format that the Clie could read. Still, it was a bunch of books that weighed next to nothing, so I loved it.

My Clie eventually died and I started reading books on my iPhone.

 That was a step up, for sure. It took a while for a decent e-reader program to come out. I waited and waited, but Stanza is pretty good. There’s probably something even better than that but my iPhone is stuck in version 2.0 so I can’t download new apps. I’m not a very hip iPhone user. Anyway, this is what I had been using to read books on the bus ride to and from work.

I say had been using because my sweet husband got me a nook for Christmas.

 It’s the Barnes and Noble version of Amazon’s Kindle, but with a color touchpad, no bulky keyboard and running on Google’s Android operating system. The Android thing doesn’t mean a whole lot to me right now, but it makes Ryan and Devon drool a little because it means people can easily write programs for it. Well, as easy as it is to write a program. I’ve been using the nook for a few months now and I love it. People who sit with me on the bus often ask my opinion of it, so I thought I’d post on it because I love it. I think ereaders are amazing, and the Nook is an especially good one. Here’s why:

1) It’s amazingly easy to get books, even free ones. So far it has recognized all the formats I’ve put on it, too. It has free wireless connectivity and it’s fast.

2) I love the digital ink screen. One huge downside of the iPhone and Clie was that they were backlit and after a little while of reading on them my eyes would hurt. It’s like staring at a computer screen for a while. Also, when the sun would shine on the screen it would be hard to see. As in impossible. The digital ink screen doesn’t have any glare problems and it’s so gentle on my eyes. They don’t hurt at the end of the commute anymore. The bad thing is that I can’t read in the dark anymore, and that it’s not in color. The good news is that there are booklights, and most text is black and white.

3) There’s a music player so I can tune out the guy on the bus who wears headphones and sings along. No kidding, he sings the whole ride. He’s not very good, either.

4) It’s so pretty and light. There are keys to turn pages right where you would want them. Good thinking, Nook design team.

Things I’m not crazy about:

1) Speed. I think this is the only drawback. It’s slower than death to start up. Once it is started I usually leave it in sleep mode, so it’s not a big deal. Turning the pages occasionally takes up to five seconds if I’ve come to the end of a chapter and need to start a new one. That’s way slow. The software update a month or so ago made this a little faster, so I can only think it will get better with future updates.

So, in summary, the Nook is pretty darn cool. If you don’t have one, you should get yourself a husband to buy you one. It’s awesome.