The ebook, by the way, is the very good Jester Leaps In, by Alan Gordon, part of the Fools Guild Mystery series, which has an interesting premise: the Fools Guild is a secret society of professional jesters, who in fact are spies working to keep the politics of mediaeval Europe on an even keel.

I'm reading it using Kindle for PC, which works fine for me because I have a good quality 24" LCD monitor hung in portrait mode on a wall bracket. It's like someone is holding up the book for me to read. I can see the day coming when I might acquire an ebook reader, but I've resisted so far.

Speaking as a techie for a moment and not a writer, single-use devices are a doomed strategy. Except maybe for your toaster; it's unlikely you'd want to surf the web and do word processing on your toaster. But there are many years of experience now to show that popular single-use devices—like, for example, a phone— are eventually replaced by general purpose devices which do the same thing and more, as soon as someone works out how to do it.

For that reason I wouldn't expect any of the current batch of ereader designs to survive. The only possible exception is...here comes the inevitable mention of the...iPad which actually had me interested. I might have bought one, until looking through the specs and hearing some user experience convinced me it's a lifestyle toy. No keyboard? Then it's unusable for writing. No multitasking? Do I really want an ereader that I can't also use for writing and email?

Also the iPad lacks the one and only feature which makes the ereaders so very attractive: E-Ink. E-Ink was invented at MIT, I believe, and spun off as a company. When you buy an e-reader, no matter which, you are actually buying access to E-Ink; everything else in the box is dross on the side, only there to support the E-Ink so it can show you a book.

But the iPad is nevertheless a step in the direction of the future.

It seems obvious to me that the right thing to do is put an E-Ink screen on a lightweight, general use laptop, with the E-Ink screen in portrait orientation.

Something I've noticed about reading an ebook: sometimes I find myself skimming the story in a way which I never do with a paper book. Has anyone else noticed different reading behaviour, ebook vs paper?