The Kindle for PC program from Amazon is pretty awesome. It's a lot easier to read than pdfs or text files, the formatting is really natural looking (Gutenberg doesn't have the money to make the files look this pretty) it's hugely more responsive than any pdf reader, it has a surprising number of options for being free, and I'll just revisit that last one again- it's free! And so are many of the books you can download for it. You can read the classics for nothing via this program, which I am looking forward to- I have several Jane Austens that I have yet to read, and Kipling is now public domain, and a host of others, including Lord Dunsany, are available for zero dinero. And several authors I love dearly have work available for very cheap- 97 Robert E. Howard stories for two bucks? That's an hour's work on Mechanical Turk for an incredible amount of return.

Yeah, it's a gateway drug for a Kindle, I know. And electronic reading will never replace my obsession with collecting actual books, but I do like the idea of a portable library, and I probably will pick up a Kindle at some point when I have the pocket money for it. I have such a wide variety of literary interests that it would be nice to go on a trip and be able to bring enough books with me to last the journey (especially planes, I can't pack enough books in a backpack to last me a plane trip) and have a massive selection available for whatever I feel like reading at the time.