'The worth of a book...'

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Ahhh. Summer days are stretching their last legs, and that summer reading pile of yours likely is a bit smaller is stature.

Sigh. I'm in 'like' with Kindle.

I have an Amazon Kindle. I love it.

Of course, I love tangible new (and old) books — holding them, smelling their fresh pages and ink, gliding through the aisles as I search for what to pick up next — more, but the Kindle is a lovely addition to my literary collection. Anyway, I'll leave any reviews on Kindle to a future discussion.

Sony is expected to announce a new e-reader that will be $100 cheaper than the Kindle. Considering Amazon.com dropped its price on the smaller product, Kindle 2, from $359 to $299, putting the new Sony item at $199, well, that's quite a bit of bank!

One of the current Sony Readers

Yes, perhaps, still too much to pay for a reading platform, but it could give Amazon some healthy competition (finally!), especially after that whole book-deletion-lawsuit situation.

I know not everyone is comfortable — or even interested — in this digital-reading phenomenon, and I don't blame them, but a little Sony-Amazon battle would be pretty interesting on the tech front, whether  you care for e-readers or not. Kind of like if Google and Apple threw down and what the declared victor's win would mean for the industry. We would all buy tickets to THAT fight.

But how will it measure up? Will it be worth it? Is there a future in e-readers? The digital plot thickens. Let's see what Sony's next entrant offers. :)