The Great eBook Question

Confession: I spend all working day making, testing and swearing at ebooks. And then I promptly go home and open up a print book.

I don't even own a dedicated eReader. My iPod Touch can, when needed, be pressed into service as such a thing, although only for short periods of time. The screen's so small it just feels like I'm reading a regular book out of the wrong end of a telescope.

But that (almost) changed today. After a very frustrating afternoon spent undoing my acceptably-designed ePub so it would look passable on the Kobo iPad app, I nearly walked myself and my credit card over to Chapters. I was angry, hungry, and adamant that I would just buy a frikkin' Kobo, and see if my books looked better or (heaven forfend!) worse on the actual device.

However, more fiscally conservative heads prevailed. Also, Chapters closes at 7 here.

Now I'm trying to rationally decide whether it makes sense to get an ereader or not. I'm not one of those people who has a fetishistic attachment to print books. Or a conviction that ebooks are humanity's first step on its quick two-step into ignorance, starting with the Kindle and ending with a Road Warrior-like future, where reality TV has supplanted the opera as the intelligentsia's entertainment of choice and the rest of us just listlessly poke the ground with sticks. And those sticks? They aren't even pointy.

Ereaders have their benefits, from accessibility to price. But I also live within walking distance from a library, where I can get most of the books I want, for free. And those books that I would rather buy, I can't imagine reading on a device. Squinting at some poor graphic novel in PDF form on an e-ink screen? I would rather page through a thousand mildewed pages of a hundred old Archie comics. So, I will put the question to the masses: Do I go bravely into the digital future, or cling the past of wood pulp and glue? Please vote in the poll to the right.