I’ve written here about how much I’m looking forward to the Apple iPad (yes, still, despite the faulty MacBook I wrote about in my last post).
This week I’ve been teaching from two Penguin Books editions, Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799) and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920). I’ve read and used a lot of Penguin’s books over the years. One of my college roommates had shelves and shelves of Penguin paperbacks — at that time the spines were a light green — because he looked the look of them but even more the feel of them in his hands. Newer Penguins have a different link, but they still have the same feel.
All that may be about to change.
Earlier this week, Penguin’s CEO John Makinson gave a demonstration in London of some prototype e-books that Penguin is preparing for the iPad. Have a look at one of the futures of the book:
Maybe I’ll be holding an iPad the next time I teach Brown or Wharton!
I was just looking up this iPad! It looks very cool but I have to do more research.
I am not sure I would let a very young child use it!
Also, I don’t think anything can replace a book for me. I love the smell.
I think of my Kindle and the iPad not as book replacements but as complements: another way to consume text. I am happy to read a novel either In book form or on the Kindle these days, and I’ll admit that I’ve bought sone books in both forms: I wish Amazon would offer a special combo deal for such cases. What I am hoping is that the iPad will prove to revolutionize the magazine industry: I already subscribe to my computer magazines in digital form, but a laptop isn’t really a good vehicle for bedtime reading or reading on the go.