Jeff Duntemann (a great competitor/friend from the Computer Language days) opines that:
[T]here are three different kinds of reading:
- Meditative reading is reading to change your state of mind....
- Autodidactive reading is reading to teach yourself something....
- Developmental reading is reading within the process of creating texts for reading or presentation....
What kind of reading we do bears heavily on what kind of ebook reader we'd like to have....
There will come a day when the tech is good enough so that all three kinds of reading can be done exclusively on electronic devices. But I'm also pretty sure that a single device will not serve all kinds of reading.
Which certainly seems to be supported by my Kindle experience, which continues to be excellent with "meditative reading" but could certainly not support "developmental reading," which Jeff accurately describes as involving "reading that involves quick changes of focus from one book to another, with occasional dashes to the Web. I sometimes sit in my chair with four or five books lying face down on my nearby desk, the chair arms, or the floor, like bugs."