What ereader device do I recommend

You would expect a one-a-day blog project like this to run into
trouble in December, and this year is worse than most for that.
In addition to the party (and attendant cleaning and
cooking) and shopping and spending several days in Fall River, I
also lost a day on Tuesday officiating at a special election and
I have the December 17 concert and I’m trying to wrap up Bonnie’s
estate by the end of the year.

One of the tricks I’ve learned for writing a blog post when you
don’t have time to write a blog post is to take something out of
an email you wrote someone. This morning someone asked me to
tell them what ebook reader I recommend, and this is what I
wrote:

I don’t recommend any of the special-purpose e-readers, but the Sony
is probably better than the Kindle if you want to get locked into a
single-purpose, black and white device that doesn’t fit in your
pocket. Everybody who’s actually seen a Barnes and Noble Nook seems
to hate it, and apparently you won’t be able to get one until January
at the earliest.

What I use is a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. They aren’t making them
any more, but you might still be able to buy one somewhere. They’ve
been replaced by the N900, which is also a phone, but not a phone
anyone in this country would want to actually use.

The iPod Touch is another one to think about. It’s a bit smaller and
lower resolution than what I have, but of course you can use all those
thousands of apps in the app store. John really likes one that has a
candle on the screen and you can blow on it and snuff it out.

Or of course, if they already have iPhones they should try the reading
applications on that. Stanza seems to be the one a lot of people
like.

If you don’t insist on putting it in your pocket, some of the netbooks
are good deals, and give you a lot more functionality for less money
than the Kindle or the Sony.

The best website for reading long discussions about this is
teleread.org.

I later added:

The other thing wrong with the e-ink devices (Sony and Kindle and
Nook) is that you need a reading light to read in bed.

And I should have added that some of them have fairly limited
support for using larger fonts, which is strange since being
able to read at your preferred font size is one of the major
advantages of ebooks over dead tree ones.