I'm now reading a Stephen King book on my iPad, and I'm starting to feel that reading a catchy horror title or entertaining thriller on that device is akin to being served a hotdog with the works on your family's best china.
And I'm someone who doesn't look down on any genre, believing you can find both great and poor work in any type of book, whether it be a lofty literary release or a page-turning adventure. But there's something about the simple act of reading an enjoyable book on the shiny glass-and-metal technical wonder that is the iPad that just doesn't compute. Bluntly put, it feels like overkill using this amazing device that does a thousand different things to indulge in the simple joy of reading words on a page.
Maybe I'll feel differently if I read something truly challenging on my iPad... you know, a complex work to match the complex delivery system. But I don't think so.
Interestingly, I don't get this feeling when reading a book on my Kindle. In the end, that may be the biggest favor the iPad does for Amazon's device: making it seem quaint, simple, old-fashioned, and comforting, even to those final hold-outs who have so far resisted anything other than ink printed on paper.
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When we were deciding whether to buy a Kindle or an iPad, my husband really liked the iPad because of all the other things you could do on it besides read. But I can do many of those things on my crackberry...check email, get texts, surf the web...all related to work. I wanted the simple pleasure that a book provides AND the inability to be distracted by those things that keep reading from being a pleasure. The iPad would make it too easy to work. I like the Kindle because it's all about literary fun without any distractions.
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