Flutterby™! : Curling up with a good 'E'

After listening to Dan expound on the virtues and coolness of eBooks for the umpteenth time, I finally decided to give it a try. The clincher was the Baen Free Library, which I became aware of through another reference of Dan's to an essay by Eric Flint, one of the founders(?) of the Library.

I've always known that I wanted to try toting books around on my Handspring Visor (a Palm Pilot clone) but I had several doubts and concerns: First and foremost, I've never been able to find any sites that have [sci-fi/]fantasy books that I am interested in. Also, I wasn't sure that I would get the same comfort and enjoyment curling up on the couch with a PDA. I worried that I would not be able to lose myself in the story due to the distraction of holding something so different from a [paper] book.

The Baen Free Library took care of the first issue, as I fell completely for their nefarious plan. On their site I found a couple of books that I had eyeballed for years but never spent any money on because I was unsure if I would enjoy them. And I also found another book that looked interesting, but that I never would have bought in a store.

So far, I am immensely enjoying the first book - both the story itself and the act of reading it on my Visor. Precisely as planned, Baen has exposed me to the fantasy stylings of David Weber, and if Oath Of Swords ends as well as it's going now I'll most likely be buying the next one.

Reading it on my Visor has turned out to be more an absolute joy than I ever could have imagined. The Mobipocket reader is clear and easy to navigate. And the size and weight of the Visor coupled with the up/down scrolling buttons allows for easy, one-handed reading without the cramping usually associated with holding a paperback open. There are, of course, less words on each page but I find this keeps me more engrossed in the story as my eye has a tendency to skip to the next page in paper books if a paragraph becomes too boring.

Thank you, Dan, for continuing to champion both ebooks and freely available offerings :-)