My e-reader arrived on Wednesday, so my experience so far is limited, but I have a few observations. First, a long setup.

I haven’t read printed books in some time. Aside from a few keepsake books that have special personal value, or copies that get a fresh reading regularly, I’ve largely divested my book collection, giving hundreds of volumes to charity and the public library. I don’t feel comfortable with the resources required to create a physical book, and I’ve downsized my stuff and my personal space to support a more compact, (hopefully) environmentally friendly lifestyle. While the creation and consumption of digital content also has an environmental impact, I feel marginally more comfortable with that, and I purchase carbon offsets.

My reading, up to now, has been listening, mainly: audiobooks. I have a monthly subscription with Audible.com, and I’ve listened to dozens of audiobooks while in the gym or out walking. (Disclosure: I have a relationship with Audible, as a contract narrator.)

Audiobooks have a number of advantages, but there are some genres that don’t work for me in the audiobook format. Intricate histories are hard for me to follow, probably because I listen to audiobooks while doing other activities, like working out. And Audible’s library currently offers around 50,000 products. The bestsellers are there, and so are the classics, but the catalog isn’t deep, and I’ve been adding more books to my Amazon wishlist in the past two years, reluctantly conceding that I’d need to buy them in book form.

So, enough scene-setting. A few observations about the Kindle 2:

• * Amazon’s store currently offers about 250,000 titles. The first thing I noticed was that every book I’ve dumped into my wishlist is available for the Kindle. It’s surprising how deep a 250,000 volume “library” can be.
• * The buy-and-download-instantly model is almost an exact replica of the iTunes experience, by which I mean, it’s perfect. Buying books is so simple, delivery is effortless, and the result is: I spent $50 on books in the first 20 minutes of Kindle ownership; that makes it dangerous, too, for people like me who like to consume books.
• * To think of the Kindle as simply an e-book reader is to misunderstand the power of the device and its capabilities. Andy Ihnatko still has the best piece on the Kindle, and its true killer app: the Sprint EVDO connection, coupled with a (simple) web browser. This is a simple Internet device, and there’s a lot of power in that.
• * The new design is sleeker, cooler, still not perfect. The five-way toggle switch is annoying from an ergonomic standpoint, the “next page” buttons closer to the bottom of the device than I’d like (I hold it closer to the top, for some reason.) E-ink has to flash the page to display it, and that, combined with the delay is bothersome, but not greatly so. After reading for several minutes, you kind of forget about it.
• The experience of reading on a Kindle is immersive, more so than I expected. It takes some time but the device does seem to melt into the background, in the way that a physical book does. The interface doesn’t strain my eyes, and the reader is light enough to hold and substantial enough to feel like a small book.

I like physical books, but I’m not interested in turning them into a fetish. They aren’t inherently better or more pure than any other kind of book; that’s entirely a matter of personal preference, and I refuse to debate anyone over their personal choice in this matter.

For me, the Kindle is a new way to transport and enjoy books and it has a lot of potential as an always connected Internet device (within Sprint territory).

Note: I bought the Kindle 2 with my own money. I don’t accept review copies of items; actually, I’m not an A-list blogger, so I never get offered review copies of anything.