I'm not sure how it happened, but I somehow managed to marry someone who is a bigger reader than myself. Sue has the ability to tear through books at such a high speed, it's almost as if she's attempting to finish them before she needs to blink. It's rather uncanny, and has led to a rather sizable book collection in our basement.

Once I had discovered this about her, and realizing that she is among the largest threats to the world's tree population, I set out to do what I could.

For her birthday this year, I picked up a Sony E-Reader. While at first skeptical, glaring at the device as if it had scratched her car, Sue eventually succumbed to the paperless reader and has since become a proponent for all such devices.

Seeing as I refuse to live in a world where my wife has cooler tech toys than I do, I purchased the Amazon Kindle before my China trip. Like Sue, I hated the device at first as well, but over the last few weeks the advantages and portability of the thing has won me over.

Looking at it from another angle, however, such gadgets have me slightly worried.

With my Kindle, I have access to the Amazon Kindle Store, which allows me to browse and purchase all their books wherever I am, without even so much as connecting to a computer. I never have a reason to walk into a bookstore again.

And that's the worry.

I love going into the bookstore. It's one of our weekly routines at home, where Sunday night sees us out for dinner and a trip to Chapters.

The effect that the Kindle, The Nook, and The E-Reader will have on Brick and Mortar shops will be slow in coming, but it will come. The question is, what will that effect be?

I leave you with that question today, as well as a wider one, do you have an E-Reader? What do you think of it? Will it replace traditional books in your house?

- Because I can.

Quote of the Day

"It's like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there's this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it."
-Jack, from Out of Sight (1998)

I've never been what one would call a 'religious man', in any denomination, yet the celebration of the birth of Jebas is a day I hold true to my heart. Or is it the death of Jebas? Not super sure either way, but the 'christ' in 'christmas' leads me to believe that he may be somehow involved.

And when I say 'true to my heart', I...

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As I sit here at my desk for the first time in a couple of weeks, my mind is being pelted by several questions. Questions such as: Where am I? Does anyone know what day it is? Where'd all the Chinese people go? Am I a communist now? Did I travel forward into time, then return back? Do the changes in time zones work like time travel?

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