The text search is a really handy feature; I find myself using it when the author refers to somebody and I can’t remember who they were and what their role was. Text search on their name, and up they pop–often the little snippet of text around the search term (each occurrence of the search term in the text gets about 3 lines in the results screen) is enough to remind me who the character was, and I can use the back button to get back to what I was reading. If not, I pick the occurrence that looks like it will tell me what I want to know, read that part of the book, and use the back button twice to go back to where I was.

I love being able to put little notes in the margins too.

I really enjoy the wireless access too, though; being able to look something up in Wikipedia or even Google for it–it’s like reading with a computer with broadband at my elbow. I’m sorry you won’t be able to use that feature.

What I think of Kindles and e-readers in general: I love e-books but don’t like DRM; I get many of my e-books DRM free if I can manage it. Feedbooks and manybooks.net have free public domain e-books compatible with Kindle, and I have a lot of those. Baen Webscriptions sells various science fiction and fantasy e-books without DRM and so does Fictionwise (but double check what you’re getting from Fictionwise–you need “Multiformat” ebooks; the DRMed Secure Mobipocket ebooks they sell won’t work with Kindle). That said, I still expect to buy some Kindle books from Amazon; I don’t want them to *regret* selling the Kindle, after all, and much of what they’ve got I can’t find elsewhere.

I have nothing against other e-book readers. I rather like the iLiad, in fact, but it was 1) too expensive 2) didn’t have a big enough selection of books to suit me and 3) uses WiFi, which isn’t easily available around here, rather than Whispernet, which is. On the plus side, iLiad reads PDFs (most scientific papers, for instance) and lets you write and draw by hand on its touch sensitive screen. But in the end I wanted the fiction books and the Whispernet access I could only get with the Kindle, and the iLiad costs nearly twice as much.

What Kindle books I have downloaded: many samples, like _Merle’s Door_, _Three Cups Of Tea_ , _The Future of Life_, _The Counter-Creationism Handbook_ and _Halting State_ for example. I downloaded a sample of _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_ and liked it so much I bought the book.

I’ve also downloaded a bunch of public domain books from the sites I mentioned above; my husband is fond of Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance, so I downloaded all the Barsoom books and all the Tarzan books for him. I have _The Three Musketeers_ and _Pride and Prejudice_, all the free e-books Tor has been giving away to promote its new website, a lot of free e-books from the Baen Free Library, a subscription to _Baen’s Universe_ science fiction magazine, that kind of thing.

Fortunately e-books take no space and weigh nothing.

May I suggest you have a look at the Feedbooks site? They have excellent formatting (also for Kindle), include a lot of classics but some newer stuff for free as well, and are terrific about answering emailed questions and addressing any issues. My own YA fantasy novel Mortal Ghost is listed there.

Here’s the link:

http://www.feedbooks.com/