I guess I wasn't too serious about the bath thing. After all, there are other areas of a bathroom far more suitable for extended reading sessions.
The interesting thing about this gizmo, I thought, was the fact that the reading surface is apparently similar to paper, unlike other devices of this type. If it provides a comfortable and practical reading experience, with the added benefit of being able to store hundreds of full texts in the space and weight of a paperback, that sounds like a step forward to me. The way the memory-density/price equation is moving these days, it will soon be practicable to be carrying the equivalent of a full-text-indexed library in your pocket.
It won't have the feel of a book, but I daresay one could learn to live with that. It won't have the smell of a book. But then, if in the Land of the Free you're prepared to accept that cheese in a spray can is actually food, it can only be a matter of time before some enterprising company produces that authentic new-book smell in a convenient spray, for use with such devices and also for revivifying older purchases.
As artifacts, it's true that there's no romance about these things at all, especially when compared to well-filled cedar bookcases in a study, complete with the comfy armchair and crackling fire of fond imagining. Perhaps some of us will find it impossible to ever get beyond that ideal.
But our children won't. My kids have their IPOD-type thingies with thousands of songs on them, which will retain their quality (ugh!$#) for all time, and in the face of those I find it hard to get sentimental about my vinyl records, big scratchy, crackle-pop things that they are. I suspect that in a generation or so, the book will be regarded as similarly old-hat - charming in its way, but inferior and inconvenient compared to the alternatives.
The screen size is terrific. It's about the size of a paperback, and the text is larger than on paperbacks -- that alone is enough to make me love it. (Maybe it comes with turning 40? 
