NEWS FLASH: I caved and bought a Nook this week. I had to. I’m a social creature who loves hanging out in bookstores and I think Barnes & Noble has come up with a brilliant angle to supporting brick-and-mortar stores.
When you go into a Barnes & Noble store with your Nook you can read any eBook they carry for an hour each day. Exactly, a splendid excuse to hang out and drink coffee and be around book people. (Some of us also watch to see what kind of people are reaching for what kind of books, mainly because we will always be booksellers and editors at heart. I will be the woman with a Nook and a book and a magazine in hand.)
Amazon’s Kindle first brought me to the eReading world but I soon found out that Kindle is a “closed” system, which means the books there are formatted in a type of file which cannot be read on any other device. Now understand, you can go to Amazon (just as you can to Barnes & Noble) to download software so you can read Kindle titles on different kinds of electronic devices, but most public libraries offer books eBooks only in ePub form, which the Nook can readily read and the Kindle cannot.
Also, Nook now has color, too, so if you are into art and glossy magazines this is an excellent reader.
And last but not least, know that Barnes & Noble offers refurbished Nooks at a discounted price.
