Oh dear. I made a possibly awful awful mistake. I touched something.

We’ve talked before about the choice between Paper and Plastic and the e-volution of the e-book genre. For me personally, I never thought I would end up getting an e-reader. Right now in my day to day life I work with a PC, carry a netbook and have a PC at home. I have a quite reasonable phone that I am sure I could get an e-book onto if I really wanted, assuming that I don’t simply use the various other computers I have access to. There are Kindle and nook applications for PCs so why would I bother?

More importantly though, reading has always been for me a visceral experience. I can feel the weight of the book in my hands while its images play out in my head. I can enjoy the texture of the paper and the memory link to when I first started reading every time I turn a page. As much as the words impart feeling, the whole connection with the book in my hands carries meaning. Touch is a powerful thing.

Then I went and ruined it all by touching the Barnes & Noble nook. It wasn’t just myself that fell for the machine. Both my wife and my mother-in-law now want their own and so we will all be getting our hands on an e-reader.

Why? Well… perhaps my resistance to e-readers hasn’t been all based upon the association in my head of touching my books. Perhaps it was simple aversion to early adoption. New gadgets are a risk after all. Sure there are those who will charge out into the technological frontiers and grab the first run of every new machine that comes out, but I no longer count myself as one of them. In fact had I come across the nook one or two weeks earlier, I probably would have no interest in it.

I have toyed with the Sony E-reader  and felt nothing for it. Had I seen the nook before the 1.3 firmware update, it’d have gone the same way. A cool looking gadget but ultimately passed over. The update however has sold me on what Barnes & Noble are doing. To my mind it is no longer a gadget, it’s an experience. The nook wants you to read and does what it can to help you. If you’re lucky enough to live in North America (currently nook does not ship internationally, but that won’t stop me) bringing your nook into a store on a Friday will net you a free book. No mess, no fuss. Wonder if you want to read that new Dan Brown book? Pop into the store and you’ll get an hour per book per day to read as much of the book as you can manage. Elsewhere you’ll only get some sample chapters. Does your friend have a nook and do you have something they simply must read? The LendMe feature will grab the book from your nook and give it to them for a week or two.

Sure it also does a few games now and has a basic web browser. Sure it can play music and sure people have hacked it to run android apps but none of those ever interested me before. What interested me was how they’ll still bring you to the bookstore and how the nook itself is trying to help you read instead of simply being a flashier method for reading.

I look forward to getting my nook and who knows? Maybe it’ll help me review more books as I won’t have to worry any more about buying a paperback that I may not enjoy and filling my scant shelf space. I will still buy my favourites in print of course, but having touched the nook, I’ve found a place in my library for it.