It was time last week to upgrade or cellphones.  My lovely bride was sick and tired of her old phone losing its battery power within a day or when she tried doing anything with it, coupled with Verizon’s unwillingness to do anything about it save at an exorbitant cost.  She also wanted better internet capability for when she is on the road.

We went to Costco and decided on a Droid X for each of us with the data plan.  I’ve been rather skeptical of smartphones up to now, associating them with hipsters, urban moderns and boneless teenagers.  Now that I have it, I find I love the thing and for a surprising reason.

Last year I bought my lovely bride a Nook so she could read at the doctor’s office or on the road at shows.  She also has her AKC standards stored on it so she can take it in the ring for consultation while judging.  Fine for her, but I didn’t much like the appearance of the type on the screen and so developed something of a prejudice against e-books in general.

What I found with e-books on the Droid – whether with the Kindle, Nook or Aldiko apps – was that the background was bright, the text easy to read – much easier and more comfortable than on a desktop or laptop screen – and turning pages and going to and fro in the book was very easy.  Stop the app, use the phone for something else, return to the book and I’m at the same page as when I stopped.

Delightful!  Many of the books I’m interested in or have always wanted to have are either in the public domain or are available at much lower cost than a physical copy:  for example, I can buy the Harvard Classics for $0.99 a volume.  Project Gutenberg has tons of stuff, all free and they have an app for browsing and downloading.

So now I’m busy downloading and enjoying some of the books I’ve wanted or always liked.  Right now I’m reading (more or less at the same time):  The Count of Monte Cristo, Hadrian the Seventh and The Good Soldier.