A Coincidence of Wording

John Steele Gordon likes this sentence.

This weekend, in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, I read a review of two new books about railroad history. The reviewer, John Steele Gordon, begins thus:

"One technology replaces another only because the new technology is better or cheaper or both." His allusion, in this context, is to the rise of steam engineering as a replacement of the application of muscle power by humans or horses.

Here's a link to that review, though you may need to get a subscription.

Through some random unmotivated googling, I found those same words in another context, in a story published only three weeks before. The website of The American Enterprise Institute ran a story about the death of the old-style printing press and, for that matter, the contemporary dying of dead-tree books.

Here's a link to that one.

I thought I had uncovered a bit of plagiarism until I checked for the author's name at the top of that article on The End of The Book. It was ... John Steele Gordon. He is entitled to re-use his own sentences without quibble from me.

Don't use it too often, though, Mr. Gordon. It's not that great a sentence.

eBooks

I'm thinking of buying an eBook reader. This would be my latest step into the 21st century.

What do you think, dear blog readers? Should I do it? Are the devices easy to read and use? Are there really enough books available in these formats to make the investment worthwhile? Should I wait until the technology develops further, to avoid buyers' remorse?

I'm thinking especially of Amazon's Kindle on the one hand and Barnes & Noble's nook, on the other. Yes, I understand that Apple has come out with something too, but from what I've heard the iPad is higher-priced and more complicated than what I have in mind. Besides, I don'tlike that snarky guy who plays "the Mac" in all those ads, poking fun at dorky PC. SO let's stick with the narrowly-targeted eBook devices for now.

I'm a bibliophile. And, yes, I love the feel and smell of the real thing. But keeping a lot of them takes up a good deal of shelf space. I'm always picking out the ones to which I feel least attached and donating them to a library, school, or other good home. And then regretting the fact, when I say, "Hmmmm, didn't I have a copy of Lawrence Kaplan's biography of Alexander Hamilton around here somewhere? There was a great passage in there about the old Dutch families in the Hudson Valley in revolutionary times. I'm sure I could find the page if only I could find that book." At around that point in my musings I slap my forehead with my hand and realize that this was one of those books I had given away so generously.

So on behalf of preserving space, I might have to sacrifice the physical aspect of bibliphilia, and advance the easy-reference aspect thereof.

A quick and uncritical check of the relevant webpages shows that B&N claims more than 1 million titles available through its nook. Amazon claims 'only' 400,000 through the Kindle. That may mean greater variety through the nook: or it may mean that B&N is hyping its numbers through the inclusion of various non-book titles.

Amazon says the single Kindle can hold a virtual librray of up to 1,500 books. B&N says its nook can hold ... the same number, 1,500.

Anybody know of any other comparative factors I might weigh? What about the frequency with which these things have to be re-charged.