MADNESS: I bought a nook on eBay

Note: I paid far less than double. But I did pay a premium.

The sad thing is that I added a nook to my bn.com shopping cart on the day it was announced. But I couldn’t bring myself to complete the transaction. I wanted to feel one in my hands, read the reviews, and consider the Kindle. Then December arrived and with it, nook frenzy. I read some rave reviews of this latest delectable gadget. I started scouring eBay for one for which I wouldn’t have to pay double.

I tell myself it’s market research, because I’m an author.

The truth is, I read voraciously and lickety split fast, and patience is my growing point, not my strong point. To be able to read anything right away without walking the three blocks to my local Barnes & Noble will be a treat for me.

Ecco, the nook has been in my grubby palms for several hours. Here’s the scoop.

Bad news first: the nook is heavy. Heavier than it looks. And it’s definitely slow. Pages lop over like a turtle crossing a finish line. I purchased a novel to read tonight so I’ll blog on how annoying the slowness is when I finish the ebook.

Also, the reading screen seems one shade too dim, to my eyes. It’s simply not white enough. It’s real gray. Not light gray, but gray gray. I get that backlighting causes eye strain and reflective light is the way to go, but real paper is pretty white. Open a book and check it out. So why not make the eink page whiter? To heighten the contrast between the black letters, which are crisp, and the page, which is just so gray? It would boost this ereader’s appeal.

The next negative point that must be stated: the buttons and touch screen are not immediately intuitive. They take some figuring out. If you’re like me and you want to open something and use it right away, this obfuscation will be annoying. I downloaded the pdf of the manual onto my macbook pro.

Now, the positives: The touchscreen is way cool. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to buy the kindle, though I parked one in my Amazon shopping cart and stared at it for days on end, because I just didn’t like those clunky looking buttons on the bottom. I’m a dedicated iPhone user. I like virtual keyboards. User interface matters to me.

It’s great to scroll along those covers, like walking along a case full of candy. And my purchase went through immediately. For the record: I bought Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. I could pretend that it’s because he went to Amherst (was he the source of one of those gargantuan donations to the school this fall?) and my beloved eldest daughter attends Amherst so I am biased in favor of Amherst grads. But the truth is, for as mediocre a prose writer as Brown is, he can tell a whopping good story. Sure, there’s no character development, and the diction of some of the sentences should make Amherst ashamed that he earned his degree there. (Why doesn’t he have a better editor or copyeditor, someone who can politely point out the most egregious of his lines, where he’s just godawful clunky and infelicitous???) But Brown has a sense for conflict and suspense and mystery, and I enjoy his work.

Next I will probably buy Sue Grafton’s U book because Grafton’s prose is extremely beautiful, and she can also tell a great story!

That is, I will buy it IF it turns out that the gray reading screen doesn’t detract from the reading experience too much. Fingers are crossed.

One other reason I jumped and bought this device now: I’ve been following the Apple Tablet rumors, and the latest one said that the Tablets, which will feature ebooks (and Apple is making excellent deals with publishers) will be here in the spring. And that they will run $1000. As diehard an Apple fan as I am–one whole grand to read books, more than twice what I paid even on eBay, is just too damn expensive.

So I indulged myself, and now it’s in my hands. More tomorrow, after I find the symbol. Anyone else take the leap that I did, into a molto expensive nook?