Pros

It’s VERY easy to buy a book. It’s easier through iBooks, but it’s not difficult through Amazon either. I haven’t tried the B&N app yet. Just one click and you own it. And you’re reading. [...]]]> So now that I’ve had a little more time to read books on the iPad, here are some thoughts:

Pros

It’s VERY easy to buy a book. It’s easier through iBooks, but it’s not difficult through Amazon either. I haven’t tried the B&N app yet. Just one click and you own it. And you’re reading. Right there in the palm of your hand.

It’s great at night. If you’re in bed and don’t want to turn the light on because a baby is sleeping or your husband is sleeping or you’re in a tent and it’s really not comfortable to read with the battery pack of a headlamp behind your head, it’s fantastic.

Full color photos! I bought a cookbook through iBooks (you can’t do this with Amazon or B&N) and it has all the same graphics and color photos that the real book does.

Cons

It’s VERY easy to buy a book. Just one click and you own it. And you can’t return it. And it’s charged to your credit card. And you can’t pass it on afterward. I bought two books that I probably shouldn’t have. One I already owned in the paperback version but wanted to be able to read at night with the lights out. The other was a cookbook I wanted to take traveling without packing it in my suitcase. I used both for about five minutes each. It’s just too easy to make impulse purchases, and $10 here, $5 there, and $15 over there add up fast.

It’s great that there are so many things the iPad can do, but the drawback is that only one person can use it at a time. When I was on a four-hour plane ride and gave my iPad to my toddler to play games and watch Kipper to keep him from screaming and kicking the seat in front of him all flight, it was a godsend. Except that I couldn’t read any of my books. Fortunately, my 10-month-old was too busy jumping on my lap to let me read anyway. Still, on the return flight, I took a paperback along.

A lot of books aren’t available through iBooks yet, so you have to get them through Amazon. Which isn’t a bad thing, but the interface isn’t as nice (no color and the page doesn’t look like a real page.)

As much as I love my iPad, I still kinda prefer reading real books. Something about the feel, something about knowing what page I’m on, something about looking at the spine to see how far along I am in the book, I just love. I’ll keep reading iBooks, but I’ll keep reading real books as well.

What about you? Do you have an iPad? How do you like the e-reader function?

Cons