Dan, I agree that Lethem isn't much of a postmodernist, but for me, that's not his problem. I love the idea of, for example, a fairly traditional detective novel in which the detective has Tourette's... The problem is Lethem's prose! You're right, critiquing the long excerpt from CC, to write "I could have settled for the first sentence." For me, his entire ouevre is overwritten to an extreme - every work needlessly exhausting to get through. More on my blog, at http://www.litnow.com/wp/?p=902

Joe, you make a great point, and I think that future e-reading devices are likely to give users a much richer experience, and more power, and enable them to access a wider variety of content types, in an array of forms. But I wonder if the device market won't be fragmented, with more powerful devices capturing the lion's share, and Kindle-style simple, single-purpose devices secure in a niche. The first type, after all, will be more appealing to the bulk of consumers, who like to read, but also want to be able to use the device to watch videos and so forth. The second will appeal to people for whom text reading - of novels, and serious non-fiction, etc. - is a serious hobby, and who value the "freedom from all distractions" feature of the Kindle, i.e. that it doesn't make it easy to do things like browse the Web, doesn't let you send emails or watch videos, etc..