A recent jaunt through the Philadelphia airport, with four hard cover books in tow, made me wish I'd purchased a Sony Reader before my trip. I read constantly — at the airport, on planes, on vacation, during lunchtime — so I usually end up bringing endless amounts of reading material on any trip, long or short.

Sony's Reader stores eBooks and is perfect for a book enthusiast like me. Instead of towing around four heavy books, I could carry a 1/2 lb. Reader with a mini library. (Their PRS-505 model holds up to 160 books on its internal memory and has memory card slots for additional memory.)

The idea of a 1/2 lb. library should have been incentive enough for my purchase, but I have another reason. I'd actually tried out a Reader. So I know that the best thing about the Reader is the display screen. It's uncannily similar to a normal printed page. And of course, this was done on purpose — reading from a typical LCD screen strains my eyes after just a short period of time, but the "Electronic Paper" screen is just as easy to read as pages from an actual book.

The same technology that makes the screen so similar to a printed page also makes the Reader incredibly energy efficient. It only uses power to "turn" each page, and the battery allows up to 7,500 page turns between charges.

Stocking the Reader with my favorite novels would require a shift in my book buying habits though. The Reader displays eBooks (available for purchase at Sony's eBook Store), as well as Adobe® PDFs and Microsoft® Word files.

I've been back from my trip a few days now, and I'm still dreaming of the Reader, so I guess I'd better update my Christmas list.