When I travel, I always take a book. And a magazine. Sometimes more than one of each, because I read so quickly and I’ve usually got at least two books going at the same time. It weighs me down somewhat, but what else can I do? I need to have reading material with me at all times!

Well, problem solved. A marketing agency for Sony contacted me about reviewing the Sony Digital Reader, and I jumped at the chance! Being able to carry around hundreds of books at once, plus photos, audio, and video? Yes, please! I received model number PRS-505 in Silver, plus a soft cover in light brown with white stitching. Because my computer-tech husband wasn’t home when the package arrived, I decided I would get it working all by myself, I mean sheesh, I can charge a camera and a laptop, and upload photos, right? I should be able to get a digital reader working.

I immediately had one rather embarassing problem-I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. I intuitively looked for a button somewhere near the screen that said power-nope. I turned it around in my hands until I noticed a slider bar on the top edge with the word power and an arrow pointing to a…SD port? I was confused. I actually emailed my contact at the marketing agency to ask her how to turn it on-DURRR. Once she explained that I was to slide the slider bar over in the direction the arrow was pointing, it made sense.

I also appreciated the fact that the USB cable was also the charger. I have way too many black cords in this house as it is, and I can never remember which one goes with what.

The Reader synced up with the Sony site, and then informed me that I also got 100 FREE Classic book downloads! Awesome! I had to install the Digital Library software using the included disc, then I worked my way through an English Major’s Dream Book List, adding “Heart of Darkness” and “Jane Eyre” among other titles to my Reader. The display is organized in a list, with corresponding buttons running down the length of the screen. Pushing the button for a certain book title brings up the title of the book, “Begin”, “End”, “Bookmarks”, “Table of COntents”, “History”, “Info” and “Utilities”. It took me a while to figure out what each of these do.

You begin reading and what you see on the screen looks just like the title page of the book. A small graphic of an open book with a page being turned and arrow buttons underneath is how you “turn” the “pages”. Oddly, there’s also a large round button underneath the screen with the same graphic and arrows, maybe it’s just for wherever it feels comfortable to rest your hand while using the Reader. The font is smallish, but a magnifying glass button offers two larger fonts, although that does limit the number of words on each page. I was sure that I was going to be completely frustrated by the pace, that I would be reading faster than the buttons could turn the pages, but NO. I had absolutely no problem reading the excerpt of “The Other Boleyn Girl” that came with the Reader. In fact, it made this 400 year old book feel more contemporary to be reading it on a digital device!

The background of the screen is a light grey, so there’s no glare from a white screen. You hold the Reader just like any other book, but in some ways it’s actually EASIER to read on it. The bottom of the screen displays how many pages are in the book total and what page you are on. The best part? It has a bookmark feature. Just like you might turn down the corner of a page to mark your place, you can bookmark the page you are on, using a button that looks like an open book with the corner of one page turned down. Brilliant! I tested it out by bookmarking page 16 of the book I was on, then pressing the Menu button.

Sure enough, on the main screen, next to the words “Continue Reading”, it shows page 16 as the starting point. But I wanted to know what the point was then of having Bookmarks as opposed to just the Continue Reading option. So, I opened another of the pre-loaded book excerpts and started reading it. It also took a minute to figure out what to use the second round button at the bottom of the Reader for, it has four arrows and a smaller round button in the middle. It does not, however, navigate internal pages but is rather just for navigating the menu.

Anyway, I bookmarked page 6 of Michael Connely’s “The Concrete Blonde”, and then went back to the menu screen. Ahhhh. So what you can do is bookmark more than one page in the SAME book and then when you touch the “Bookmarks” option, you’ll see all the different pages of that book that you marked. Say, for example, you are looking for quotations from Shakespeare’s King Lear-you can bookmark each page and then go back and find those pages again. That’s pretty cool. Although I have to admit, I was hoping for some kind of central organization where I could see which pages I had bookmarked in more than one book.

The Sony Digital Reader is only compatible with PCs, but there is a free Mac application that makes the books possible to download a different way, in case you are wondering. Thumbs up to the Sony Digital Reader, it turned this die-hard book lover into a DIGITAL book lover, and that’s saying a LOT.

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