I haven’t looked into many etext readers — I just use Writeroom on the Mac, which is basically a plaintext fullscreen text editor — but I’d bet there are some. But then again, maybe not. An online etext reader would be interesting, especially if you let people share annotations. Kind of like a library copy where you can write in it. Hmm.

Speaking of Quoty, I popped on over there thirty seconds ago and came across a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (posted by Richard Miller) which I absolutely loved:

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Laura: I heartily agree. Books are always better. Or at least better for reading; for searching, etexts usually trump flipping through pages.

I suppose one of the primary reasons to read an etext is if you can’t get hold of the book any other way; for example, neither BYU Library nor Provo Library has David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, so I’m reading the Project Gutenberg etext. But I suppose I could always get it through interlibrary loan…

There’s another reason which doesn’t quite apply to most of us: namely, people in third world countries often can’t get access to real books. Etexts are the only way for them to get at this literature.

For me, though, I’m so addicted to reading that I’m pleased as punch to be able to do it on my computer as well as with a real book. :)

Are there any e-text readers that let you mark or highlight, and save that document w/ your annotations?