My preferred way to read is to have a physical and digital copy. The digital goes wherever I go, on my laptop and iPad, and is easily searched with a query stri

My preferred way to read is to have a physical and digital copy. The digital goes wherever I go, on my laptop and iPad, and is easily searched with a query string. The physical stays at home, and has all of the advantages you mention. I love having both, and feel handicapped if I only have one. But it's still not ideal... -------------------- I envision a future where we'll have the best of both worlds; a physical book with double-sided e-ink pages. The front cover is a touch-screen running iBooks, letting you swipe around to find something to read. Touch it, and all of the e-ink pages instantly display the book. Now you can easily flip through it like a normal book, far faster than an iPad. Text-searching is a breeze, impossible with a paper book. Using your stylist, mark pages with notes, highlight them, do whatever. A small microphone lets you record audio notes, tied to a passage of text. Everything saves and syncs to the cloud, following you wherever you go. Errata auto-downloads and updates your books as needed. A small camera, integrated into the hard-cover lip that extends above each page, tracks your eye-movements and watches what you read, looking at facial expressions and pupil dilations, to determine what you found most important. In the future if some information it saw you read is wrong, you'll get an auto-email or tweet telling you about it. Every paragraph in the book will be connected to a community-discussion board, where you read and ask for clarification regarding confusing text, similar to djangobook.com. It's a social reading experience, letting the community at-large make comprehension easier. Physically the e-ink Book comes in many different sizes, from small and pocket-sized, to large and biblical. Text auto-adjusts, similar to the Kindle. Battery life is measured in months. Embedded video, audio, and animation is common. Something like that will kill paper books and e-readers, since it marries the best of both worlds.