I've read books, papers, articles, and various other things on ipads, kindles, palm IIIs, two android phones, and a Transformer prime, (I think I'm being exhaus

I've read books, papers, articles, and various other things on ipads, kindles, palm IIIs, two android phones, and a Transformer prime, (I think I'm being exhaustive enough). And I completely agree with you. I tore through lots of books on my old palm III, but it was often constraining and some types of material worked much better than others. As a more recent example. In a book club I'm in, we were reading "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (man, oh man is Veblen cantankerous, but "conspicuous consumption" is a bit of genius). Anyway, many of us passed around the ebook copy we had, and at least five people tried to read it on their phones... to unanimous, vehement agreement that the late 1800's style of long-winded rhetoric was too much for reading on small screens. Headaches, lots of paging back to find the point of things again, no one made it through more than a quarter of the book that way. Just another example of the medium shaping the possible messages.