Most accounts of the Kindle seem to fall into two categories: either the tech journalists evaluating it as a consumer product, or book trade people evaluating what it might do to current business models and practices. Relatively few are considering the Kindle as readers, and then going from there. Which makes Josh Marshall's post especially interesting, because he notes something about the Kindle (and the iPhone addon) that others rarely have, and then extrapolates from that to something that hits home for me, as someone who has a few thousand books himself.

Below are some quotes, and then a follow up comment:

"...But after reading a bit, it struck me mostly as a clever novelty. The text was crisp and readable. But the physical thing itself was just too small. Maybe half as small as anything you could hold and get comfortable with like you can with a book.

But then my habit betrayed my first impression. I kept reading -- when I had a free moment, before I went to bed at night and then just when I wanted to read my book. Even at that small size the system provided me what you need from a book, which is that you fall into the writing and forget the book. Or in this case, the imitation of a book......

What I'd intended here, though, wasn't just a product review. I've always been an inveterate collector of books. Not in the sense of collectibles, but in the sense that once I buy a book, I never let it go. As I made my way through adulthood it was while dragging a tail of several hundred books along with me.

Finally, only a few months ago, I purged a decent chunk of my collection. And most are now in storage. But in our living room we have two big inset shelves where I keep all the books I feel like I need or want ready at hand. And last night, sitting in front of them, I had this dark epiphany. How much longer are these things going to be around? Not my books, though maybe them too. But just books. Physical, paper books. The few hundred or so I was looking at suddenly seemed like they were taking up an awful lot of space, like the whole business could dealt with a lot more cleanly and efficiently, if at some moral loss.

...But I didn't realize the book might move so rapidly into the realm of endangered modes of distributing the written word. I was thinking maybe decades more. The book is so tactile and personal and much less ephemeral than the sort of stuff we read online.

I hope it's clear that I'm not of the attitude that this is a good thing or something I welcome. When I had the realization I described above it felt like a sock in the gut....

Marshall is on to something important here. This is not a tiresomely kneejerk, quasi-luddite screed. It's the account of a book lover who treasures the book-as-object but finds himself more accepting of the electronic form that he might even care to admit.

That, I suspect, will be the reaction of a large number of passionate readers out there. They may not want change to come, but they may find themselves embracing it nonetheless. Sometimes change happens despite ourselves.

But it's especially important to remember, for those of us in the habit of reaching eagerly for the next new thing, that just because someone might not be doing the same doesn't mean they are adamantly refusing the new. There is a continuum at work here, and people who might be reluctant to let go of the familiar might just need more time to adjust to new things. They deserve to be given that time, and should never be mocked for wanting to have it.

Especially when that extra time they're taking to adjust may lead them to deeper insights than the rest of us may give ourselves time to divine.