The e-reading debate continues, but there are some very interesting views cropping up in some very interesting places. Wall Street Journal’s Steven Berlin Johnson poses big theories about how e-books will essentially change the way that we read and how readers interact. In “How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write,” Johnson discusses impulse buying e-books. While I think he has a solid point about digital readers lending more toward impulse buying, I am skeptical that it will truly impact book sales in the astronomical way he suggests. I’ve been known to leave a book store with an armload of books and my husband carrying an armload of books, just because I happened to wander around the place long enough. I’m also a music junkie, but my iPod certainly did not make me go on a iTunes buying binge. In fact, iTunes turned me off so much so that I go out of my way to buy my music elsewhere and even in CD format. I seem to have those same feelings about digital reading devices.

Johnson also pontificates about where e-books might affect how we talk about books, blog about books, and even how the books are written. His ideas include the idea of tagging book passages or making e-books SEO oriented. Using the transition of Web Logs to blogging, he theorizes that “With books becoming part of this universe, “booklogs” will prosper, with readers taking inspiring or infuriating passages out of books and commenting on them in public. Google will begin indexing and ranking individual pages and paragraphs from books based on the online chatter about them.”

Fellow book bloggers and book blog readers, does that strike you as sort of redundant?

In response to Steven Berlin Johnson’s essay, the New Yorker posted “The Social Dilemma of e-Reading,” which I really enjoyed reading. In the post LaForce says, “books are sexy; electronic reading devices are not.” I have to agree. LaForce quotes Michael Tamblyn: “No one holding a Kindle at Starbucks has ever been asked for their phone number.” Indeed. Tamblyn has a lot more interesting things to say about the digital revolution in the book world in this video.

Where do you stand in the e-book debate? I know a couple of you have digital readers that you love. I’d love to hear all your opinions.