Judging a Book Without Its Cover
 

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        By DOREEN CARVAJAL

           IT was Tuesday evening on the 6:26 in a Long
           Island-bound train crowded with weary commuters
        lurching in the aisles, elbow to elbow, briefcase to
        briefcase. Unfolding a newspaper was unthinkable.
        Flipping through a hardcover might form an instant but
        awkward book club of strangers.

                             So I rummaged in my purse
                             in search of something for
                             just such a literary
                             emergency. Even in a
                             rush-hour commute there was
                             ample reading room for a
                             novel stored in a Palm Pilot,
                             which is smaller than a
                             paperback yet mighty enough
                             to carry 12 digital titles.

                             I turned to the beginning of
                             Stephen King's novel "The
                             Girl Who Loved Tom
        Gordon," which glowed from a screen a littler smaller
        than a poker card and contained 1,409 miniature pages.
        The train rumbling through its stops drowned out the
        faint cicada-like clicking -- the digital equivalent of a
        page-turner.

        For more than a year, I've been experimenting with
        electronic books in a personal quest to judge a book by
        its lack of a cover. I embarked with baggage that would
        sag a bookshelf: words were made to be inked. And the
        ultimate test of pleasure reading was the plump couch
        test. Could you curl up with a pillow and good byte?

        The various e-book devices felt like solid hardcovers
        in hand, but the first generation seemed stiff to me,
        somehow nerdy and bulky. The cold gray screens of
        text didn't offer the hypnotic calm of vanilla rag paper.

        Reading books on a PC felt too much like I was
        working, chained upright to a desk. There was a reason
        why there was a paperback revolution. I was drawn to
        the devices that offered one of the basic elements of
        pocketbook design: portability.

        My first attempt was a mystery about a rakish serial
        killer, which Penguin Putnam had offered as a teaser in
        an early version of the Rocket eBook. The
        monochromatic text and page of the reading device
        already seems a little primitive given the plans to
        transform it by Gemstar. Since Penguin sent out only
        one chapter, I still don't know whether the book was a
        click-turner.

        I have ordered titles from Zéro Heure in Paris, a new
        electronic publisher that delivers books in e-mail
        attachments, which can be read on a computer or
        printed out. The books are the latest from France and
        discounted as much as 30 percent.

        I've charged brief works of electronica from the
        bookseller Fatbrain.com -- which has now transformed
        into MightyWords. One was an illustrated children's
        book in the Chocolate-Covered Banana series featuring
        a monkey named Tyco, which I submitted to a tough
        critic, my 3-year-old daughter. There was something
        gloriously democratic about ordering a title simply
        written and posted by three children from the San
        Diego area. Anyone can publish on MightyWorks -- for
        better or worse.

        But it was Stephen King who forced me to squeeze a
        book into my Palm Pilot. His e-novella, "Riding the
        Bullet," was unavailable from Amazon.com,
        Barnesandnoble.com and the other booksellers that
        were overwhelmed by demand on the first day that the
        title was offered free.

        To my great surprise, it was not uncomfortable to read
        a book by clicking through page after page on the Palm
        Pilot's tiny screen, which displays about one paragraph
        in large type. It takes a while to grow accustomed to
        devouring a novel on a device more commonly used to
        scan telephone numbers and calendars. The contrast of
        the text and page on the screen seemed too dark for
        hours of reading. It was also a laborious effort to peck
        out notes on its tiny keyboard.

        But on the other hand, I could enlarge the text, making it
        much easier on my eyes. By thinking of the small screen
        of text as something akin to a newspaper column, I
        could adjust to the notion of reading this way. Still, my
        mind wandered, and at night on the couch I reached
        gratefully for a hardcover.

        In recent weeks, Microsoft has splashily released its
        own version of an electronic reader, which illustrates
        the relentless if not rapid progress taking place in this
        market. The text is in color with much clearer
        resolution than the less expensive Palm Pilot, but the
        price is daunting for a charter member of the paperback
        generation: $500.

        Still to come are Gemstar's new prototypes of the
        eRocket book and the SoftBook, which it is
        manufacturing for the fall in partnership with the French
        electronics maker Thomson Multimedia. Henry Yuen,
        Gemstar's chief executive, is visiting New York
        publishing suites with the second-generation prototype
        of the SoftBook, a slim 22-ounce version featuring a
        paperback-sized screen, color text, a 50-book capacity
        and a stylus that can jot down and erase notes. The
        price hasn't been set yet.

        Till then I content myself with Microsoft's offering.
        Standing on the train, I set aside my Palm Pilot and
        check through the Microsoft bookshelf, clicking through
        the Hans Christian Andersen's classics "The Emperor's
        New Clothes" and "The Match Girl."

        The naked emperor failed to maintain my attention, but
        perhaps that story seemed all too familiar. The true test
        of e-book devices is whether a reader can plunge into
        another world with abandon. And for a few pages that
        retreat came with the scenes of the little match girl,
        who gave me a chill as I imagined her dying on a street
        corner, her frozen hands gripping spent matches.

        I had forgotten the device in my hand and no longer
        heard the burr of strange clicks.