Which E-Reader?

The time has arrived, or it will in a few weeks. It's a big wedding anniversary coming up and Rona's going to buy me an e-reader. Or, I should say, I'll pick one and order it. But I'm torn. Originally, I just thought I'd get a Kindle. Why not? Every literary agent apparently has a broken one they're replacing or maybe they've just bought one for the first time.

Me and Amazon go back a long way. Back when they were simply the earth's largest bookstore, I was a devoted customer. Jeff Bezos and I are such bosom buddies that I actually have an Amazon travel mug-- a good one, too. I never even paid for it - they just sent it to me one day a long while back to go with some refrigerator magnet. Just for being me. Ho Ho Ho. I still have it.

So, there I was all pumped up about it's wireless capabilities, it's built in 3G access, when I uncovered the fact that I could not borrow e-books from my public library in a format the Kindle could handle. Yep. No library books for the Kindle, which supports a MOBI based proprietary format as well as PDF and some others. The rest of the world supports the open ePub format, which is how most libraries offer electronic media managed through Digital Rights Management (DRM).

So then, I began to wonder if I should consider the Nook, from Barnes & Noble. The Nook does support the ePub format, but then I can't buy books for it from Amazon, which, as far as I can tell, only offers media in its propriety format. You can get ePub from B&N, Borders, wherever. And now apparently B&N has reached an agreement to sell the Nook at Walmart as well as its own stores in advance of the holiday shopping season.

I've been staring at review after recent review, and these two e-readers always ride the top of the charts, with the Kindle generally on top, but not by much. There's also the Sony eReader, Kobo (becoming the house brand of Borders if you ask me), Velocity Micro and others. And of course don't forget the iPad, but that's not really a dedicated eReader. For books and such, I'd rather have E-Ink display, which is incredibly easy on the eye, as opposed to the brilliant iPad display.

I am so confused. I'm leaning toward the Nook, but I don't know if my ePub concern is particularly valid. Everyone keeps buying Kindles! (or getting replacement Kindles). Does anyone have any recommendations? Ideas? Predispositions? Biases?