I have always maintained that an eBook reader makes a lot of economical and ecological sense. Reading books in their electronic form means that you are buying and creating that much less demand for paper and ink books, saving trees and other resources used in the manufacturing process.

Then there is the fact that an eBook can be cheaper to buy and always easier to carry than the hundreds of books it can contain! Also the benefit of being able to not just read books but, magazines, broadsheets and tabloids on there; and being able to refer to the dictionary and encyclopedia while you’re at it!

The top recommended eBook readers are the Amazon Kindle Touch, the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple, the Kobo and the Sony eBook readers.

Features to look for I am looking for something that has a lot of content available from the dedicated service that the reader is available from. Then I have to figure out whether I want the e-ink technology (lets you read easily in the sunlight) or the LCD screen. Then I have to figure out whether it is a touch screen that I want or not. Battery life is another crucial factor to look at. Another thing to look at is the additional features that the reader has: does it have audio? Does it support 3G? Browsing? Can I listen to music as well?

The Amazon Kindle has three versions: The Basic Kindle (or Kindle Keyboard for $79), Kindle Touch ($99) and Kindle Fire ($199). The basic Kindle doesn’t have the touch screen, but when you look at the price you are able to forgive quite a lot. The Kindle Touch has text to speech, audio books and mp3 support. You can also look up historical references, difficult words and phrases, and a whole lot besides.

Kindle fire has web browsing, a lot of apps including games access to movies and a lot else such as graphic novels and magazines in full color.

If you don’t want ads you have to pay extra with Kindle.

The Barnes and Noble eBook Reader and Kobo are also competitively priced at $99, but they do not have 3G or audio support. They do have an expandable memory slot however.

The Sony costs $129 and has audio support. All the eBook readers have battery life of more than one month (except fire, which is actually a fully fledged tablet and not just a reader).

So clearly there are plusses and minuses in each case. As of now I am genuinely confused. Thoughts?

There are a lot of online resources that can help us to improve our vocabulary and language skills, all for free. Did you, for instance, know that you can improve your vocabulary by signing up to receive a word and its meaning everyday delivered daily to your email inbox? One word, along with its meaning, origin, usage, variations, pronunciation (including audio pronunciation) is emailed to you each day. You can sign up to receive the word of the day here, and also browse to find the meaning of any word. Wordsmith.org has a similar daily newsletter which teaches you a word a day and has an anagram server as well.

Reference.com is a great site which offers dictionary and thesaurus facilities besides a whole host of other features like a multilingual dictionary, games and puzzles, grammar and usage and other language dictionaries as well.

Another free English Dictionary with instant sound is this one, which is a great way to know exactly how to pronounce difficult words that we sometimes know the meaning of but are reluctant to use in actual speech because we don’t know how they are pronounced.

Now another way to exercise both your mind and keep your language skills up to date is to do crossword puzzles and I do a puzzle from here whenever I have the time. It is neither too difficult nor too easy and best of all if you can’t solve a clue, you have the option getting the answer instantly. Not ‘getting’ one can be really frustrating you know!

Of course you should do that which is best for improving language skills, read! Not only does reading increase the fund of your knowledge, it is the single best way to improve language. I have said it before, reading is perhaps the best habit that we can pass on to our children as well!

I had to check out the bargain section of course, which is here; all comics listed here are at a discount and available for less than 50 cents. They also have an interesting gift section helpfully subdivided into whether you want to purchase for a child, friend or geek/nerd comic collector. Mycomicshop.com is also a good source of comic books, and I would think that their bestselling section could pretty much address any comic book shopping requirements that you may have.

Marvel comics, arguably the most successful comic publication have an iconic position in the comic book segment. Subscribing to the Spiderman comics thru the site will fetch you a 50% discount over the newsstand price. They have other interesting combo offers as well.

Image comics is another force to be reckoned with in the world of comics, and they, interestingly have this section where you can read one issue of all different comic series for free! I have to tell you though that the adventures and tales of The Cemetary Blues, Shark-man, Darkness, Witchblade and suchlike titles did not hold too much attraction so I cannot testify to how enriching (or not) the experience was.

Tell you what though, with all this surfing I did to find out about comic books, there is one conclusion that I have to draw: there is nothing remotely comical about comic books, they all seem to be only about a lot of teeth gnashing and violence and people with impossibly perfect bodies! I’ll just stick to Asterix and Tin Tin thank you very much!

This free eBook site gives you the option of downloading for free, all kinds of eBooks, on subjects as diverse as education, philosophy, fitness, business, fiction and many, many others. I wanted to download and finally read The Doll’s House which was an extremely influential play of its time; it was easy to do, after a relatively painless registration. The fun thing about this site is you can even upload your book on to this site to share with others. You know what they say, there’s a book inside all of us!

This site gives you access not only to books (you can search by title or author) but also gives you access to news and public domain material, features such as celebration of women writers and banned books and more book links.

With the success of eBooks like The Daughters of Freya books by email is a concept that is really catching on. Daily lit is a site that offers to periodically email you books part by part. Classics are usually mailed to you free of charge, while you pay for reading the more current books (The Daughters of Freya is $4.95). You can even gift these books (including the free ones!). Thought this was a great idea.

If, however, you are still convinced that holding a book in your hand and turning the pages is the best way to read, there are of course a lot of sites that offer big discounts on conventional books as well. Book close outs is a site that offers up to 75% discount on books. Swim with the Sharks without being Eaten Alive, for instance is available at a 69% discount. Amazon also has a bargain book section where you can buy bargain books for under $5, $10 and $20 and so on. The All Discount Books site promises to find you the best prices for any book that you want, though this site leans more towards providing access to cheap text books.

I think books can be our best friends, and one of the best habits we can pass on to our children is the habit of reading. What do you think?