Reading with Oprah

We want to think an ebook is a book. But although an ebook is certainly related to a book, it's not a book. It's an ebook. And we don't yet know what an ebook is. We are getting some early hints, though. Oprah Winfrey dropped one just yesterday, when she announced the relaunch of her famous book club. Oprah's Book Club 2.0 is, she said, a book club for "our digital world." What's most interesting about it, at least for media prognosticators, is that each of Oprah's picks will be issued in a special ebook edition, available for Kindles, Nooks, and iPads, that will, as Julie Bosman reports, "include margin notes from Ms. Winfrey highlighting her favorite passages." Those passages will appear as underlined text in the ebook edition, followed by an icon in the shape of an "O." Click on the text or the icon and up pops Oprah's reflection on the passage. For instance, in the first Book Club 2.0 choice, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, the following sentence is highlighted: Of all the things I'd been skeptical about, I didn't feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me. Oprah's gloss on the sentence reads: That...