I’ve written here about how much I’m looking forward to the Apple iPad (yes, still, despite the faulty MacBook I wrote about in my last post).

This week I’ve been teaching from two Penguin Books editions, Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799) and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920). I’ve read and used a lot of Penguin’s books over the years. One of my college roommates had shelves and shelves of Penguin paperbacks — at that time the spines were a light green — because he looked the look of them but even more the feel of them in his hands. Newer Penguins have a different link, but they still have the same feel.

All that may be about to change.

Earlier this week, Penguin’s CEO John Makinson gave a demonstration in London of some prototype e-books that Penguin is preparing for the iPad. Have a look at one of the futures of the book:

Maybe I’ll be holding an iPad the next time I teach Brown or Wharton!