e-readerI hope you’ll pardon me as I jog my ocean air- and sun-addled brain back into something resembling normal functioning with a story from my just-ended honeymoon.

On Saturday, my newly minted wife and I got back from Tulum, Mexico, where we spent a week on the beach relaxing and—if we’re being completely honest—recovering from the exhausting, months-long process of planning and throwing, as a friend described it, the biggest party we’ll ever throw.

In anticipation of this rare week-long block of reading time (electricity is limited in Tulum and, as a result, so, gloriously, are televisions), I’d loaded up my Nook Simple Touch with another rare treat: fiction.

I’ve found my reading habits have tended toward nonfiction in recent years, and, in the last year or so, toward my tablet (at home) or phone (in transit) and away from fiction and my trusty E Ink reader. But last week, as I was loath to get sand up in my iPad’s… let’s call them delicate areas, and wary of trying to read from that back-lit screen under the Yucatan’s intense glare—not to mention that I was anxious to get caught up in an epic tale—the Nook and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings won the dias day.

So I found it pleasantly serendipitous to return to this piece in my trusty, beloved Consumer Reports5 reasons to buck the tide and buy an e-book reader.

Of Paul Reynolds’ five reasons, No. 5 resonated with me the most:

A focus on reading can actually be a plus. Device versatility has its downsides. Personally, I “e-read” on multiple devices, taking advantage of the fact that Nook and Kindle e-books sync across platforms, so I can resume reading on my tablet where I left off on my e-reader. But I read with fewer interruptions (so more rapidly) on a reader—since I can’t as easily distract myself by checking e-mail or news headlines with an tap or two.

I’ve been bemoaning of late that I seem to have less time to read than ever, but I found that with my tablet tucked safely away in my suitcase, I experienced a burst of reading unlike any I’ve had in some time—precisely because there was no email to check, no Words With Friends to play, no Facebook comments to “like.” (I’ve recently found myself wishing for that old college tradition of a “reading week” between the end of classes and the start of exams.)

To Reynolds’ five reasons, I’d add a sixth: My Nook was surprisingly impervious to humid air and  sunscreen-slicked hands. I can’t say the same for the now-smudged and -warped issues of Harper‘s, The Economist and Men’s Health I also took to the beach.

Here’s hoping, now that I’m back in Philadelphia, that I can continue to turn to my Nook to block out those great hours of reading.

* This post originally appeared on the website of Book Business magazine, a TeleRead sister publication.

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