Two products are vying for the attention of America’s readers of books.

Kindle 2 — nytimes.com

Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Sony’s PRS700 Reader are small, book-sized devices that feature the ability to upload an entire book, or a number of books for that matter, and permit the reader to have a more personal experience with text than that they would get by reqasding a book on a computer screen or laptop.

Dave Pogue, the gadget guru for the New York Times, has reviewed both devices for his technology series in the newspaper and online.

Read Pogue’s review of the Sony Reader HERE and his take on the Amazon Kindle 2 HERE.

Sony E-Reader via nytimes.com

Besides being able to stuff a number of books into their electronic innards, both devices feature the ability to search text, the Sony tablet even permits the user to flip through the e-Book’s pages via a touch screen while teh Amazon device can link to the online retailer’s vast store of titles for download.

One of these might be in your future… Imagine only have to buy a device one time and then being able to download all of your text books into a single interactive gizmo not much bigger than an oversize paperback.

This innovation might render backpacks obsolete, thus improving America’s posture.