Back in Oct. 2008, I bought an Amazon Kindle and blogged about it: Northfield Kindle owners: saving trees or destroying Division St. bookstores?

There were three bookstores downtown then: River City Books, Bookfellows, and Monkey See Monkey Read. Only Jerry Bilek’s Monkey See Monkey Read remains.

Not that I feel completely responsible for the demise of two of our bookstores, but I was glad to see this in last week’s NY Times: Stores See Google as Ally in E-Book Market

Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.

I’m a regular e-book buyer and things got even cooler this week with a new Kindle app that allows me to read the same books on my Android phone that I’ve already purchased for my Kindle… and synchronize how far along I am in the book in both devices. Very helpful.