e-reading I was unpleasantly reminded of the sometimes virulent passions that can be unleashed by the e-book debate on Mayan apocalypse day, as I was sitting in a cafe near Budapest's Chain Bridge, reading on my Nexus 7. A middle-aged English couple were sitting at the next table, and as they left, the man launched into an angry anti-e-reader rant to his partner: how the book had been around for thousands of years and was unimprovable; how if he was given such a device he would throw it away ... and so on. As usual, I was too slow on the uptake...