In this first part of a two-part column, Jenn Northington, general manager of breathe books, Baltimore, Md., continues to write about her adventures with her new Barnes & Noble nook e-reader. More tomorrow.
 
Many internet memes and colloquialisms have emerged over the past years. Almost everyone is familiar now with LOL, for example. One of my personal favorites is the "fail" meme (web-antonym of "win") made infamous by the #amazonfail discussion on Twitter when Amazon deranked GLBT titles in its recommendations system. I wish I had better news for you, dear readers, but my nook experience was almost entirely, as they say on the Twitter, Made of Fail, with precious few Wins.
 
Some of its failures are industry failures, others are device- or design-specific. It's worth noting, however, that while the nook's successes are few, they are also key. For early adopters, they may even outweigh the failures. So, without further preface, I give you: Jenn vs. the nook.
 
Win #1: The nook has arrived! Two weeks ahead of schedule!
 
Fail #1: I can't get the nook out of its admittedly beautiful but ridiculously elaborate packaging. It takes Susan and I working in tandem to manage it. Her theory is that I may be young enough to operate it, but she's old enough to know how to open the box.
 
Fail #2: It's not exactly "plug and play"--you have to charge it first. Of course, they make a point of telling you in the instruction booklet that you can use it while it's charging, but as a cell phone veteran, I never use a device during the first official charge. Mostly because I know nothing about batteries except for how expensive they are and read too many online articles on how to make them last. So instead of giving in to the urge to play, I went grocery shopping. By the time I got back, it was ready to go.
 
Fail #3 (and this is a big one): While the nook starts you off with a quick tour, the full user guide is in a subfolder, instead of on a main menu. It took me five minutes to find, and I even knew what I was looking for. It says in the "Let's get started" booklet that the user guide is in My Library, one of the first options you're presented with. This is, however, a seriously compromised truth. In point of fact, it's in My Documents, which is a subfolder of My Library, and as the device starts in My B&N Library, another subfolder of My Library, you have to tell it to go to My Documents.… Seriously?
 
Fail #4: Since I am cheap, the first thing I looked for was free content: enter the Daily, featuring regularly updated content from big writers like… Steve_King? Is that Stephen King, inventor of the bestseller, or Steve King from Saskatchewan whose blog now gets a whole 10 visitors a day? I can't say for sure, since the author has a USER NAME instead of a BYLINE.
 
Win #2: "Your New Nook," in which Dave Barry (who inexplicably gets a normal byline, by the way) "explains nook. Sort of." courtesy of the Daily, is don't-drink-liquids-while-reading-near-a-nook funny. I am speaking from experience here, in case you're wondering. So far, it's my favorite thing about the nook (a Fail in and of itself, I think).
 
Fail #4: The next thing I wanted to do, of course, was get an e-book. Because the nook can read free e-books and ePub files, I assumed that there would be a way for me to get them directly through the device. Not true! Once you set up the necessary accounts and do an initial computer sync, you can shop the B&N store from your couch or car (not recommended, by the way), but just the B&N store. Any other book purchasing or downloading has to be done on your computer and then synced to your device. Which is, you know, understandable--I mean, it is their device. Okay, fine. Maybe I will downgrade that to a Flop.
 
Win #3: Once I resigned myself to getting an e-book from B&N's store, it was easy enough. The wireless connectivity is automatic; if you don't tell it to use a hotspot, it will automatically default to B&N's wireless network. I got reception (the device uses the cell phone bars symbol for B&N's network, and the standard wireless symbol for hotspots) in my apartment, the coffee shop and the bookstore--in other words, the three places I live. Admittedly it's slower than my own wireless network, but this is something that previously only the Kindle could do.
 
Once connected to the B&N store, you can search for something specific or browse--they give you bestsellers automatically, as well as a category view. The categories are a little weird: why specify "Children's ebooks" and then "Fiction," when in fact both of them consist entirely of e-books? On the upside, you can look at a list of titles on the eInk screen and browse covers on the color touch screen, a nice dual approach. And there are lots of options to put things on an eWish list, which is just plain smart.
 
Fail #5: The eInk reading screen is harder to read than I'd have thought. In the dim coffee shop, it would have been easier to read an actual book. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't eInk designed to prevent eyestrain? Back to the drawing board on that one....
 
Fail #6: I will save you a trip--the official online nook FAQ is tired of your stupid questions and not afraid to show it. For example:
 
Q: Can I access Facebook or other social networking sites from nook?
A: No.
 
Why even put that up there? You're just being testy here, B&N. If you want people to be happy with their device and not mad that it doesn't connect to Facebook, you need to give them a little more than "no." And it's not just that one--a lot of these answers sound like they were written by an IT rep about to throw her computer through a window. My instinct was to apologize for clicking on questions in the first place; eventually, I left the site and vowed never to bother it again.