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It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one. In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them.

Earlier this week a price war started between Barnes & Noble and Amazon, signaling the beginning of the end of the e-reader.

Price wars are never a good sign for a market, especially one so young as this

The iPad has sold three million units in just three months, a number likely comparable to the number of Kindles sold in two years

Good old-fashioned reading is on the rise thanks to the booming popularity of e-readers. In 2007, a study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that half of 18-24-year-old Americans read no books for pleasure. The e-book era may be changing that. A Sony-commissioned survey conducted in May found that 40 percent of e-reader owners report reading more than they did with print books. Amazon says its customers buy roughly three times as many books after getting a Kindle. And finally, smartphone apps have re-popularized classic games and toys. The much-anticipated Scrabble iPad app hit the market this fall after the wide adoption of Newtoy’s Scrabble knockoff, Words With Friends. Electronic Arts has turned the classic Lite Brite into a digital experience.

I barely made it a sentence into the e-book I was reading before an employee of the coffee shop came by, stood over me and said, “Excuse me sir, but we don’t allow computers in the coffee shop.” I looked up at him with an incredulous look and replied, “This isn’t a computer, it’s an e-book reader.” He then told me that the “device” in my hand had a screen and required batteries, so it was obviously “some variation of a computer.” The coffee shop, I was told, did not allow the use of computers.