I’ve been wanting something like the Sony Reader for a very long time. Sure, sometimes it’s nice to sit down with a real book and get lost in the story for hours on end, but when you find yourself with only small amounts of time to indulge in reading, having a small device such as this that can store a large assortment of reading material would be incredibly convenient.

If you’d like to see more pictures, Engadget has a nice picture spread. As the pics show, the reader is about the size of a book, except thinner, and using electronic paper technology gives you a much more comfortable and book-like display than an LCD-based device.

Most importantly, it will be able to read DRM-free PDF, TXT and RTF formatted files as well as it’s own BBeB format, so there is no need recreate your entire e-book collection in a new proprietary format. And when you’re in a noisy or distracting place, it also plays audio files so you can tune out those annoyances and focus on your book.

Check out the rest of the unit’s specs and Sony’s not entirely unreasonable retail price of $349.99.

It will be available October 31st of this year.