Michael Norris, a senior trade analyst at Simba Information, called the iPad "a digital photo frame on acid." It's the best description I've heard yet. I love my iPad, no matter what President Obama says, and one of the reasons I love it is because of its ability to allow my reading experience to be so rich and multidimensional.
Right now I'm reading Sue Roe's The Private Lives of the Impressionists on my iPad. It's a wonderful book, but it has no images. So I created a database, using Bento (about which I have written much) to collect images of paintings. Here are a couple of pics which I hope will illustrate what I've done.
The Private Lives of the Impressionists on iBooks, with highlights.
My Art database created using Bento.
As I read the book, I can switch to the database and study the image. I can also put in notes from the book into the database (though not through cut and paste).