From what I can tell, this increased line spacing on lines with italics is just an idiosyncrasy with the Nook Simple Touch. I finally just said "the hell with it" and went to Barnes and Noble and plinked 89 bucks to buy one to bring home and test. Something else that really looks awful on the Simple Touch are line indentations of .25 inches. This is probably more of an illusion because of the small form factor and minute reading space.
One can only hope that this model of Nook fails in the marketplace, but it doesn't look like it's going to. Probably a wise investment for authors because you'll want to strike a balance of decent readability on all Nook devices, especially considering the fact that Pubit! doesn't offer a Nook Simple Touch previewer just yet. They probably don't think it's necessary, but I'd argue that it is, because this model is different enough from other models that it warrants attention from formatters and/or authors.
As many of you know, reviewers really like subtracting stars when they read a book that is poorly formatted, or one that they perceive is poorly formatted.
