That was my attitude for a while, but my library of non-fiction Kindle books continues to grow, and sometimes I just don’t feel like reading in front of my computer. Sure, I have the Sony Reader, but many of those Kindle books have DRM, and all of them would have to be converted to a format the Reader recognizes. I’m too lazy to do that. Also, while I can inspect my own books using Kindle for PC before I upload them to Amazon, I’d like to inspect them on an actual Kindle.

So I bit the bullet and bought the basic Kindle 4, and I’ve had it for a couple of weeks. My sister has a Kindle and says she could never go back to reading print, and I’ve heard others say the same. I’d resisted reading fiction in digital form, but now that I had a Kindle, it was time to load up one of those free fiction books I occasionally (legally) download but never read. I opened a sci-fi story with bated breath, expecting to undergo some sort of transformational experience that would have me proclaiming, “Print? What’s that?”

It didn’t happen.

I didn’t mind reading the story on the Kindle, but right after finishing it, I started a print book, rather than opening another one of the freebie eBooks. I still prefer to read fiction in print. That doesn’t mean I won’t read fiction eBooks, but only if I can’t get a book in print, or the print version is way, way, WAY more expensive than the eBook. We’re talking at least twenty bucks more expensive, here. I might also consider the eBook if it’s available before the print book, but I suspect that I’ll probably wait for the print version in those cases. I can always find something else to read in the meantime.

Non-fiction is a different story. I’ve never minded reading non-fiction eBooks, and I’m thrilled that I can now read them away from the computer. I also like that I can think, “Hmm, I need to research this,” find a book on the topic, buy it, and start reading it, all within the space of ten minutes. Just last week I wanted a book that was “1 to 2 months shipping” for print, so it was a no brainer to buy the Kindle version, and I’m already halfway through reading it.

So now I know. When it comes to non-fiction, I don’t have a preference, but when it comes to fiction, I’m still a print gal.

Based on the book blurb, I expected to read engaging stories about the obstacles Lansky faced, the people who helped him rescue the books, and those who donated their books. I wasn’t disappointed. Lansky is a wonderful storyteller—you’ll laugh, you’ll be humbled, you’ll feel uplifted, and you’ll want to weep.

I gained a greater appreciation for books as important historical objects that are sometimes the only surviving record of a culture. So many Yiddish books were destroyed during the Second World War that it’s amazing (some would say divine intervention) that any survived. Apparently four caches of Yiddish books were buried to hide them from the Nazis, but only three of those caches have been found.

As I read the stories and about how important the Yiddish books were to their owners—how they worried about what would happen to them after they died; how well-thumbed the books were; how sometimes they were the only surviving words of someone murdered by the Nazis, or the only surviving witnesses to atrocities committed during the war—I couldn’t help but think about eBooks and how intangible they are. Most of the eBooks around today probably won’t be readable in 10 years. Sure, they can be converted from format to format, but they’ll be so easy to wipe out, should any power ever decide to do that.

Amazon has already demonstrated its ability to remove books from Kindles, but that’s trivial when compared to the possibility that a movement like the Nazis could destroy an entire category of books because it’s offended by them. Wipe key servers and confiscate eReaders and you’re done–just like that. The books are gone forever. Can you bury a cache of eBooks that people can recover and read 50 years later? I can’t even read the floppy disks I have lying around. My computers haven’t had floppy disk drives for several years now.

My concern about eBooks may sound paranoid, but given human history, it really isn’t. I’m not knocking eBooks or suggesting that they’re inferior to print books. But if eBooks had been prominent during the Second World War, it’s likely that all those Yiddish books would have been lost forever, as if the communities and cultures had never existed, and the horrors some of the books describe had never happened.

If you appreciate literature and books in any way, shape, or form, Outwitting History is a great read.

Bonus for Canadians: Lansky was studying at McGill University when he answered “the call” to save Yiddish books, so some of his stories take place in Montreal.

As Karin says, since the lesbian fiction market is so small, it doesn’t take many lost sales to potentially close down a lesbian fiction publisher or have a writer wondering if she should quit.

Anyway, pop over to Karin’s post about eBook piracy. It’s a long one…

The Read an E-Book Week site has a list of participating stores and authors. You can also grab free PDF files from my site, Rymellan Fiction, if you want to check out a story. They aren’t nicely formatted, though; they’re basically the Word files saved as PDFs. During Read an E-book Week, you can get the first eight stories, formatted for eReaders, from Smashwords, at half-price (you can get them all the time at half-price by using coupon code HL36R).

On the subject of eBooks, Aaron Shepard came across a job posting on Apple’s site that strongly suggests that Apple is interested in having small and self-publishers bring their books to the iPad, so that’s good news!

Have a great weekend!