E-lit gives rise to fashion trends. Or not. Fred at large in airport.

This started innocently enough when I bought a paperback at a bookstore at Heathrow Airport. Unlike U.S. airport bookstores, those at Heathrow have given up the pretense that your flight will be so fast and efficient that you won't have time to read. They know better. They have 3 for the price of  2 specials, buy one get one 50% off specials, and general clearance specials. They know you'll need distraction. They also have in paperback Special Airport Editions of UK bestsellers that are not even available in the US yet, and can't even be sneakily ordered from amazon.ca or amazon.co.uk for US delivery. The Special Airport Editions are quite large and heavy, even with the paper cover, and it was one of these that I dropped on the snoring head of Himself when I returned to the seat in the "Lounge Area" (ho, ho, you try and lounge there; you'll be in the bookstore or worse, in the Boots sniffing Germolene and torturing the pharmacist with persistent inquiries about whatever happened to real APCs).

So upon our return last fall and after some lengthy and neurotic reflection we decided to get an e-reader, thinking that the World of the Joy of Reading would be inexpensively and conveniently open to us, and for less carrying weight than an Airport Special Edition. Open to one of us at a time, since we only got one e-reader. And since we are already accumulating electronics that outdate faster than single-purpose cooking appliances, we got a very simple one. The world has more than enough ways of getting in touch with us already. If I wanted my books to interrupt themselves with messages from distraught e-merchants, I am sure I could arrange to have my literature printed on the backs of semaphore flags.

You can search for e-lit to purchase by price range, $.00 to $3.99 for example, and it is amazing what is available to a person with an open mind. I have still not discovered how to dispose of something once purchased; I think it's like all those incriminating fragments of first drafts of documents and embarrassing emails that forensic techies find -- in there somewhere are the remains of all the books I decided not to finish now that I am too old to be required to do book reports. So I guess that that wonderful freedom and lightness of spirit I gained when I decided  that I may not have a Permanent Record after all, may be about to vanish.

Here are some of the books I have found that are available through Amazon.com:

Full disclosure: I haven't bought any of them, in E-form or any other, for me or for Himself. But, I am thinking that one or more of these will be good choices for airport or plane reading because:

                   *  anyone glancing over one's shoulder at the e-reader will be discouraged from starting a conversation;

                   *  there is always the possibility of learning something useful or developing a profitable hobby;

                   *  and you never know when or where you will detect the potential of a soon-to-be-discovered fashion trend.