Literary Logjam

I'm stumped.


A few weeks back I up and bought myself a Sony Reader; I won't get into the details of why the Reader over the Kindle, except to say I like my expensive tech to look like it came from THIS decade, not 20 years earlier.

I'm a book junkie, and love to read; my biggest concerns were where to store the books I was done with, and when I finished a book on the way to work should I buy another one to pick up for the ride home?

I remember being in a bookstore once with a friend, and she pointed at these two bookends and said "that's you." I looked, and they depicted a small dragon crouched on a desk, with its nose buried in the book. I asked why, in particular, she said that reminded her of me. She replied: "It looks like he's inhaling the books, not reading them. That's how you read, you breathe them in and you're done."

I read a little fast. Sue me.

Anyway, none of this per se is my dilemna. Where I'm stuck is in deciding what books to download onto my Reader. See, Sony decided to run a promo where, if you bought a Reader by a certain date you'd receive, from their ebook store, 100 free classic titles. I emphasize, free.

A virtual smorgasborg, right? A literary cornucopia, every reader's dream.

Be careful what you wish for.

Oh at first it seemed so EASY! Without hesitation, I checked off: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Iliad, the Odyssey; the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the Count of Monte Cristo, The Divine Comedy, Dr Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. 26 great classics in all, so far.

...but now, I'm stuck.

There are over 900 classics to choose from, and now I'm not sure which ones I'd want to own. I don't want to just grab books I'll never re-read, or reference. I can dig up Shakespeare for free online at any time, so do I NEED to own copies of his works? Will I ever want to read Moby Dick again? I should own Mark Twain, but will that be at the expense of Leo Tolstoy? Herman Melville? Jonathan Swift? Charles Dickens? George Bernard Shaw?

ARRRRGH!

And in this, my friends, lies the fatal flaw of the ebook. I can own as many bourgeois books as I want...and no one would ever SEE them. So if they're not being owned for my reading pleasure, do I need to own them at all?

Certain books are meant to be put on a library shelf, only brought down and dusted off in the presence of company. It loses the flavor if you're simply handing over a thin device and saying "See index 3.14, header G". You can't pass on an ebook to a friend, a confidant, a child who needs a copy for a book report.

Classics are...well, classic. They deserve to be treated with love and respect, shelved and ignored for decades until, long after your death, some younger relative going through your most sacred possessions will pull down that ancient tome you've hoarded, carefully wipe the accumulated dust from the title, and whisper to herself:

"...wow, I can probably get twenty bucks for this on ebay!"