Having your cake. . .

A printed book is a very personal item. I have books that are 40 years old, collected during my 20s when I had the first chance -- after the force-fed experience of high school and college -- to read what I really wanted to, slowly and completely personally (with no concern with accepted interpretation). Electronic books are public events. I belong to a church book group now. We read and email each other as we read the book so that as we are reading the book, we are thinking of each other and actually communicating with each other. I would want to experience both with an important book: the personal and the public. However, it would be impossible to have a public experience efficiently with a printed book. And it would be weird to have a totally private experience with an electronic book. However, buying the electronic and print rights to the same book at the same time would be like having your cake and eating it too. Why can't we do that?