My wife and I decided (independently, I must add) to gift each other with a Nook for the other's birthday. The "let's take a look at the Nook at Barnes and Noble" visit was a priceless one as both of us were deftly trying to get the other's thoughts on the device while having the same covert questioning tossed back at us. 

Once it came out that we each were planning the same birthday gift, we each quickly decided on a first generation Nook.

After charging it, fiddling with it, working out how to use the most basic of features, I suddenly ran straight into something that struck me as rather nifty. I will explain it this way:

1) Books in the public domain are free to download
2) Books in the public domain are 70 years old or older
3) Most classic books are over 70 years old
4) Most of the important books of our planet, humanity and history are over 70 years old
5) I would really like to read those classic book everyone who reads always talks about 
6) I now had no excuse not to read those books

I quickly found myself searching down classic books I had only read parts of in school, or had heard about or have had been told I should read and never had.

I slapped a copy of Don Quixote (Cervantes) into my Nook.
Then a copy of Paradise Lost (Milton).
The a copy of Bleak House (Dickens).

I started reading Don Quixote and loved it.
What a treat.

While watching a movie with my wife one evening, one of the characters mentioned he was reading a book by a French author named, Balzac. I had never heard of this man, sad to say. I spent a little time researching Honore' de Balzac and then certainly had to read his work. I downloaded a (free) copy of his book, The Country Doctor.

I was immediately taken in.
Balzac.
Another author to read like Dickens and Cervantes.
Another wonderful, quite unexpected treat.

I then hunted down my favorite author, P.G. Wodehouse.
I downloaded a book of his I had never heard of, The Girl On The Boat, read a few pages, laughed out loud twice and closed up my Nook a very happy man.

The next day or so, I downloaded Edgar Rice Burroughs', A Princess of Mars, the first of the John Carter of Mars books. My friend, Billy, is a big E.R.B. fan, and I have read most of this book but I have to give it a go again and finish it up so I can get on to the rest of the John Carter series.

A few weeks passed by before I found myself looking for other sources of free, downloadable e-books. Somehow I had missed Google Books as a source of the books during my initial search. Once I worked out Google Books' search format, I found a book I have long wanted to own - Pitching In A Pinch by Christy Mathewson, circa 1915. I also found the book How To Play Baseball by John McGraw on Google Books.

Mathewson played major league baseball from 1900 to 1916. He is considered one of the best pitchers over to toss the ball in baseball history. Pitching In A Pinch is Mathewson's personal account of what it takes to be a successful pitcher in major league baseball - and he should know (Matthewson's career statistics).

McGraw was a major league baseball manager from 1899 to 1932. From 1902 to 1932 he managed the New York Giants (the baseball team). McGraw is regarded as the best ever, or at least one of the best ever major league baseball managers in the history of the game. McGraw managed Mathewson on his Giant teams from 1902 to 1916. Mathewson and his wife along with McGraw and his wife became the best of friends.

I then soon located Touching Second by Chicago Cubs legendary second baseman, Johnny Evers. Evers major league playing career spanned twenty years from 1902 to 1922. This book is Evers' description in his own words of what it takes to be a successful major league baseball player.

A quick rundown of my Nook documents results in this:

Don Quixote (Cervantes) - 1605
Paradise Lost (Milton) - 1667
Bleak House (Dickens) - 1852
The Country Doctor (Balzac) - 1833
The Girl on the Boat (Wodehouse) - 1921
A Princess of Mars (Burroughs) - 1912
Pitching In a Pinch (Mathewson) - 1915
How To Play Baseball (McGraw) - 1914
Touching Second (Evers) - 1910

I thought the same thing you are probably thinking right now - I could go to the library and check out all of these books and read each one of them.
You are quite correct.
I could not, however, carry all of these books around with me wherever I go in a device that is smaller and weighs less than one standard hardcover book.

If I could choose to ready any books - if I had my druthers - I would read the classics.
That is what I am doing.
I like contemporary fiction and non-fiction also, but I think that if I want to really learn to read and improve myself as a person, a thinker, a husband, a father, a friend and a helpful member of society it may be all right for me to read from the pens of those great ones also, instead of only reading from the pencils of today's current best-selling authors. 

Don Quixote (circa 1605) - every one knows that book.
In 406 years will anyone remember the Harry Potter or the Twilight series books?

The most striking fact about this entire Nook episode for me is that a cutting-edge piece of equipment like this e-reader has given me an opportunity/motivated me to search out written works from technological epochs ago. This is an entire endeavor that crosses in some way the space/time continuum. 

I am so glad the Nook is here today.
I am glad my wonderful wife considered me when she thought about the Nook.
The Nook has compelled me to seek out what are generally agreed as the finest works of literary history.

I guess for a man like me, it takes a snazzy piece of technology to help to search out the finer things in life.

I had never owned a Bob Dylan vinyl album, but I now own at least twenty Bob Dylan albums in either CD format or in MP4 format purchased from iTunes.

It is something neat, this Nook.

What is gives me a chuckle just like when I am reading a passage from Wodehouse is the dawning-on-me fact that I now want to own printed/published copies of these books I am reading. But I don't need them - I have them all now.
In one place.
All together.
Bound in a leatherette cover just for me.

I am beginning to lose all of my books.

I think they are being taken -
By my Nook.