From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 22:22:10 -0500 Am I the only one to think of Mission Impossible when I read: http://mashable.com/2015/01/20/james-patterson-self-destructing-book/, "James Patterson releases the 'world's first' self-destructing book". Apparently you will buy it in e-form and have 24 hours to read it (with a clock ticking down on your screen as you go). A hardcover edition will be published later. This could seem like a madman's version of Digital Rights Management, but it's primarily a sales ploy. It's enough trouble keeping up with deal-of-the-day pricing on e-books without this kind of speed reading incentive. (Though I think it's Kindle that's now timing my reading and telling me how long I have to go. I keep meaning to test it on the Faerie Queene and see if it can project on a time scale of decades -- I'm thirty years in and not out of the first canto yet.) Movie rentals already do this, but it's easier to project when there's a 24 hour period in which you will have 113 minutes to watch a particular film. Jim O'Donnell Georgetown