'Fahrenheit 451' now out as an e-book *

Yes, Ray Bradbury used to say that he would never embrace e-books or the Internet. And yes, the book is about a ban on reading and the burning of printed books. But that was then and this is now, and e-books are all about reading. Simon & Schuster released the electronic edition today, list price $9.99. From AP:

First published in paperback by Ballantine in 1953 and as a hardcover by Simon & Schuster in the 1960s, “Fahrenheit 451” has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into 33 languages. It imagined a world in which the appetite for new and faster media leads to a decline in reading, and books are banned and burned. Bradbury himself has been an emphatic defender of traditional paper texts, saying that e-books “smell like burned fuel” and calling the Internet nothing but “a big distraction.”

“It’s meaningless; it’s not real,” he told The New York Times in 2009. “It’s in the air somewhere.”

Update from a city librarian: The new "Fahrenheit 451" likely won't be available through most libraries since Simon and Schuster's hard-ass licensing policy doesn't allow libraries to check them out. (Said librarian originally thought S&S allowed 26 check outs.)