and can't be remotely deleted from a hard drive to save the publisher from copyright infringement issues

I seem to recall a movie set in east germany where the macguffin was a set of subversive books hidden under someones floorboards.

Look into national security letters to libraries and your credit card info usually has book titles.

@Kevin Not quite sure what you're saying. Explain?

@jessamyn just because you're reading real books doesn't mean your reading habits can't be tracked. FBI has been sending out national security letters to libraries to request what people are checking out. Corporations like Barnes & Noble use discount cards to track reading materials. Amazon tracks not just what books you buy but what books you look at online(real or digital). And all of them use that info to figure out if your gay or right-wing or Muslim or pregnant.

Most just use the info to target advertising, but the info is out there to be repurposed.

To read real books without being tracked you pretty much need to steal it, get it as a gift or pay cash without a discount card.

You're talking about the act of purchasing books, the image is about the act of reading a book (which a Kindle, Nook, or iBooks app can track your habits).

If you want to purchase anonymously, a used bookstore is probably the best bet. Ones with hand written numbers on the jackets for prices.

There are also a large number of libraries that don't maintain lists of what patrons borrow (mine is one) and now that the gag orders that go along with NSLs have been declared not really legal we're seeing less of that. Hear what you're saying, but many libraries are actually a decent choice for this. You just have to do your research.