It is a cold snowy day and I was browsing the internet looking for inspiration, or maybe I was looking for distraction. Just for fun, I decided to search for my second novel, Refugee Without Refuge, to see if it has been pirated like my first one. Before I build the suspense too high, if it has been pirated I didn’t find it. What I did find surprised me—a lot.
I expected to find quite a few online book stores, and I did. Some of them had descriptions in languages I didn’t recognize, while others started with the explanation that it was a book, libro, or Buch written in English, inglés, or englisch. What I never expected was to find my books, even the books in which I have contributed only a few pages, listed in a Medical Books Center. There are many Medical Books Centers on the web, but this one is sponsored by echocardiology.org. You may be reassured to know that this is not a brick and mortar store that has my books on its shelves, sandwiched between medical tomes. The “buy now” links click through to Amazon.
While I am a doctor, I’m not that kind of doctor. My medical knowledge is a mixture of old wives tales (I am an old wife after all), common sense, and odd bits of real science gleaned from sources I can no longer remember. Whenever I write about an injury or other medical problem I always run it by my youngest son (who is that kind of doctor) before I release the manuscript for publication. Even so, I love being listed on a Medical Books Center.
The internet is so much fun! Why would anyone want to censor it? It would not be half so delightful if the apparent mismatches of information, non sequitur answers to questions, or the incredible wealth of misinformation as well as information were somehow limited and ordered. The internet just “growed like Topsy,” and I, for one, think it is better for it.
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