I live on a small Caribbean island (yeah, I know it's a tough life) where one of the drawbacks is that there isn't a bookshop worthy of the name and whatever books that can be bought are stupid prices. I always have been a reader and rubbish television confirms me in that habit. A lot of (cough) friends (cough) have bought a Sony readers (Kindle is pretty pointless here as they don't allow downloads to the island) and they are superb. The (cough) friends (cough) download books via torrent. It seems a few hours at the keyboard and you can have a very impressive library. Just google for the book title with ebook, torrent and/or PDF and you'll get most things
Of course, as well as bookshops, the other things we don't have here are the internet police.... oh, and traffic wardens.... and an LBS.... and Sainsburys.... I could go on.