I agree - I hope someone figures this out soon. Using the slide-out manual that Probex posted does help somewhat (in that you can leave the book open to the page you want but still get it out of the way (see this thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=112944 )
However, I still haven't figured out how to get the phantom/invisible background to retract like the rest of the manual, so you still wind up having to close the bokk to get at the controls underneath it and, voila, you're back to the problem of losing your place when you open it back up
There must be a way to do this, and I would think that you should be able to change the order of the sections so it would open up with either Japanese ships or merchants first (and the other one second), but I've only played around some with moving the whole book around on the screen and I don't know the secrets of the inside workings of the book at all. Hopefully, one of the real modding gurus around here will get bored waiting for the patch and will take a crack at this
