/mnt/us is complicated. In mass storage mode it is exported as a FAT format partition. In that mode, I don't think it can be written from a terminal or ssh over wifi. I don't have a terminal installed or use wifi so I don't know. I always have USB networking on and /mnt/us is writable without using mntroot rw.
It is true that all the flash memory is on one chip.
Adding, deleting, opening, paging, and closing books modifies the database /var/local/cc.db and if such changes don't persist across a restart that is an indication the flash memory is wearing out. (New books don't show up, deleted books don't go away.)
After mntroot rw can you do something like
touch /etc/my-test-file
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