Heaven in Hell's Kitchen

When I first started using AOL in the nineties, I discovered that they archived a bunch of magazines I was saving on my bookshelf. No longer did I need to keep issues of "Worth" in order to reread Peter Lynch's column. I emptied my filing cabinet of clippings from the "New York Times," "Money," etc.

It wasn't easy.

I had acquired all that information so assiduously. What if I wanted to look at one of those articles again? Two things were now evident. I could just go to Yahoo with my Netscape Navigator and find anything that I needed, and it was current, too. I had rarely actually looked at any of the material in my library of yellowing clippings. If I needed anything again, I would go to the web to get whatever was relevant now.

I adjusted.

Now I can't imagine keeping all that crud around.

I still have books in storage. Even paperbacks. Lately, I've been enjoying the New York Public Library more than ever. I can use their website to put items on hold and they'll transport them to my branch which is on the very block on which I live. I have a huge wishlist. What am I storing books for? A huge amount of what I want is already stored by the library. I don't need to rent space to store my own copies.

Perhaps very soon, keeping books on your shelf might be just as quaint as archiving newspaper clippings. We already have Google Books. I want to read Walden. It's in the public domain. I can download it in PDF. I don't need it on my bookshelf. The Kindle is coming. (I guess it is anyway. Have you ever seen one? I suspect Amazon never manufactured a one. Maybe it's still in development. Being "sold out" might be just one of the greatest marketing strategies ever imagined.) My entire bookshelf would fit in one gadget. I like physical books. I love them. Yet might I come to deal with them the same way I've dealt with my entire audio library? Practically the whole thing fits in one iPod that I can carry around with me. I haven't gotten a CD out in years except to import it into my computer.

Yes, I threw away books today.

Kurt Vonnegut, Frederik Pohl, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh. As much as I enjoyed them, will I open them again? Well, maybe, but if I want to I could just put in the request at the NYPL, or I could download them to my Kindle (if I'm not still on the waiting list in 2010). Paying for the whole thing all over again would be a lot cheaper than renting storage to stockpile paperbacks. Why bother? Clear up my personal space for more library books!

All those textbooks from Chubb. Do I still need database textbooks? I learned the material, I have the job. Any references I need, I have at work. The textbooks on COBOL and Visual Basic? It hurts simply to discard them. I spent $10,000 on that education. But hey, mission accomplished. I work in technology now. Why would I want to store that stuff? If it were important, I'd have it at work!

I threw out books today. God have mercy on my soul.