The
End of ListingsThe
End of ListingsSun 4/12/20. Actually the listings ended ages ago, but this little scribble is about my efforts here in paradise to make a little space for some more books, on my all-but-totally-occupied shelves — most importantly, a couple of Angela Thirkell tomes I’d bought when I discovered they weren’t in the kindle! ... If that trend continues, the shelf will eventually be filled with un-kindled Thirkell — this is my second go-round through the groves of barsetshire (what Thirkell appropriated from Trollope) set and written before, during, and after the 2nd world war, and while I am content to read them on the kindle this time, amazon apparently isn’t.
...
When we moved from
beautiful Long Island to paradise,
I took only books I thought unlikely
to be available at amazon, either in dead-tree or kindle versions.
Which was a very small number, hardly detectable at this point. And
after I stuffed away a shelf of listings into a box or two
destined for the shed — the most recent dated from the halcyon days
at ADDS, or maybe Burroughs
— I looked around and couldn’t
find any leftovers to fill the 2nd box. ... Not just listings; any printed personal material —
it’s all gone into the computer.
And I realized — with
a weird shock — that almost all my remaining books, except
on this newly cleared “real book” shelf I suppose I should
call
it,
were decorative — I was
never going to read them, in most
cases I had never read them. 
They are titles like DNS
for Dummies
which I still think is funny, or endless computer language books
& such esoterica I’d faithfully acquire at microcenter over the
weary
years long ago, when microcenter still carried computer books, most of
which I may have dipped-into for a few pages at most.
... Bunches of books about the inner mysteries of DOS/windows,
which I
actually read through, more-or-less, but probably will never peruse again.
... Vast
herds of antique ’30s radio
books, starrett tool catalogs, Popular
Photography and other tech and women’s magazines. ... There
are three editions of Fowler’s English
Usage — none of the
numerous “updated” rewrites of course — which I won’t
read,
but I have occasionally consulted
— at least once a decade. ... I remember
buying one of them on 8th avenue in Chelsea NYC, at a salvation army store
I think....
But
the age of reading & writing is coming to a creaky close, at least
of the dead tree flavor.
And just the way Apple presided over the monetization of popular
music’s funeral, Amazon does the same for readin’ writin’
&
litrichur. ... After achieving monopoly, neither company had any motivation
to advertise their products, so
the record and book covers went the way of the dodo — the presentation
part disappeared, making music & books much harder
to deal with in their electronic afterlife. ... As always, there are antique books and records, and there
are modern day “antiques” — the resurrected LP
market most vividly, moved largely, I suspect, by the innocent desire to
see the album covers again.
... The future belongs to twitter, or worse. And there are weird beautiful things on the web. But the world has changed, and one of the things left behind is the world of books, in the remains of which I of course will continue to wallow, along with all the derelict MLA cranks. ... But I’ve got no more listings....
