Generation Q

Here's an interesting article about how the consumption of entertainment has shifted recently to a consume-later mindset -- from saving movies in theatres to your Netflix queue (of which I am guilty) to Amazon.com and TiVo. (I would add del.icio.us and Bloglines to that list, even though I'm not spending money on those when I consume them.)

I was just talking with one of my coworkers the other day about how I wanted a Netflix for books, so I didn't end up with (as I have now) scads of books that I haven't read, which get pushed back and back because of my propensity for library books. I've attempted to implement a system similar to that with which I discipline my Netflix queue -- where I sit down the night before my books are due and read the first few chapters of the ones I haven't even touched, to see if I do actually want to read them, or if they aren't what I expected or wanted. (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust recommends reading the first 50 pages of a book if you're under 50, less if you're older.) Sometimes this backfires -- I went ahead and renewed Sex with Kings and then it lagged a ton in the middle and I regretted it, but hey, back it goes, no loss. At least this way I don't amass huge library fines. For Netflix, this system has meant returning a fair amount of movies whose first half hour just didn't grab me, and that's all right, too.

Of course, there's always self-imposed limits like the From the Stacks challenge (in which I am advancing -- more on that later!), but sometimes those don't work. Like this weekend, when I was traveling and had three library books waiting at home while I bought more books. I should have held back, but my dad was buying -- he knows the way to my heart all right.