On Tangibility....

Last night I was thinking about how much I spend at Barnes and Nobles and Amazon.com. I'd say, with each paycheck, I usually allocate at least $50 to books and music.

This is an improvement from high school when 95% of my pay check from being a hostess at Houlihan's went to CD's and band t-shirts. The last five bucks were for giving my sky blue Ford Escort a quarter of a tank of gas (because it would just pain me too much to spend money on actually filling it....)

This Christmas break I admit I read my first book on the Kindle Fire. I had to carefully choose which book it was going to be - I ended up with Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her because I am not a huge fan and I wouldn't mind NOT owning a copy of his book.

A lot of people have asked me why I continue to stock my shelves with books when I have the option of using the Kindle Fire HD. And I guess, call me old-fashioned, it's the TANGIBILITY of stuff like books I just love so much.

Most of my books have a story of their own. My book collection and collection of Nirvana import CD's and cassettes are probably the only materialistic things in the world I truly would mourn if lost. In my itty bitty Williamsburg apartment, my book case is the one space that screams at you with details about who I am and where I have been.

I have a full two shelves dedicated to British history, one full section to Oscar Wilde, several Norton Anthologies with huge USED stickers on them, a rack of my favorite DVDs which include the Unsolved Mysteries boxed set and a documentary on wolves and every Jimmy Stewart/Hitchcock collaboration. Stuffed in between are English translations of Tarjei Vessas's The Birds (because, you know....I need 50 copies of an out of print book) and anthropological studies on the immaturity of people who live in Brooklyn (yes, there are studies of this.)

I can look at my copy of The Catcher in the Rye and see passages I highlighted from the first time I read it at age 12. My Norton Anthology of Poetry has notes written in the margins about every boyfriend I've ever had and how he applies to one poem or another. My copy of Wuthering Heights I stole from my 10th grade classroom because I loved it so much that I couldn't bear not to have it.

There are pictures of my childhood cocker spaniel, Otto, and little boxes of high quality stationary.

I admit to now a days owning an IPod (it's a TEAL shuffle, ok?!) but I really miss the art of owning an album. Remember when you first bought a CD and because you had invested your own money in it you listened to that album first song to last? I only recently started doing that with bands I like such as Woods of Ypres and The Sword and Alcest.

Long before the days of Ebay and Amazon, it was actually DIFFICULT to acquire things like import CDs. For years I hunted for Nirvana's Outcesticide 3 after tracking down all the rest. Where did I find it? In the back of a bin in a used CD store in Wildwood, New Jersey called COOKIES. To this day, I still go back to that store and recall the absolute joy I had when I spied that CD in the rack.

It makes me sad when I hear people say they just want to read on the Kindle now or listen to music on the computer. Because things are so easily accumulated I don't think they are as appreciated, you know???

·  What was the first album you ever bought? “Nevermind” Nirvana

·  What song always gets you dancing? “Glad You Came” by The Wanted

·  What song takes you back to your childhood? “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode

·  What is your perfect love song? “In My Life” John Lennon

·  What song would you want at your funeral? “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.”

·  Time for an encore. One last song that makes you, you. “You Know You’re Right” by Nirvana