Fahrenheit 2007

I have a problem with books.

For a lack of shelf space, there are a gadzillion boxes of them in the occasionally damp basement of Kiko's House being protected 24/7 by a dehumidifier. There are probably 1,500 books down there and that's not counting all of the paperbacks I gave to a charity a while back. Then, when I go to work, I'm surrounded by nearly 3 million of the damned things. (Yes, you guessed correctly if you think that I work in a library).

So when I read that the Fairfax County, Virginia, public library was purging all of the books that people don't check out anymore -- stuff by has-beens like Aristotle and Hemingway -- my heart went pitty pat.

Jon Swift is all for the idea:

"Groups like the American Library Association are always complaining about books being "censored" by libraries. But thanks to Fairfax County's software we now see that no one actually reads these books anyway. I say good riddance to "classics" by gay authors like Tennessee Williams and Gertrude Stein, books that sow racial divisiveness like those by Maya Angelou and Harper Lee and books that romanticize rebellion like those by Jack Kerouac and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Getting rid of George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss" not only keeps our children away from a potentially dangerous book by a transvestite author but also one that is excruciatingly boring."

More here.