Tuesday, July 05, 2005

So Many Books, So Little Time

How things change!

I remember the bad old days - before Amazon.com, before the Internet - when it could take weeks, months, YEARS to locate a rare book. You had a local library, but it had a limited selection. If you wanted to borrow other books, you had to travel to a bigger library in another city.

Now, virtually all books ever written are at your fingertips - that is, if you have Internet access and can use Amazon.com, or Project Gutenberg.

Do you get "Pile-of-Books-I-Should-Read-But-I-Never-Get-Time" Anxiety? It's not uncommon.

Research used to take days. Now you can do it in hours, minutes even. Google it!

And the inevitable question arrives: Why write new fiction at all? What can it add to the now fully available mass of existing works? When all books are within your reach, is there anything left to say, any story yet untold? (Except, of course all the bad and boring ones.)

Please post your opinions in the Comment field.

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