Imprisoned by Books

Christopher Hitchens has an entertaining piece on the City Journal web site about the travails of having an apartment overrun with books. Except for the part about getting most of them for free, I can definitely relate and I suspect I'm not the only one:

I live in a fairly spacious apartment in Washington, D.C. True, the apartment is also my office (though that’s no excuse for piling books on the stove). But for some reason, the available shelf space, which is considerable, continues to be outrun by the appearance of new books. It used to be such a pleasure to get one of those padded envelopes in the mail, containing a brand-new book with the publisher’s compliments. Now, as I collect my daily heap of these packages from my building’s concierge, I receive a pitying look.


Prisoner of Shelves