Agent Palmer

Years ago, and much closer to its 2014 publishing date, I told you about Console Wars and its masterful retelling of the marketing and gaming dominance match between Nintendo and Sega.

The book is absolutely amazing, but the documentary also stands on its own. Since it clocks in at only 90 minutes, it’s best referred to as the abridged story of the Console Wars as they occurred.

Have you ever found a piece of media that works so perfectly in the way it’s presented that you feel like maybe everyone else should stop trying?

Ok, so perhaps it is just me, but “Storm,” the animated short from Tim Minchin on YouTube, is what the medium should be. It’s not clickbait or the start of a rabbit hole. It is a single piece of art. But first, let me explain the animated short and we’ll get to why I feel that way.

Despite all of the incredible television advertising catchphrases that still live in my millennial head, one still has a stranglehold: “The incredible, edible egg.”

Yes, yes, television was supposed to rot my generation’s collective brain, but it seems downright healthy compared to the subsequent generations’ digital diets. But that’s not the health I want to dive into.

In order to discuss paring down one’s own personal library of books, it is important to recognize two important facts, especially for the avid reader. One: there is no such thing as a complete library; and two: having too many books is a binary experience. You either have too few or too many. There is no in between.

So with that in mind, why am I writing a post about purging books? Because I found that I had too many, and so I went searching for ways to decide how to shrink my personal library.