My husband and I have lots in common, a love of reading, a fondness for technology and an unhealthy loyalty to the music of the 1980s among them. But while we both love music and are both obsessive bookworms, we have opposing takes on their place in our home.
Partly, I'm sure, our differing attitudes to the media we consume stems from necessity. I began acquiring a sizable book collection when I came to London to university and I've really not been home since. Actually, the family home moved at the same time I flew the coop, so there weren't really roots to return to or an attic in which my academic arsenal would fit.
Naturally, I could have bagged up my literary swag and taken it to the new family home in lieu of washing; but as part of my adult identity, the books came with me. Furniture, clothes, plants, gadgets, pictures and more have been dicarded along the way, but my book collection has always been heavily guarded and steadily grown. Some long-cherished titles have seen the insides of 15 different abodes. There are a lot of boxes of books, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
It's a similar story with my CDs and records. Most people understand the idea of music as being the soundtrack to your youth and young adulthood. I've kept all but the most disastrously scratched or obviously ill-advised.
Mark, by contrast, got rid of his CDs and went digital a year or two before we met. He moved around a lot and travelled light enough that each change of address involved a full car boot and backseat, rather than the van I needed to hire each time.
When we moved in together he had an iPod or three and a couple of shiny Macs which he used to house his entire musical history. As far as I can tell, this sort of suits him - and means it's my musical idols that end up getting played on the in-car CD player on long car journeys.
He had - and still has - hundreds of books. But I worry about the digitising effect.
The one big, expensive-but-worth-it plan for the home we've managed to buy ourselves is a wall of books. An expandable shelving setup that fulfills and - at first at least - exceeds our needs. If it grows from a wall of books to become a fully-fledged library, we've even discussed getting a scoot-along ladder for the tomes we couldn't otherwise reach.
The e-book seduction has set in though. As a gadget journalist like me, Mark has had his paws on Sony Readers of every type, BeBook Readers and Cool-ERs and the highly covetable Amazon Kindle. He still drools over the Plastic Logic Que prototype we had a very early peek at more than a year ago. An Apple iPad has already been preordered.
None of this bothered me in the least. His side of the bed is still a jealously guarded assortment of 'boy things' and a teetering tower of on-the-go novels and graphic novels, science and programming books. He's not digitised it all yet. But a recent chat with colleagues suggested a change was in the air: did I detect a wishful sigh in response to the idea that we forget the idea of bookcases as they will soon all be digital anyway? Am I right to panic?
A year ago I ruthlessly threw out my old cassette tapes. Not just the bargain compilations I picked up from Our Price and Woolies, but the ones I played over and over and the ones I made myself. I'm still kicking myself for doing so. Logic - and my friends - said I should get rid of them as I still hadn't got round to taping them to MP3. I would have done eventually. Probably.
It's simple: I'll just have to make sure we never move house again.
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