Try a library instead

• John Cook reports on Paperspine, "a Netflix for books," in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Last I checked, libraries were free, but whatever.

Subscribers can check out up to five books at a time. Like Netflix there are no late fees, and members return books in a prepaid envelope. They also can browse by category, say history, romance or science fiction.

But books have some unique challenges when compared with DVDs. For one, the weight and size vary depending upon title, which makes shipping unpredictable and costly.

Furthermore, the number of books that a person can read in a month is limited, while hard-core users of Netflix can buzz through two or three DVDs in a weekend.