I really don’t miss the days of humping to the library in February to photocopy articles, or for that matter watching stacks of unread journals pile up in the front room of my East Village studio apartment (more than six and I can’t open the bathroom door). Honestly, I can’t stand paper clutter anymore, and I’ve gotten obsessive about throwing it in the recycling. My wife on the other hand lives in both worlds, and still like her magazines old school. One afternoon on a caffeine induced paper purge I got carried away and tossed some of her magazines out. Bad idea.

My wife is right, as much as I appreciate the power of digital information, sometimes the simple love of reading gets crushed like some nostalgic flower in the proverbial pavement crack. So over time I’ve found ways to bring that simple joy of reading clean crisp text back into my life. For an EM doc who has to read all the time its a no brainer. I read more, I learn more (and I spend less time looking for the Tylenol). These Tools to Live by posts were started with just that goal in mind . Here is one tool for that will allow you to do the same.

The other day I came across this interesting article on medpagetoday.com  Mostly it’s just a machine for advertising, but I keep it on my radar for articles like the one below.

Can’t see it?  Are you blind?  Oh yes, now I see it buried down there at bottom under all the banners, ads and other crap.  Enter Readability, the little applet that sits on you browser’s bookmarks bar.  Just click it and see below for the world of clean, beautiful undistracted text that is yours for the taking.  Better yet, Readability lets you save that beautifully transformed. You can read it  on your browser later, send it to your Kindle, your iPad, or share it with others, all without the ads.  And its free. Pretty cool.