Short Version:
I like the kinds of books you see listed here, and use this site primarily as a convenient way to list and categorize them. All else is secondary.
Long Version:
Warning: The following will take longer to read than today's Marmaduke. Proceed at your own risk, but rest assured that no animals were harmed in the production thereof. Indeed, three were made most content during the production phase.
There are around 10,000 books published each year in the U.S. - in just the fiction category. That's about one per hour. The trick is to find the ones in the smaller percentage category of Sturgeon's Law. Fortunately for me, there are a whole lot of these to be found in the bargain racks at Half Price Books. I'll leave it to others to relate this to the qualities of most writers and readers, e.g. the highly entertaining "101 Reasons to Stop Writing" weblog.
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This shelf goes to 11. My only regret is leaving all my Doc Savages back in Ohio. Crikey, almost finished!
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Now I'm finished. I did the cataloging thing because I had to box up all (well, most) of my beloved library and put them in storage due to a change in coordinates. I also did some categorizing until something shinier distracted me. Feel free to engage in the friendship thing, although be fairly warned that I'm notoriously bad at maintaining email exchanges (although my parents haven't disowned me quite yet). I'm not good at the phone thing, either. Go figure. Perhaps it's the significant loody moner component of my psyche (which one might have already inferred from the book count). In person I'm reasonably engaging with people, albeit moreso with dogs, although my location - which can be literarily described as the middle of nowhere - makes the literary confab thing a bit tricky. Anyhow, if you're ever in town, I can be found at Duddley's Draw damned near every weekday between 11:30 AM and 1:30 PM. Oh, and I'm not nearly as hirsute as my avatar.
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It seems a FAQ is in order:
Why so many books? I'm 48 and have been interested in and reading about many things since I was around 5 or 6. I horde because of the increasingly nasty exigencies of the book industry, wherein the very recent and popular displaces pretty much all else, with the relatively unusual stuff I prefer in the latter category quickly becoming not unlike hen's teeth. Thus, I buy now and horde rather than wait until later and either win the lottery or carefully study "It Takes a Thief" reruns. There's also an obsessive/compulsive component prominent in the mix.
How many have you read? It's probably somewhere around 35-40%, with the rest saved up for that magical day when I'll have nothing else to do but read. (I'm also stocking up on reading glasses to avoid one of those nasty post-holocaust Burgess Meredith moments.) For the really curious, I've probably read about 500 or so other books that are not listed here because I don't currently own copies.
How do you/I find time to read so many books? The average person in the USofA watches television 4-5 hours per day. Stop being average. On a more philosophical note, we generally choose what we want to do, with each choice to do one thing limiting our time and choices for doing other things. For example, if one chooses to have 5 children, and further chooses for each of them to engage in a dozen extracurricular activities in and out of school, then one has chosen to be a chauffeur for at least 20 years. Choices have consequences, and the more you ponder those consequences now, the less you'll have to regret/bemoan/etc. later. In my case, I've found that the less you let others influence your decisions, the fewer regrets you have down the line. And unless you're serving a life sentence without parole in prison, you have more choices than you're allowing yourself to think you do. A self-constructed mental prison can be every bit as confining as one made of steel.
Stop pontificating already! How do I find time to read? If you really want to read, then you'll find time to do so. It really is about choices.
What's the difference between shelf, reading and wish lists? As near as I can tell, a shelf list contains books that you own and have read, a reading list contains books that you own but haven't read, and the wish list contains books that you don't own but wish to both own and read. For the sake of completeness, perhaps there should be a "virtual shelf" list for those you've read but don't own. For that matter, how about a "negation shelf" for those books you want to neither own nor read (although that's getting a bit overly Borgesian for even my peculiar tastes)?
What's the difference between your shelf list and your reading list? I'm not terribly interested in creating and maintaining separate lists to codify a difference I find neither aesthetically or pragmatically necessary, i.e. I don't want to do it.
Do you really own all of those books? I own at least one copy of each of the books listed, give or take a small percentage due to lossage, giftage, theftage, etc. I also have somewhere around 60 duplicates. Just last week, I bought a stack that included three duplicates - one deliberately because of the content, one deliberately because of the price, and one because I wasn't carrying a copy of this list around with me. As my Unindicted Co-Conspirator never tires of telling me - it's a disease, albeit much less deadly than most.
What's with the avatar? Depending on the phase of the moon, it's either (1) a heavily photoshopped image of yours truly; (2) something I found on the nascent web many blue moons ago; or (3) what one of my pugs looks like after I've snorted a fifth of Chivas through a guitar neck.
Why do you own [your book title here]? Why not?
Why don't you own [your book title here]? The unbearable finiteness of being.
What do you recommend? If I were me (and indeed I am), I would especially recommend the stuff in the "favorites" category, followed by everything else depending, of course, on mood. If I were not me, I'd probably find recommendations from me useful proportional to how much I resembled me. That being clearly said, the recommendation system in place at Amazon would almost certainly be more useful in such matters than I to the vast majority of folks.
Where can I find [book title here]? Try Amazon, ABE books, Google and your local used book store. It's what I do.
Can I have one of your books? I don't sell books. I occasionally give them as gifts to those I've known long and/or well enough to reach a certain comfort zone. Your only realistic chance of obtaining one involves contacting my Unindicted Co-Conspirator sufficiently soon after I've shuffled off this mortal coil, at which point my opinions on the matter will be even less important than they are now.
Who are you? A research scientist dabbling in physical oceanography, numerical analysis, web services programming, GIS programming, and many other shiny things.
What are your hobbies (besides hording books)? Hording music, hording vintage stereo equipment, hording video, hording software, the arts culinary, ultimate frisbee, scratching dogs, growing exotic peppers (although this one's on temporary hiatus for now), existential introversion.
Why won't you argue with me about [your obsession here]? 1. Been there, done that. 2. The argument clinic is just down the hall to the right. 3. Sorry, but that's not a feature of our current inventory.
What is a loody moner anyway? Look up "spoonerism."
Are you really a loody moner? Rumors to that effect have been swirling about for quite some time.
But doesn't that make you a bad person? The vulgar manicheanism department is just a couple of doors past the argument clinic.
You think you're really clever, don't you? You could stick a tail on me and call me a weasel.
Icky! You're weird and I'm confused and/or insulted! That's not a question. Please stay focused.
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