Angry Note:
Some adminadroid has magnanimously decided to retroactively truncate this profile. Up yours, control freak.
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.
I've spent the last couple of months perusing the marvelous wares available via Google Books. Basically - unless your name is Disney - everything before around 1940 is public domain - and the 19th century is a freaking gold mine. Check out my http://books.google.com/books?uid=11107344459373556548&hl=en Google Books page for my categorization of the 4500+ books I've found that are available in PDF format.
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
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