I might have been guilty of this in the past, but, man, I can't be sparing any shelf-space for vanity these days.

Your bookshelf is for storing your books. Whether you've read them yet or not seems kinda beside the point.

I don't think I've ever tried to use my bookshelves to project anything by displaying books I've not read. If it's on my shelves, I've probably read it. I have, maybe, ten or twenty books in the house that I've not read. Which is a vanishingly tiny percentage of the whole.

However, the really trashy stuff, I tend to buy, read and then give away or donate to charity shops as it's unlikely I'll read it again or need to refer to it. So my bookshelves probably present me as somewhat more high-brow in taste than I really am.

For certain values of "read". Did I read all of Either/Or? I can't remember, probably not. But I understand "The Seducer's Diary" and have a passing undergraduate knowledge of the text. There are more books that I've picked at on my shelf than books that I simply don't intend to read.

But sure, a bookshelf can be a vanity project. I rotate out the books that stand at eye level because that's the shelf that everyone looks at when they come into the Flophouse. I keep my favorite books and new purchases there.

Apostropher is right. The question is what motivates your book purchases. I don't see anything wrong with aspirational purchases, in moderation.

Oh, god. I read an awful lot of trash fiction, and it just builds up. And Buck doesn't like throwing anything out. So our shelves are, while large, kind of embarrassing.

I'm like ttaM, though -- I mostly don't own books I haven't read. If I buy it, I want to read it now.

Why, yes, I have read the entire Encyclopædia Brittanica. Why do you ask?

LB, I will read your trashy novels. In exchange, I can offer Buck tips on how to store a year's supply of food for the coming Armeggeddeon.

I'll admit to looking at people's bookshelves to see what kind of people they are.

Some examples:

1. Dan Brown books - ouch!

2. As much as I detest Dean Koontz books, I try not to have a permanent bad impression of the person. (I wait to get more information because we all have some guilty pleasures.)

3. Borges - automatic huge plus. Despite Stanley's other negatives, he likes Borges.

4. If you have read something of Nabokov beyond Lolita, I am impressed. (I LOVE Transparent Things.)

I have some books that I havent read on my shelf. But I intend to read them. I am a horrible book collector. I have books stacked everywhere.

I dont have them for show, but to remind myself to read them.

This was all inspired by Sunday's Diesel Sweeties print comic, right?

In exchange, I can offer Buck tips on how to store a year's supply of food for the coming Armeggeddeon.

Everyone needs a Mormon in their life to help them with these issues. Br keeps attempting to throw out my provisions. Last night, she tried to make some mandarin oranges disappear.

My 'book thing' came to a head recently and I took a car load of books to Oxfam. However, that now means that the double-stacked shelves are now largely single stacked. It hasn't actually made any free shelving and I am under spousal pressure to get rid of more. I am reaching the 'noooooooo!' stage, but I think I can find another 100 or so to dump.

It hasn't actually made any free shelving and I am under spousal pressure to get rid of more. I am reaching the 'noooooooo!' stage, but I think I can find another 100 or so to dump.

Don't do it!!! BR is going to read this and pressure me to put books in the basement.

Apo is exactly right. If you can only store the books you've read on your bookshelf, where do you keep the books you haven't read? And don't tell me you're one of those pusillanimous weenies who only buys one book at a time and reads it before buying another, because that will reflect worse on you than any amount of bookshelf padding.

In my apartment, two out of eight bookshelves are in the common/living area. One of those is for practical reasons; it's the cookbook shelf, and it's near the kitchen. The beer/wine hobby books and cooking magazines have ended up there, and so have a couple of super-oversize books (Atlas of Rare City Maps, In The Shadow of No Towers) on the top (open) shelf. The other one, though, is deliberately a vanity bookshelf, and has some stuff from all of the other collections that we think are interesting.

re: 14

As I said, I never have more than about a dozen I haven't read. Obviously some books are reference books, or collections of papers where I've maybe only read a few. I've not read everything I own cover-to-cover. But, generally, if I buy it, I read it. I'm quite a voracious reader.

how to store a year's supply of food for the coming Armeggeddeon.

The key is rotating your food storage -- use the oldest stuff from time to time and replace it with fresher (still canned) stuff.

Also, something about canning lots of wheat and then buying a better wheat grinder than your neighbors have. At Armageddon, people will only be able to eat flour they've ground themselves, or something.

2 gets it right. My bookshelves have philosophy books, which I have read, and fiction, which I have read, and an assortment of books from a priest who thought I might want part of his library, which I haven't read.

My best friend growing up got a better wheat grinder from his wife for their anniversary present.

He was very excited.

an assortment of books from a priest who thought I might want part of his library, which I haven't read.

"Marry a Canadian and Go To Hell!"

"Poutine Will Make You Fat"

"Why Must the Canadians Steal Our Womenz?"

Mentally adding up books I have at home and know I haven't read, bah, it's more like a shelf-full. So, I lie above. More like 30.

Am I the only one who will cop to having bought books aspirationally---to be seen as a better person? I've had to get over it, but I know there was an element of other-directed vanity in some of my earlier book purchases.

I've probably had that sort of thing going on in some book purchases, but I read the books. Which is still aspirational, but not like just dressing a room to make yourself look clever.

Definitely, to 23. I've bought stuff because I thought would be cool to be the kind of person that read that stuff. And ended up reading it.

But I've never, knowingly, bought stuff where the 'having' of it rather than the reading of it was the goal.

I signed up for librarything recently -- shut up, I have my reasons -- and have now become acutely self-conscious about my shelves. So far I have resisted lying.

the phrase "intellectual Wonderbra" comes irresistibly to mind.

on the other hand, I'm reminded of Schopenhauer's aphorism that "it would be wonderful if along with the purchase of a book, one could buy the time to read it in" and if it was good enough for him it's good enough for me.

I also remind readers of my previous advice that conventional principles of librarianship should be discarded when organising your collection of books about the Nazis, as they do tend to stand out (particularly if grouped together) due to their heavy use of red, white and black on the covers, and if someone notices a group of more than (say) a dozen books about the Nazis on your shelves, they tend to mark you down as a weirdo.

I can't understand buying a book you don't plan to read. I can understand getting behind on your reading, and I probably have 6 or 10 sitting around I haven't got to yet (out of 6 bookcases worth). On the other hand I've got a couple hundred there that I've read at least twice, some just due to running out of reading at a bad time to get something new.

Buying or arranging books to convey the type of person you would like to be is incredibly lame. Buying books that you actually would like to read but never seem to get to? That makes way more sense.

I'm not as sad as Dostoevsky,
I'm not as clever as Mark Twain;
I only buy a book for the way it looks,
Then I stick it on the shelf again.

Well, ok. I'll admit that I usually ended up reading those books. I'll also admit to having committed adultery in my heart, in case anyone needs to know.

dsquared: You could always adopt the system an acquaintance had --- sorted first by number of words in title, then alphabetically. Something like 3500 books.

(this might not help with being marked down as a weirdo)

I am more or less consciously stocking up on books for my retirement. The trouble is that the fucking things go out of print so if you see one that looks interesting, you need to buy it now or it may disappear forever. To be honest this has only happened to me once, but the scars are apparently quite deep.

My reading of Classical lit ground to a halt during college, so I've ended up with a few unread nice editions. But all in all, all the books in the house were bought to be read.

I'll not deny that our LR bookcase has the nicest editions. It's also where we keep our nicest furniture*; isn't that how public rooms are supposed to be?

* Increasingly juice-stained couch excepted; that thing's just a place holder until #2 reaches middle school.

But really, my misrepresentatory impulses are all about wanting to hide things I do read, rather than to display things I don't.

I do own records/CDs I've never listened to, also. Which I suppose is pretty bad, given that listening to an album isn't much effort at all.

The trouble is that the fucking things go out of print so if you see one that looks interesting, you need to buy it now or it may disappear forever. To be honest this has only happened to me once, but the scars are apparently quite deep.

Abebooks? Out of print, if it's not a real rarity, shouldn't be a problem anymore.

I suspect 33 is much more common.

I guess I'm spared the issue, since nobody really sees my bookshelves. I'm rooming with two other people, so space is kind of limited; my living space is mostly crammed with one desk (with one laptop!), three bookshelves, and a bed.

So, as much as I love books, I really can't afford not to get rid of stuff I don't think I'll read/reference/watch again at some point in the future. This has the odd effect of making me look probably more cultured than I really am, but I'm also a huge nerd so my shelves have plenty of gaming books and misc. media as well.

26: An ex-employer of mine is an ex-Marxist, and has a dedicated shelf with dozens of books by and about Marxism. Similar color scheme, but less creepy, mostly due to absence of swastikas.

22: For me, it's hard to separate that impulse from my desire to actually read those sorts of books, even if I find them lacking in doing so.

The linked blog entries other than Ezra's sound like they were written by someone with far more time than money. Which is fine, that's what public libraries are there for. But I definitely tend to pick up books a far while before I read them, and rarely feel like going down to the library. It's worth the cost of buying a book to have it around until I get to reading it, and to be able to loan it to friends.

All this is smokescreen for how ashamed I am that probably half to a third of the books on my shelves are unread. Thanks to school on top of work, I never read during term time. During breaks, I'll easily get through a few or several books, depending on how big and dense they are (the 800+ page compendium of political philosophy from Thucydides to Heidigger is taking a while). In a year and a half, though, I will go on a long tear and get through most of the collection!

a dedicated shelf

Sorry, to be clear I mean bookcase - there are probably 4 shelves. It's really striking visually.

LB owns copies of everything written by Dan Brown, Ann Coulter, and Rush.

Yes to 33.

My wife's shelves are laden with posh black-spine Penguins and books in foreign languages [as that's genuinely what she likes]. Mine used to include too many books with big embossed gold writing.

What I find really embarrassing are the multiple editions of the same book. One of them has the marginal notes, the other one has the revised edition, this one has the scholarly notes, and that one has the spiffy illustrations! I should just get over the idea that I need a "working library" anymore.

I'm so ambivalent about the library. Even though I grew up in a library family, I've always wanted my own book collection. It's hard for me to imagine wanting to take the time to read a book that I don't want to keep (not that I never read trash, but pretty close to never - periodicals are light reading for me)

I've been taking my daughter to Library Story Time, and seeing books that I've thought of reading just sitting there for the taking is tempting. But, again, I've got unread stuff at home, so....

Plus, my wife has pretty different tastes from mine, but good, so every second or third book I read is pulled from her collection - I'm halfway through Edith Wharton's New York novellas.

When I was younger and even more insecure, I certainly bought books that I felt I ought to read--not quite the same thing as buying books to impress others, more out of a sense that I wasn't doing what I should be doing. This wasn't as stupid as it sounds, since in later years I've actually read a lot of them.

I don't shelve things to impress--in fact, I have all my science fiction right near the door, except the classy Samuel Delany which I keep in my room with all my other very favorite fiction.

But right now I buy books omnivorously with a sort of stockpiler's mentality. The bookstore where I volunteer gets donations which go on our dollar book shelf, so I usually pick up two or three there every week, for example. Last night it was a sixties edition of The Modern Prince, a seventies paperback about The New Women's Lib and a very watercolor-cover-ish sixties Penguin of Dombey and Son (which I've read but did not own). I've also picked up Dishwasher Pete's memoir (all right) a beautiful forties copy of Camel Xiangzi, an old Joy of Cooking, a book about Irish gardens for my mother, a bunch of late seventies/early eighties GLBT books, a spare copy of Jane Eyre...too many to recall, in fact.

I'll confess to buying a new copy of a favorite book because I like the new cover. I'm shallow like that.

I tell myself that I can theoretically give away my old copy to someone who might want to read it.

34: Heh, I really do have to make a concious effort to listen some of the music that I buy, or else it just slips through the cracks as I keep going for whatever I like most out of my recent listening or an old favorite.

Right now, I'm listening to a playlist composed entirely of recently purchased albums and compilations that I had not gotten previously gotten around to. I find this trick works pretty well.

47b is a habit I try to get myself into periodically. It can end up with some pretty weird mixes, natch.

Bookshelves are like your mp3 playlist. Organization scheme (or lack of) says as much as actual content (By publisher and series?). The most interesting bookshelf can belong to a self-loving knowledgeable schmuck, and people who go in for crystal healing and recreational Dan Brown can be warm and generous and perceptive, if not good for discussions of Ottoman currency reform.

Judge less.

That said, I've got my lone Elmore Leonard western (an absorbing read, and less self--indulgent than his stuff in a contemporary setting) ready to send off to my dad.

What I find really embarrassing are the multiple editions of the same book. One of them has the marginal notes, the other one has the revised edition, this one has the scholarly notes, and that one has the spiffy illustrations! I should just get over the idea that I need a "working library" anymore.

I totally understand this comment.

Have we discussed that Goodwill sells books for a dollar????

Having read The Black Swan recently this reminds me of the Eco anecdote he relates:

"The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encylopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with "Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?" and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight read-estate market allows you to put there. ... Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Seriously though, I need to get back in the habit of reading books. I have just been realizing that a couple of years ago I got out of the habit and I need to change that.

Nothing on my shelves bought to impress, no. I did (and will probably do again) a few stints as a freelance book reviewer, wherein one gets large amounts of crappy books that one never gets around to. So I've got plenty of embarrassing shit on my shelves, most of it forgettable Canadian poetry or mass-market fiction, which I'm trying to get rid of. Also some pretty embarrassing trash novels, some of which I've read (Colleen McCullough's The Grass Crown, Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead), some of which I can't bring myself to read (Doris Lessing's Shikasta). I had an unread copy of Che Guevara's Guerilla Warfare for a while, but since I wasn't into it I lent it to someone and will probably never see it again.

On my bookstore shifts I try to listen to at least one new album a week. Last night it was Black Box Recorder's England Made Me, which I think will require another listen. It was pretty, but I didn't get much out of it.

This policy has had a cumulative effect--I've finally listened to enough free jazz to have some opinions about it, for example.

On the flip side of this, I don't really infer much from anyones bookshelves. Perhaps partially because ours are so disorganized, but really I don't think it tells you much. Maybe I'm a little put off if I see a bookshelf full of bad bestsellers or genre fic or whatever and nothing else. Or a load of neocon `non fiction'. For the most part though, it doesn't register.

What does get me is when I meet people who don't have any books at all.

If you can only store the books you've read on your bookshelf, where do you keep the books you haven't read?

Tucked into nooks on out-of-the-way shelves. They don't have pride of place.

The linked blog entries other than Ezra's sound like they were written by someone with far more time than money.

Not so, but one good way to change your time/money ratio is not to waste money on crappy books or books that you'll never read.

I did some editing work for an old-school German professor who had honest-to-God stacks in his home library. Now that was a working library. It reminded me a bit of the worksuite at the Goethehaus in Weimar, which will always remain my ideal layout for a work environment: Goethe had a sort of open workspace with multiple library carols and lots of counters, and in an adjoining room, there were the stacks: close by, yet walled off.

I've got a copy of Ulysses on my shelf and it is constantly mocking me for my pretentiousness. Loudly.

I expect ot be judged on my bookshelf. I like my husband to keep his books separate from mine for more representativeness.

56: I had a professor like this once. He had a small apartment with more than 5000 hardcovers in it and very little else (every wall lined). His library was, for the discipline, better than the universities.

55: But the thing is, you don't know which books you'll never read. Even crappy bestsellers--if you were to read, for example, a neat book about crappy best-sellers, you might then want to turn around and read a few.

Depressingly our local Saver's (The thrift department store!) has raised the prices on their random assortment of used books such that you get to the register and find yourself being charged four or five dollars for a battered seventies paperback on home decoration.

But you have some idea, and you get a better idea over time. If you have the choice between a particular book and nothing and pick nothing (over a period of time, to account for mood and other circumstances), it's fair to say that you probably won't read it. I have several books at this stage now, and this weekend I'll donate them.

Part of my neurosis is a function of having moved seventeen times over the last ten years and not being especially strong.

There is no metric by which I judge a person more strongly than their bookshelves. I do, however, assess the type of bookshelf: if no light fiction is present, I will assume a "display" bookshelf, and judge accordingly. I generally don't judge negatively. That is, I don't care if you have Dan Brown, but do you have Borges? Everyone reads crap now and again; it's the homage that vice pays to virtue.

It can end up with some pretty weird mixes, natch.

No kidding. This is going from local electronic/afrobeat to French house/disco to shoegaze to balls-out rock from the inchoate Beijing scene to early DFA1979 and Six Finger Satellite, with a few other stops in between.

It seems to me there is a vast difference between buying a book that you want to read --- honestly, at some level --- an then never quite getting around to it, and buying a book because you want other people to see it on your bookshelf.

A lot of classics might fall in either category (or both) but I really don't thing the motivations are at all related. The latter is a (perhaps contemptible) form of interior decorating.

I'm sure that we have discussed what books we havent read.

Ulysses, the Iliad, and the last 2/3 of War and Peace are on my list.

61: Well, yes, I live in fear of moving. (I actually had a nightmare the other night about our landlords deciding to sell the house. As I recall, I was weeping while clinging to the doorposts.) I have a fantasy about giving away or selling most things besides my books and then living in a streamlined, simple, Dwell-ish space forevermore, but then I look at my careful collection of weird glassware, the various fifties chairs, etc, and cannot.

63: Beijing? What from Beijing? What's doing musically in Beijing nowadays?

As someone who believes that the shelf reflects the self, I find this sort of indiscriminate book gathering deeply problematic.

Honestly, I find this attitude--that somehow it isn't honest to display books one hasn't read-- distastefully puritanical.

But what really grinds my shorts is the assertion that there's no other reason to own a book other than to read it. Books do furnish a room. I've purchased a lot of books either because they were aesthetically appealing (19th century boys' books, Baedaekers), or bibliographically significant (early Everyman's, Hogarth Press books), or because the book was owned or associated with someone I knew or admired. I'll never read most of those books, I just like to look at them.

If you have read something of Nabokov beyond Lolita
i read a lot of Nabokov, Bunin, Bulgakov, Gumilev, my father's complete Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, basically almost all Russian poetry Esenin, Blok, Pushkin, Lermontov of course, MT
and all books i have i read, basically i buy books which i am sure i will re-read, others i can't afford, the other day i visited my friend who stayed in Princeton until the mid February and there in the bookstore i saw people buying books for 700 $ at once, i felt so envious, i bought only three books
the western literature, i usually read borrowing from the library, Servantes, Somerset Moem i remember i have, others are medical books
now if i have time i read online from rambler
i don't have philosophy books, just popular books on philosophy
i used to read a lot of available sci-fi, then got at once bored with it

I just like to look at them.

That strikes me as quite different from wanting other people to look at them.

I don't get the idea that books you haven't read shouldn't be shelved --- where the hell else are you going to put them?

re: 53

Black Box Recorder are great, but the thing that's great about them is often the juxtaposition of their lyrics -- which often have a sort of JG Ballard thing happening -- with the pristine school-marmishness of Nixey's voice [and Moore and Haines often pretty music]. That's not necessarily obvious on first listen.

At the peak I had 1500 or so books. I shipped about 60 book-boxes when I moved to Lake Wobegon, at the cost af about $1000. Once I got here I realized that there are some of them I won't live long enough to never read, so I sold them on ABE at bargain prices (my take will total about $2300-$2500). I just don't want to move them again.

If I were more stable I'd probably have 2500 books by now. I still regret selling some books in 1983, and remember a bunch of them.

Most of the books I sold were excellent (sometimes rare) books that were part of reading or study projects I'll never get to (e.g., learning the Mongol and Uygur languages). In the end I'll probably also give away or junk 100 lbs. or so of books.

My book collection is impressive to the point of being weird. I've read or intend to read everything in it, but a lot of them I was saving for retirement (now). I also still buy 10 or so books a month, so I still probably have about 1500 books after selling some.

The weirdest books I have are genre fiction in Catalan, Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish. They're stereotyped enough that you can often guess what's happening. (Dutch "Ruiters van de Purppuren Prairie": "Doe met me wat je wilt" = "Do with me what you will". The young wounded bandit turns out to be a girl. Kinky.)

i read a lot of Nabokov, Bunin, Bulgakov, Gumilev, my father's complete Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, basically almost all Russian poetry Esenin, Blok, Pushkin, Lermontov of course, MT

This is a good example of why my adverse judgment about other people based on their bookshelves is not permanent and severe.

I love to read. I am relatively intelligent. But, I recognize that my reading has only skimmed the surface of the world of amazing writing.

70: Yeah, that was kind of what I was thinking. We had--god damn it--a customer, and then I had to mop the floor, so I couldn't give the album the kind of attention usually possible on my shift. "Lord Lucan Is Missing" seems to be stuck in my head, though.

I deliberately moved two shelves of genre fiction downstairs to my living room after I got tired of hearing visitors make assumptions about the nonfiction I had stored there. (Anthropology and sociology, among other things.) It didn't really help.

What does get me is when I meet people who don't have any books at all.

My dad had British ex-pat coworkers who gushed when they came over for dinner - ours was the first American house they'd visited that included books in the LR. And that was just a single (very nice, late-60s Danish) bookcase - the rest were upstairs.

I've got a lot of crap & genre fiction too. I find the more technical reading I'm doing for work, the less likely I'll enjoy thinking much about anything else I read. So I end up not reading at all unless it's pretty light. But they are all mixed in all over the place. About the only things that are properly separated at home are cook books. I've got a couple of reference shelves at work.

75: Yeah, if I don't see books I'd assume they're somewhere else. But I meant really don't have any. It's odd if you find out over time that someone just doesn't have them. Or has five, so they all fit in a bedside table.

74 is funny - silent battle against your visitors' assumptions.

67: Klein is being dishonest. Someone who buys books by the foot with basically no regard for their contents is also dishonest, if he knows or should know that the presence of those books will convey a false message. How is this deception not distasteful?

69: There's shelving and shelving, as people point out. Currently my nightstand is full of unread and unworthy books. The prominent shelves have the good stuff.

In the immortal words of a Harlan Ellison story, "Who wants a library full of books they've already read????"

It's odd if you find out over time that someone just doesn't have them.

I find it astonishing. And it's happened to me a number of times. It seems to me that it takes effort not to acquire books -- people give you cookbooks for shower/housewarming gifts, baby books for babies, how-to books for new homeowners....

It's partially a class thing, but not entirely.

My wife and I met in a used bookstore, so we probably have more books than most (about 7,000 in the apartment, couple thousand more at my parent's house). We organize ours like most rational people: by subject, as covered by "the pickle meme" Kotsko tagged us all with a few years back.

Beijing? What from Beijing? What's doing musically in Beijing nowadays?

It's this compilation, which I can easily recommend based on my early listenings. It was put together by Martin Atkins of Public Image Ltd, Pigface & Killing Joke fame, who apparently was just chilling in Beijing on vacation when he decided that these underground bands were too awesome to remain unknown in the west, bought studio time, and pulled them all in for recording sessions.

As would be expected from the man behind it, the compilation leans heavily toward post-punk sounds. There's some songs closer to the straight-up underground rock of bands like Hot Snakes and McLusky, some closer to straight-up punk, and a couple shoegazey pop songs. All quite good stuff.

I collect old editions of Samuel Delany, feminist science fiction and fantasy compilations (particularly the mediocre yet interestingly weird publications of a particular British women's press), academic books about science fiction, books by Alistair Gray with his illustrations, left wing books of the sixties and seventies and vintage decorating books. Those I will buy whether they're good or not.

The thing is, I've found that I can do much more productive reading if it's rooted in genre fiction. That is, I can read and remember Franco Moretti and Frederick Jameson on genre books, and I'm looking at How Novels Think right now, and I've been reading a bit of stuff about the USSR because Soviet SF is so important to Jameson, and so on. It's been a lot easier for me to read fancy theory books now that I've just given up and admitted that I like science fiction and I'm interested in the various cultures that have grown up around science fiction. While I'm not going to revolutionize literary criticism any time soon, I'm a smarter reader than I was even a couple of years ago because I'm not caught up in guilt and anxiety about the worthwhileness of the things that interest me. So although my science fiction is right there for any one to see, those books are also part of my actual serious reading and thinking. Not that this gets one any respect from anybody anywhere, of course. Lefties think it's frivolous; serious literary people think it's embarrassing.

While we're talking about books, has anyone read the new Soldier's Heart: Studying Literature through Peace and War at West Point? I am midway through and would like to get someone else's impression.

*I* think it's cool, Frowner.

(this is where an emoticon would be)

1500! how enviable,
here i bought some books from Amazon, hopefully i will be able to afford more books money and time-wise
i could mention other books in Mongolian, but it won't mean anything for you, all unknown names, hopefully when i retire i'll try to translate some books from Mongolian into English, but that's just my very ambitious dream :)
my friend's father, a learned man, has translated and written in the old Mongolian script Chaucer in one copy, just for himself i guess

83: ZOMG! ZOMG! I've been wishing for years that someone would make a compilation of mainland Chinese punky stuff. That looks really good. Although here's how I know I'm old: I used to keep up with all that Beijing stuff and yet I don't recognize any of those bands.

study projects I'll never get to (e.g., learning the Mongol and Uygur languages)

read, get to work. You are Emerson's rendezous with Mongol destiny.

One of the benefits of working for the university is the library privileges. At any time I generally have 80+ books checked out, and some of them I have had for years, renewing every semester. I do still buy books, but I try to limit it and donate/sell ones that I no longer need.

I have two bookshelves, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. I tried to do a split, with the ones I had read in the living room and the ones I hadn't in the bedroom, but they have gotten jumbled up. I am not obsessive about keeping them ordered or organized. They should consider themselves lucky they occasionally get dusted.

the

I may have to recuse myself, spending 40 hours/week in a used bookstore as I do (with the freedom to bring home anything I like). Skimming the thread -- really, people mostly read most of the books on their shelves?

I'd say I've read half to 2/3 of what I have at home; several hundreds, maybe 500, unread, then. Some of it's aspirational, if that means books I either want to read or feel I might like to read at some point; none of it toted home with an eye toward impressing anyone. (I am, of course, completely impressed by my own books, especially the recent acquisitions shelves, since they are, after all, of most current interest to me.)

I had around 1800 books (most unread) and got down to around 1500, but just in the past week, I've gotten into buying books again. I suppose someone should stop me, but...but...

Right now nothing is sorted in the house, but I plan to choose books for the front room based on how pretty they are.

This thread has made me realize something: I moved all of my books into my office. I left a bookcase idling in the front room, waiting for overflow.

The idling front room bookcase is going to be replaced presently by my girlfriend's very handsome glass-door book hutch. So now the only books in the front room are going to be hers!

Her taste is suitably impressive--some weird meandering in the women's studies shelves (Mary Daly!), a lot of good environmental stuff (McPhee, Abbey), but it's the first impression bookshelf, and it's not mine.

Maybe we'll mingle them in time.

Example of the sort of unread book I have:

Books about my dissertation topic, which hasn't been my official area of research for years, but still draws me in to buying books aspirationally.

We live in a small one-bedroom flat, and I've moved a lot since I was in my early 20s. So, we have about 4 full-height sets of bookshelves and a couple of half-height ones. One with pretty much only cookbooks, sheetmusic and vinyl on it.

I couldn't fit any more into this flat without divorce proceedings [seriously]. I do have a cupboard full of books at my dad's though [which I'll probably never get back].

I don't know how that translates into numbers of books, though.

I lost a large box of books when I transferred colleges. Because they were my first two years of college reading, they were the books I read the best -- the most impassioned marginalia, the latest-up-at-night to be ready for class. When the Post Office took 'em from me, I lost the great part of my urge to hold on to books. I still have a decent set of shelves, but I'm a promiscuous lender, and I'm at peace with that. Books are portable.

2 is all that needs to be said about the post itself, of course.

92
Nearly everyone has some number they haven't read yet, but acquisition patterns vary. Personally, these days I cut myself off of new acquisitions based on lack of space. I'd probably be much worse with more space. I read pretty fast when I'm actually taking regular time for (non work related) reading, so I'll go through a pile of a dozen unreads pretty quickly.

I suspect also people go through differently scaled acquisition vs. consumption cycles.

My reaction, and I think others as well, was to the idea that you might buy books without any intention of reading them[*], and more particularly that you would do this with an eye to what others would think of them on your shelf

[*] with exceptions for collecting, replacing beat up editions, etc.

84: Frowner your book collection sounds really cool. Also there is great virtue in admitting that you like what you like.

I remember being introduced to someone who tried to impress me with his library. It was OK, but I noticed that none of his books showed any signs of wear at all. I realize that some anal people treat books very gently, but I became immediately suspicious.

I can tell you for certain that Saiselgy hasn't read most of my books.

One of the benefits of working for the university is the library privileges. At any time I generally have 80+ books checked out, and some of them I have had for years, renewing every semester.

It's you! It's you! YOU are the reason I can never check out The Many-headed Hydra! And I bet you have that really good sixties book on London during the Blitz, too. Grr.

96 sounds a lot like our apartment. People ask me sometimes about not having a television, but one thing is clear -- there is no space for one. Not even a flat screen.

103: I sit on a lot of library books too, but everywhere I've been that had faculty/grad student term-loans would force you to give them back if anyone else requested them. This is how I know some very nice books on topic X were not needed by anyone at university Y for a period of several years.

Frowner, do you mean this Many Headed Hydra? My father in law gave me a copy for Christmas. Do you want to borrow or trade for it?

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.
"What do you think?" he demanded impetuously.
"About what?"
He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.
"About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real."
"The books?"
He nodded.
"Absolutely real--have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they're absolutely real. Pages and--Here! Lemme show you."
Taking our skepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the "Stoddard Lectures."
"See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too--didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?"

103 should have the caveat `for a non-humanities type'. I'm sure my `lot of library books' would look tiny for some of you lot. There is an entirely different information density, I guess.

I've thought of renting out my book-reading social capital in return for money or sexual favors. I've also thought of selling off my useless-to-me relationship to the first Libertarian Presidential candidate (John Hospers, 1968, my second cousin once removed, first cousin twice removed, something like that). I'd renounce my cousinhood and authorize whichever libertarian was able to come up with the cash to assume cousinhood.

106: Your father-in-law isn't Minnesotan, is he? I know a family in which that's a very common gift book.

I would trade for it, you betcha. What sort of book would one trade? (I have another lending source locally.)

re: 104

Oh, there's a TV and, er, three hi-fis.

Besides my normal buying of cheap books, I also have a list of 11 $50+ books I'd love to have but can't afford. If I had a windfall I'd buy most of them. And one $500 Chinese dictionary.

Your second cousin once removed is the child of your second cousin or the second cousin of your parent.

Your first cousin twice removed is your grandparent's cousin or your cousin's grandchild.

"Cousin" is a word that becomes weird if you type it too many times.

I also have a list of 11 $50+ books I'd love to have but can't afford.

Good books can turn up in unexpected places. I got Fernand Braudel's complete trilogy on the history of capitalism for $12 from a used clothing store.

111: We've got a largish computer screen (24") that serves for video as well. And too many guitars and cameras in the living room. Only one hi-fi though. LR has 4 full height and 1 1/2 bookcases, a small couch and chair, and not much room for more.

Our place might be smaller though, only 2 rooms, properly, with a kitchen/living room divided by a bar. I can't remember how many square feet, but 600 and a bit I guess.

Many Headed Hydra is $9 on Amazon.

Eco and Ellison get it right. I acquired loads of books when I worked at Powell's and at newspapers where there was a steady stream of review copies; hundreds of those are still waiting to be read, but how awesome is it to be surrounded by potential reading? There is a time to read books, and a time to gather books together.

books about the Nazis, as they do tend to stand out (particularly if grouped together) due to their heavy use of red, white and black on the covers

Long ago I picked up a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich while traveling, and spent the next couple of weeks feeling incredibly self-conscious about toting around a brick of paper with a big fat swastika on it.

Somehow it seems more fun to trade for a book with another member of the unfoggetariat than just buying something on Amazon.

I didn't really think lending by mail would be a viable option, and I prefer to give books than to lend, but I wanted to make it an option.

I tell you what Frowner. I'll send you MHH in exchange for one random book from your house, the randomer the better. My email address should be below.

re: 115

Yeah, I have so many cameras that I am having a cull. So, the 35mm SLRs are going [except one] and some of the medium format stuff. I'm downsizing on the Soviet stuff, too. Ruthless getting rid of anything I don't regularly use.

We are lucky enough to have a big kitchen so although there's not a lot of space for books, that actual place isn't oppressively small.

116: Yes, but you see I ought to be able to get it from the library so that I can spend my $9 on dollar books at Arise.

That's the thing--I tend not to order stuff. It's either serendipity or the library for me, not for political reasons but because I can't get past my pre-internet suburban childhood. Book- and music-scarcity has scarred me forever. Come to think of it, that's probably why I'm such a book hoarder.

99: My reaction, and I think others as well, was to the idea that you might buy books without any intention of reading them[*], and more particularly that you would do this with an eye to what others would think of them on your shelf

Yep -- hope it didn't sound in 92 as though I didn't understand the premise. There's an ambiguity to "aspirational" buying: I aspire to read this (get this under my belt, as it were) vs. something like a projection of self (necessarily to others?)

Anyway: space problems, good lord. I still have enough space for books at home, but am sorely in need of additional shelving. Books are now stacked on each stair going upstairs. I suspect it would make me happier if I addressed this.

118: You betcha.

119: I'm down to one 35mm film SLR (an A-1) now. One thing I really like about the living room merge into kitchen thing is the kitchen is open and fairly big with enough counter space. That, and the bathroom is big (because it has washer & dryer and hot water heater) so even though the apartment is small, it doesn't feel that small. Oh, it has 12 ft (really) ceilings too, which opens everything up. So I guess I can look into over height bookshelves. Except we won't stay here too much longer.

26 + 38: I have cube-type bookshelves, and not too many books, so they are arranged by a combination of size, topic, and color. The black and red Nazism and Marxism books share a cube with some black and red typography books.

I was excited when I realized I could fit the translations by the subject of my dissertation into the project, because it gave me reason to buy the translations volume of his collected works. Now I've got the entire collected works! In hardback!

Come to think of it, those are red and black, too. But they sit on my desk.

There is an entirely different information density, I guess.

Oh yeah. Pretty much all the mathematics of my undergrad degree (or at least all that I cared about) is held in a single shelf of books or less. The texts/notes from my MBA that I've bothered to keep are already taking up more space, and I'm less than halfway through.

Because I am acutely aware of the existence of libraries, I've never bought a new book without thinking "I want to be the sort of person who owns this book", with the exception of a couple reference books. That thought generally makes me disgusted with myself, so almost all the books I own are things I bought used.

My bookshelves as of June 2007, though there are maybe thirty or forty books unaccounted for (and there are already many more than there were then, alas). Judge me, I dare you.

re: 123

I have 3 film SLRS. Two pentaxes and a canon. I'm keeping the smallest Pentax as it mounts the same lenses as my digital SLR and also because I love using it. The others go. Most of the rangefinders go, and the 6x9 medium format stuff.

I can get quite depressed at the sheer amount of camera stuff I have and don't use: prices on ebay a few years back were so low it was easy to buy classic cameras for the equivalent of $20.

You know what is snazzy? The new Suhrkamp books. They're the same dark color as before (black or navy), with the titles in various bright metallic colors.

Judge me, I dare you.

You say this as if it would be the first time.

Now everyone can play the `Huh, I've got that edition' game though.

128: I nearly fell into that trap but was a) moving a lot and b) writing a thesis so didn't buy a lot of stuff I considered buying. The prices are astonishing. I don't actually have a film slr that will share a mount with my digital, but I'm shooting so little film these days I can't get to worked up about it. I've got a couple of range finders I'll keep if for no other reason than they are small enough.

Books do furnish a room.

Ha! I just recently finished reading the work this comes from--and it was both an instance of aspirational reading (I wanted to be the sort of person who had read it, and am now glad to have done so) and an acquisition motivated in part by aesthetics (the University of Chicago edition looks so lovely I had to have it on the shelf.) I find these reasons play a not insignificant role in my book buying, with the thought that a certain volume might prove useful some day being the third main element.

I love LibraryThing, and looking at the covers of the books I've cataloged there gives me great please. I have all my books (except cookbooks and the like) in my study upstairs, so most visitors don't see them. If they do, however, I am likely to be disappointed if they do not take some notice.

has a dedicated shelf with dozens of books by and about Marxism

Doesn't everyone here have one of those? (Mine includes a book by a certain famous uncle of a certain Unfogged commenter, but revealing more could compromise said commenter's Internet anonymity, so I don't think I can say.)

on the other hand, I'm reminded of Schopenhauer's aphorism that "it would be wonderful if along with the purchase of a book, one could buy the time to read it in" and if it was good enough for him it's good enough for me.

Yes!

Once I buy a book, if it's not extremely easy to read I am much less likely to ever read it than if I had taken it out from a library. Without a deadline, Tony Judt's "Postwar" has just sat there since I got it for Christmas and read the first 50 pages. But I read the entirety of this book during three months and five library renewals.

Same thing with videos. I own a bunch of VHS tapes that I found for cheaper than the rental price at flea markets and stores that were dumping their inventory. I probably watch ten rented films for every one of those, even though I wouldn't have bought them in the first place if I didn't want to watch them.

I'm just waiting for someone to de-lurk as a Dan Brown completeist and tell us what a bunch of ivory-tower wankers we all are.

Doesn't everyone here have one of those?

Surprisingly enough, no.

Capitalist.

re: 131

I'm on a bit of a film-kick at the moment and have shot quite a bit recently. However, the honest truth is that the digital SLR takes better pictures than most of my film cameras so it gets used more. The rangefinders [and I have a couple of really conveniently tiny ones] are definitely still better for some stuff, though, and are fun to use.

We're away to Italy for a few days, soon, and I'll take one of the little film cameras for days/nights when I don't want to lug around 2lbs of camera + lens.

Am I the only one who will cop to having bought books aspirationally---to be seen as a better person?

Buying books aspirationally ("I'd really like to have read that, so maybe I'll try to slog through it") is not the same as "buying books to be seen as a better person." I'll cop to the former (if you haven't tried and failed to get through a book, you're not ambitious enough), but not the latter.

The closest I have come to buying a book to be seen as a better person was when I was dating a feminist* in college and I went out and bought a bunch of Carol Gilligan and her ilk. I sincerely intended to read them so that I could get a better understanding of where my girlfriend was coming from. But I found it impossible to get through, and I decided I would just come to terms with playing an unexamined role in the patriarchy.

* who is now married to a woman

The anecdote by/about Eco quoted supra continues, the web aids my memory in quoting, thus:

"The question about your books has to be answered, while your jaw stiffens and rivulets of cold sweat trickle down your spine. In the past I adopted a tone of contemptuous sarcasm. 'I haven't read any of them; otherwise, why would I keep them here?' But this is a dangerous answer because it invites the obvious follow-up: 'And where do you put them after you've read them?' The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: 'And more, dear sir, many more,' which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: 'No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office,' a reply that on the one hand suggests a sublime ergonomic strategy and on the other leads the visitor to hasten the moment of his departure."

Leydi's response seems to have stuck with me a bit.

It's the feeling that I'll go on a film kick again that keeps me from unloading. I have a couple of very good modern nikon lenses though for my digital, and honestly none of my older stuff can match it.

I do have a little retina range finder that is built like the proverbial brick shithouse, and I really ought to use for traveling in just the situation you speak of. Maybe with slide film.

Judge me, I dare you.

Ok, what the hell kind of shoes are on your bookshelf?!?! Do you actually wear those?

109
i can't pay in the currency you mentioned, but i would be glad to receive the oxford anthology of the english poetry, part one, for the regular price
if you have a spare volume, of course, coz it turns out i bought the part two only last week
if you don't have any spare one, it's ok. i'll find it through Amazon
127
what's the shoe on your bookshelf, do you have a good story to tell?

w-lfs-n's bookshelf doesn't evoke much to me, but I can tell that the book on the left of the second-from-the-bottom shelf was written by Paul Reubens.

I found the girl's shoe which is now on my bookshelf sometime in early 2004 (or perhaps late 2003) in Hyde park, on 55th near, IIRC, Blackstone (or perhaps that's where I found the woman's boot which is now a lamp on my desk? anyway, I definitely found this shoe in Hyde Park) and scooped it up and brought it home. Later in the year when I had some copper pipe left over I noticed that it fit snugly and nicely in the shoe and it's been there ever since.

I never found the girl, though.

re: 141

Yeah, I have one of the folding Retina rangefinders. It takes great pictures, too. Scanned with a good film scanner, the results are pretty amazing. That and a little Olympus are my favourite 'travel' cameras.

I have a couple of tremendous [early 80s] Pentax primes for my dSLR, and, like you say, most of my film cameras can't match that. Or, more accurately, scanned film can't match it. When I still had an enlarger, I could get pretty great prints from some of the older film stuff.

Frowner, I can assure you I do not have either of those. On closer observation, however, I may need to get them.

We also have a recall system here, and it is amazing how few of the books I have -- on a wide range of subjects -- ever get recalled. We have a decent interlibrary loan system, which is probably the reason why.

One of the reasons I buy new books is that I can afford to. Since much of what I buy isn't likely to make the bestseller list, I want to support small presses, worthy topics, worthy authors, authors I know (hopefully a large overlap in those 2 groups). Books (like Caro's) that will do reasonably well without my help, I'll buy used; others I'll buy new even if there's a used copy available. (But only from my local independent bookseller or Powell's, bien sur.)

Not a sustainable tactic for everyone, of course, but now that I've got a reasonable amount of disposable income, I'm happy to spend some of it on books.

I can tell you for certain that Saiselgy hasn't read most of my books.

So is his book coming out soon?

but now that I've got a reasonable amount of disposable income, I'm happy to spend some of it on books.

Nice try, SK, but Erasmus you ain't.

my misrepresentatory impulses are all about wanting to hide things I do read

We all minimize the window containing unfogged when the boss walks in, right?

I found the girl's shoe which is now on my bookshelf sometime in early 2004 (or perhaps late 2003) in Hyde park, on 55th near, IIRC, Blackstone (or perhaps that's where I found the woman's boot which is now a lamp on my desk? anyway, I definitely found this shoe in Hyde Park) and scooped it up and brought it home.

Very interesting, Ben. Very interesting.

Do you collect other items of women's clothing that you "find?"

Bc when we got back from Unfogged DCon, BR noticed that she had lost her bra.

Books do furnish a room.

When I worked at the used bookstore, we had arrangements with interior decorators: they would give us a range of sizes/colors, and we would scour the store looking to fulfill the order. The best part was the books we ended up giving to people who, clearly, had no idea what they were, because had they, they clearly wouldn't have wanted other people to see them on their shelves. (Some beautifully preserved Black Spring press hardbacks of the complete Henry Miller ended up in the library of a prominent local pastor.)

I realize that some anal people treat books very gently, but I became immediately suspicious.

I don't break spines, but I ravish those virginal white pages for every last bit of space.

Erasmus you ain't.

Just imagine I wrote with a Dutch accent.

146: My retina was bought new by my mother, and dragged all over Africa, India, Nepal. So that's one I won't get rid of. It has the leather case too, so very convenient.

I don't have or have easy access to an enlarger any more either. You're right, it makes a difference when you are comparing film->digital vs. plain digital. At this point, though, I can't imagine myself doing much darkroom in the near future.

The combination of current(ish) digital sensors and modern(ish) primes is really quite amazing. Even some of the current crop of zooms are spectacular. You can have a 2.8 zoom over a reasonable range 17-35, say, or 70-200, that has better optics than mediocre primes. Which is kind of scary. Of course, they'll cost you upwards of a thousand dollars each. By comparison one of my nicest primes cost $20. (a 28mm)

What did you do with the girl's foot, w-lfs-n?

109: Sorry, don't have it.

erm, that was new price vs. used of course, so not apples and apples.

145
shoes are ok to find, i guess, is it true about the boot?
but i think i have to warn against finding hats
if you find a hat or something to wear on you head never pick it up, it's a very bad luck, you may die!!!
not really, but close to it bad luck

We all minimize the window containing unfogged when the boss walks in, right?

Not since BR came to Unfogged DCon.

Havent you learned that Fleur knows you post here?

What did you do with the girl's foot, w-lfs-n?

Cut it in half and used it for the gelatin the next time I made aspic.

it is amazing how few of the books I have -- on a wide range of subjects -- ever get recalled.

If university libraries are anything like public libraries, there is probably a not-small portion of the reading public who will reply, when a librarian offers the opportunity to recall a book, "Oh, no, I just wanted to look at it. I'll wait for it to come back."

Where "look at" means "I wanted to read it but am afraid that my reasons for being interested in it are unworthy.

I would never have imagined that so many people could be so deeply, deeply insecure about their right to be interested in whatever topics they like, and to read or page through or not even finish books on those topics.

152: You mean there were people who didn't lose their bras at unfogged dcon? I may have to be dissapointed in you all.

My undergraduate major had a distinctive core syllabus that hasn't changed much for 30 years. The prodigious required reading list for sophomores was known as "The Shelf", because all of us had the same books, and they instantly identified one as part of the department when you saw them stacked together in a dorm room. When I have visited members of my cohort at home, I have noticed that the urge to display The Shelf persists many years after graduation. Whenever I see a bookshelf with Marx's Capital, Weber's Economy & Society, and Adam Smiths Theory of Moral Sentiments in close proximity, I know that I am among kin.

re: 155

Yeah, re: primes. I have a fast Pentax 50 that often gets described as one of the best 50s ever made. Cost me 40 dollars in Prague. Combined with a 10MP sensor [and shake reduction!] even hand-held the results are pretty amazing.

I have access to a dark-room in my day job, so if I really wanted to do wet prints, I could. But I am lazy.

Our bookshelves are almost completely random and occasionally draw shocked iimpressions form less bookish neighbors and such. . Word to the wise: Take a close look at the lower shelves when your kid reaches the age of sounding out single word titles. Especially if the lower shelves hold stuff like this.

I photoshop my name onto the spines of all the books on my shelf.

It's also just surprising how rarely lots of library books are read. I was back in my high school library three or four years ago, and picked up a copy of Stalky and Co. that I'd taken out in eighth grade. Mine was still the last name written on the card in the back, and that's about a twenty-year lapse in a fairly small library.

You mean there were people who didn't lose their bras at unfogged dcon? I may have to be dissapointed in you all

Notice the date on w-lfs-n's photo. June 2007. Before Unfogged DCon. A picture now would show his bookshelf covered with bras. Knowing Unfogged, probably all the same color.

I've recently considered a reorganization that puts all expensive or difficult to replace books at or above sitting eye-height. I figure it would be difficult to spill red wine there. Just saying.

Kids these days know better than to read Kipling.

I've always loved buying books, but trying to use the library in grad school made it seem a necessity. Brown's policy was grad students could take books out for an entire semester--except for art books, which were due back in four weeks and could only be renewed in person, book in hand (that last part was later changed, I think, but it was the rule for at least most of my time there.) Art books are also often very large and heavy, meaning carrying them to and fro the library when one doesn't have a car becomes a difficult undertaking. Spending a bunch of money on books became an alternative to library fines, though I paid plenty of the latter as well.

Hrmphf. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if kids these days hadn't lost track entirely of who Kipling was and why reading him was questionable. Man, I love me some Kipling.

You know what I'd really like, if I had ridiculous amounts of money and shelf space? Complete sets of a whole bunch of Victorian authors. A complete set of Trollope, Kipling, Thackeray, Scott...

161: Yes, it's true. I have never yet requested that a book I wanted be recalled. Partly because I hate having books recalled before I'm done with them (Mr/Ms "I need Dreamworld and Catastrophe back, stat" I'm talking to you! I wanted to reread the part about the early Soviet films.), and partly because I assume that the person in question is probably using the book for a class, their dissertation or some other research purpose. I can, you know, wait.

I would never have imagined that so many people could be so deeply, deeply insecure about their right to be interested in whatever topics they like

This amazes me, too. I always have more books than I need from the library because free! books! How can you restrain yourself?

I am a month away from submitting my dissertation in Victorian fiction and have read not one book by the authors LB mentions in 172. Very sad indeed.

It's ok, Sybil. Trollope and Thackeray especially were no-talent hacks.

I don't really do T's.

171: I've seen people using shopping carts for this purpose.

One thing about term loans is I do tend to hold onto things I don't really need right now, but will later.

I am a month away from submitting my dissertation in Victorian fiction and have read not one book by the authors LB mentions in 172.

So there's still time, then.

174: You are rapidly changing my basic left-leaning generosity into an everyone-for-herself greed, you know. From now on, it will be war between me and the book-recallers--they will recall a book, and I will counter-recall.

I have no academic interest or expertise in the area. I just like big clunky Victorian novels. And short punchy Victorian stories. Oooh, Stevenson too. And back a little further for Fielding.

(It's funny, I'm thinking of there being no women on the list, and I think it's because I have the impression that the women from that period I like wrote fewer books. I don't need a complete set of Charlotte Bronte, because I think I've got everything she wrote, or at least could find it again quickly. But I have a nagging belief that there's probably at least one Trollope novel I haven't read. Elizabeth Gaskell, maybe.)

Man, I love me some Kipling.

Me, I don't know, I've never kippled.

Charlotte's novels are less good than Emily's and Ann's, in my opinion. I urge you to get Mary Braddon in the house. Lady Audley's Secret cannot disappoint.

You definitely don't want a complete set of Braddon, though. There are some real clunkers in there. She is sort of the Neil Young of Victorian trash fiction writers.

Take a close look at the lower shelves when your kid reaches the age of sounding out single word titles.

Another reason I keep books that I don't particularly expect to read again is that I have fond memories of being in a friend's or relative's house when I was a kid and just pulling things off the shelf to read. I want my nieces and nephews to have a smörgåsbord. (And, other than the sort of mishap referred to above, I believe that kids are pretty good at filtering what's "appropriate" for their maturity level.)

I used to have books recalled on me--it always seemed to happen at the worst possible moment. I did recall the occasional book, but generally didn't not because of insecurity but because it always seemed like such a bother: I would already have an armful of books and now would be expected to put them down and fill out some form when really I just wanted to get them checked out and go wherever it was I needed to go next.

Nowadays, of course, I have a superb art library three floors above my office, from which most people cannot take anything out but I can do so for unlimited lengths of time. I get all tingly just thinking about it.

180: You know what I wish was set up in these days of computerized records and ubiquitous email at university libraries? Recall requests should come with anonymous email contacts.

Me, I don't know, I've never kippled.

First time for everything, KR.

My kid is fascinated with the covers of the strangest books, btw. She cannot get enough of Paglia's Sexual Persona or Miller's The Novel and the Police.

Emily, maybe? She's not to my taste, but I could totally see an argument that she's a better writer than Charlotte in some sense. But Ann? Did she write anything but The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall and whatever the governess one is called? The Governess?

Austen, again, I have a complete (one volume) set, and Eliot wrote few enough books, although a fair number that I don't have that nagging feeling I've missed something.

I don't know Mary Braddon at all. Must investigate.

185: Oh yeah. I have babysitting clients from when I was a teen the memory of whose bookshelves I treasure. All sorts of great random shit. I was completely pleased to find myself as an adult lending SF to Lupita, the college kid who we hire for occasional nights out.

Anne only wrote a few (3 maybe? Agnes Grey, you are thinking of?), but The Tenant is, for me, soo much better than Jane Eyre. Or Shirley. Maybe that's making it too easy. The only Charlotte I really even care for is Villette.

I started teaching Adam Bede this week and am remembering what a snooze it is.

One thing about term loans is I do tend to hold onto things I don't really need right now, but will later.

Oh yes--and not run the risk that when you do need them, someone else will have already snatched them up. Gotta get in there early.

if you find a hat or something to wear on you head never pick it up, it's a very bad luck, you may die!!!
not really, but close to it bad luck

Oh dear, the winter hat I usually wear was not only found on the ground, but advertises my college's arch-rival in sports. Only twice have I felt embarrased on campus when wearing it.

193: Well that, and the fact that it's already on my shelf so returning it is a trip to the library, while renewing it is in my web browser. That really doesn't help.

192: Heh. I love Adam Bede. A lot of what I like about Victorian novels is the boringness, except I don't find it boring. But the dailyness of them. And Eliot does such a good job with decent, kind, well meaning people doing terrible things.

(And I was thinking of Agnes Grey.)

was not only found on the ground, but advertises my college's arch-rival in sports

Taking the piss about sports in places where they're taken too seriously is an objective good. So the karma probably balances out.

There is a real beauty int he lyrical nostalgia of Adam Bede, but it's a tough sell after the intrigue and spookiness of Great Expectations. Or so say my students.

I once got into a recall war. It was ugly. At one point I found my enemy's library carrel and turned in all the books. I'm not sorry!

At one point I found my enemy's library carrel and turned in all the books. I'm not sorry!

FAIL

What you should have done was hold them hostage, and threatened to keep them out indefinitely and incur lost-book penalties to that person's account if she didn't give you what you wanted.

199: Dude. Remind me never to piss you off.

There are some lines ladies and gentlemen don't cross, Ned.

LB, I can't imagine that you'd be as awful as this person was being.

200: I did consider that. But I went for the lesser evil of causing her big inconvenience.

You know where I'm going after work today? The library!

Scraps of the Untainted Sky

Dockers and Detectives

Larque on the Wing

The Novel and the Police (thanks, Unfogged!)

a Patrick Keiller book whose name escapes me, and The Famished Road. Plus I just renewed all the books I have out now. Plus I'm going to geekily request Paul Park's early novels from storage, but that will take a couple of days.

A lot of what I like about Victorian novels is the boringness, except I don't find it boring. But the dailyness of them.

This is what I like about Fontane. But when I read German less well, and therefore more slowly, it drove me crazy, because the boringness just went on for what seemed like forever and ever.

Oh, hey. Someone tell me who the respectable translator of de Maupassant is?

You know where I'm going after work today? The library!

This thread is making me want to go out tomorrow to my favorite bookstores and drop a lot of money on books regardless of any intent to read them.

looking at the pile of CDs on the BWs bookshelf i'm reminded of my father's old records, kept in pile about this height
my sister used to slide down sitting on them
the record player also was on the floor and i could listen to the records very easily, just putting the victrola's how it is called arm? on it
my mom was a pretty jealous wife, during one of their fights, i remember she threw some records out of the window from our 5 storey apartment building, some records and my father's shirts, we then went outside with dad to collect them, me holding dad's hand and he holding my sister, i think she was 2-3 yo then
nowadays people don't fight like that i guess :)

on the picture i meant

As a newbie, I have to ask: what happened to the Unfogged Reading Group?

It was about Heidegger. Have you ever tried to read Heidegger? There was another one on Montaigne's essays, which was easier, but still ran out of gas.

210: Discussion here.

The Novel and the Police

Little did Bakhtin know the police were nowhere ... and everywhere!

I love the local public library and the fact that I can request books from all over the system to be delivered there for my convenience. However, I keep being lame about returning books and acquiring terrible late fees, such that I'm embarassed to show my face again to get any more books. Really, I bet that at some level they're happy for the traffic and happier for the bonus money directly from the pockets of exactly the people who can afford it....

As a newbie, I have to ask: what happened to the Unfogged Reading Group?

Not enough cock jokes.

However, I keep being lame about returning books and acquiring terrible late fees, such that I'm embarassed to show my face again to get any more books.

No, no. Your late fees are what makes the library possible. I like to think of it as a donation.

Maupassant

Can't name a translator, sorry. But Bel Ami is a really wonderful victorian novel, unjustly obscure. Maybe compare the start of chapter 2 to see how you like translators. One of the the handful of books that are nice as furnishings that I have is a French printing of Yvette with engravings. Came from the library of the architect who built the Barrandov studios.

This is what I like about Fontane.

Flaubert, too.

Bahktin more or less knew, didn't he? Why else do we need the carnival so desperately?

Maupassant is one of a number of short story writers who didn't make the modernist cut. Even more so, Saki and O. Henry. And I think Chekhov too. They're all fun to read and write about interesting people and situations. O. Henry and Saki are gimmicky, but still fun.

Yeah, I'm fond of both of them. O.Henry, particularly, for his sense of locality -- it's a hundred years ago but he's still very definitely writing about my home town.

re: 172

There's a guy has a stall at the weekly market here who has beautiful and I mean absolutely lovely original 19th century bound sets of that sort of thing. Expensive, but not absurdly so.

Belatedly, Sir Kraab's 185 deserves more attention. Hear, hear!

Nicely bound 1920s O. Henry books are pretty easy to find. I like the way he works the accidents of his life (South America, banks, prison) into the settings of so many stories. He was imprisoned in the old penitentiary in Columbus, about where the hockey arena is now. It was pretty easy to sneak around there before it was torn down.

B. Traven and jack London also worked nitty-gritty stuff into their stories.

Another reason I keep books that I don't particularly expect to read again is that I have fond memories of being in a friend's or relative's house when I was a kid and just pulling things off the shelf to read. I want my nieces and nephews to have a smörgåsbord. (And, other than the sort of mishap referred to above, I believe that kids are pretty good at filtering what's "appropriate" for their maturity level.)

I meant to comment on Kraab's comment.

My parents had books from floor to ceiling so I got to read a bunch of stuff.

This is one reason why I collect so many books. I am also always giving my friend's kids books. When they come over, I pull a book of the shelf and shove it in their hands. (Ok, so maybe I and Thou is a little above a fourth grade reading level...they can hold on to it for later.)

I've probably bought 50 copies of Graeme Base's Animalia and a similar number of copies of Where the Wild Things Are.

222: If he had a card with a website on it, and you happened to pass by his stall and pick up a card, I'd love an email. When I've seen that sort of set, it has been absurdly expensive.

WHAT? Chekhov short stories don't make the cut?

Oh, I see on reread, the 'modernist' cut. I can live with that.

I went through a stage when I read a Chekhov story every night before bed. I felt much wiser during that stage.

_Maupassant_ skip the novels, read the stories. Also read Balzac - fast paced, fun 19C french fic.

_Suhrkamp_ reminds me to push everyone to read Uwe Johnson's Jahrestage - unjustly unknown postwar masterpiece (outside Germany).

Earlier this year I heard the old fogey in my department badgering his publisher about why they won't put out a new edition of his B. Traven book. He is obsessed.

Johnson once commented that it should take a reader as much time to read Jahrestage as it took him to write it. (That is, decades.)

LB - you would probably like Boleslaw Prus' The Doll, there's a recent translation that's supposedly good - fun though slow paced novel of the rise and fall of a bourgeois arriviste in late 19C Warsaw.

RE: w-lfs-n's shoe-snatching. Fantastic art project by a local student. Find a single glove? Pick it up, leave a sticker, and turn it in. Mapping, photodocumentation, and reunions! It's great.

RE: w-lfs-n's shoe-snatching. Fantastic art project by a local student. Find a single glove? Pick it up, leave a sticker, and turn it in. Mapping, photodocumentation, and reunions! It's great.

231 - I confess to never having gotten to the end of it - read the first three volumes fairly quickly, then other things came up - since then I've been dipping in and out every couple months.

re: 227

He was there yesterday. He'll be back next week. I'll ask. He had a complete set of Austen, I think, a few weeks back. Lovely mid-19th century hardbacks with a sort of lapis coloured binding. I can't remember the exact price. Definitely hundreds of pounds, but it was for 10 volumes so in the region of maybe 50 dollars per volume.

235 - I haven't even read all of one volume - it was for exams, and I just got enough of it to talk about the form.

But Speculations about Jacob is awesome.

read Balzac

Always good advice.

Referencing a comment from whenever ago that was, I'm eight books into Aubrey/Maturin now.

so the rule should be that when you buy a new book you can't put it on the shelf until you have read it?

240: No, that's insane.

The rule should be: read lots, however you want to manage it, and also mock anyone displaying books for the positive effect they hope it has on other people, Do so mercilessly if that was the primary purpose for which the book was acquired.

241 is right.

The rule is, shelve to-morrow and shelve yesterday, but never shelve to-day.

226 - I try to keep two or three extra copies of Holes around, so I can immediately give one to anyone who hasn't read it.

243: This is also my rule for filing, which is why my office is such a disorganized mess.

ttaM, I just finished Patricia Finney's Firedrake's Eye, on your recommendation from a while back. Quite well done overall, I think. Very ambitious, but still a lot of fun. Thanks.

Someone else recommended Flashman, and I enjoyed the first in that series, as well. Richard Sharpe, on the other hand, I'm having a harder time getting into. Cornwell's writing just pales in comparison to O'Brian's, IMO.

244: I haven't read it, but it's a children's book, right? Does my eight-year-old (currently reading Ozma of Oz) need a copy yet, or do I wait a couple of years?

LB, did you have any luck with the math books you ordered?

She needs a copy of it IMMEDIATELY, and if you were here, I would hand one to you and rush you out the door to take it home to her.

You might want to read it to her. I did to my baby brother. It is wonderful. (As I think back on reading it to my brother, I remember a sorta rough scene. You might want to read it first, which you will do straight through.)

248: They showed up, and she's chewing her way through fourth grade.

247 - There's no sex or graphic violence or anything. Would the idea that people do bad stuff to kids (or the ideaa that adults and power structures are bad/indifferent) freak her out? If not, get it for her (and when she's a little older, get her House of Stairs and scar her for life).

Holes, by Louis Sachar.

The sequel isn't nearly as good.

I also strongly recommend The Misadventures of Maude March, Couloumbis. Western, funny, young sister protagonists.

Your late fees are what makes the library possible. I like to think of it as a donation.

Me too - I like to feel virtuous about helping to keep the library service free. Being able to renew books online has helped though.

I mostly read library books these days. Because I mainly read trash (can't sleep without reading, but am too braindead to think by bedtime) and I refuse to spend money on stuff I don't want to keep. Also because I've got rid of almost everything I want to get rid of, and there are no more shelves.

I don't mind buying children's books, and I think I will soon need to buy the children another bookcase. I have far too many children's non-fiction books.

I think the only thing (apart from clothes) I've ever bought to consciously impress someone else was a watch with a dinosaur on it, just before the film of Jurassic Park came out. It was for the benefit of a boy I liked (although I was going out with someone else), who was mad about dinosaurs. He thought that was hilarious when we finally got together and I told him.

251: She's not much for getting freaked out. I'm trying to think of what she's read that would be disturbing on that level, though, and I'm not sure.

247 - There kinda is some violence: the events that sent Kissing Kate outlaw. They weren't too bad, until I was reading them out loud to my brother and wondering how he was taking them.

I didn't like Holes that much. My 11 year old reads some very dodgy stuff, and sometimes I wonder whether I'm being a Good Parent (in the eyes of the world, not my children), but then I remember that I was reading way more dodgy stuff at that age.

Oh, right, Megan, I forgot that. It's not graphic, but it might be too intense for some kids. (I was thinking more of, e.g., the snakebite.)

LB, I wouldn't hesitate to let my 7 year old read it, but then I'm very slack.

Yeah, it's funny. I read all sorts of random grownup stuff very very young, and mostly failed to understand anything too inappropriate, but I do worry about it some. I figure micromanaging is the wrong reaction, but I worry about being too hands-off.

Oh, this reminds me: All you people who said that a 3-y.o. could handle Spirited Away need to come over here and explain to my daughter why the hell the parents turn into pigs.

We only got 20 minutes in before she begged me to turn it off. The next morning:

"I'm not interested in fairies or princesses anymore. All I can think about is why did those parents turn into pigs."

It's been a week, and she seems to be over it, but sheesh.

"I'm not interested in fairies or princesses anymore."

And you have the nerve to complain?

JRoth, if you've found an effective counter to the disney princess bullshit, you've won big. Just saying.

(Sorry if that sounds harsh - I can't tell now rereading it - it was meant as a joke!)

260: Two reasons, from inside and outside the story. From inside: in a fairy tale, you turn into what you act like -- you act like a pig, you turn into a pig. They were acting like pigs. From outside: The story was about the girl being a hero, and a hero needs a job to do. Hers was rescuing her parents, and if she was going to rescue them, they had to be in trouble.

then I remember that I was reading way more dodgy stuff at that age

I had two great sources of age-inappropriate books in my childhood.

My mother worked at a women's prison. She is an obsessive-compulsive packrat who could never stand to see anything thrown away, so she would bring home the books that were confiscated in the mail as being inappropriate for the inmates. Got lots of radical politics and steamy sex novels that way.

Also, my (dirt poor) school district got donations of unsold books from publishers (paperbacks with the cover half cut off, for the most part), and my mother was somehow involved with that. The local busy-bodies would sort out the books that were considered inappropriate for the school library, which my mother would bring home and stack up in the closet. Thus did I come to have my own copy of The Anthology of Gay Erotica in junior high.

I also remember finding, at the age of 12 or so, The Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft and Demonology in my mother's bookcase. It was full of graphic descriptions and historical images of the tortures used in witch trials throughout the ages. I can still remember my fascination and revulsion in reading about stuff like strappado and squassation.

These memories came pouring back to me when the stories about Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base broke.

My, erm, donations to the library have been pretty expensive -- so much so that after one particular fine I decided I was really just better off buying anything I was interested in. This was when I was barred from enrollment in grad school until I paid off the $700 in fines from my two years using staff privileges at the campus libraries.

The program I was enrolling in? Library and Information Science, of course.

I had a professor like this once. He had a small apartment with more than 5000 hardcovers in it and very little else (every wall lined).

When my mother met my stepfather, he'd redone one of the bedrooms of his house (probably 20X20) as a library. In addition to the built-in bookshelves, he'd also set up two reading chairs with spotlights over them; it was a wonderful place to sit at night, with just two pools of light in the dark room.

When we sold the house, the first thing the new owner did was rip out the library. I've never forgiven him.

You folks sure seem to read a lot of books.

261-264: Believe me, a thrill went through me when she said the first part, but of course it hasn't stuck. Anyway, I'm not sure that searing her psyche with disturbing, otherworldly imagery is actually better than princess shit.

I tried explaining the first part of 264 to her, but the trouble is that she doesn't actually know the phrase "eat like a pig," so there's no logic (resonance) to it for her.

269: Nah. We just like to talk about them on the internet.

267: Send a thief....

269: Nah, it's just like the # of sexual partners thing. We're old.

she doesn't actually know the phrase "eat like a pig,"

Pigs are unfairly maligned, that way. It's true that they are not particularly discriminating in what they eat, and that they will cheerfully root their food out of the mud, but they are not gluttonous. Leave a cow in front of a limitless supply of feed, and she will eat until she is sick, possibly dangerously so.* A pig, by contrast, will stop when it's full.

*In fairness to the cows, that behavior is only maladaptive because we feed them high-protein feeds. They can modulate their grass intake with no problem.

I also remember finding, at the age of 12 or so, The Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft and Demonology in my mother's bookcase.

I have that book! Not in my apartment now (limited space) but in my bedroom at my mom's house. It was in one of a few boxes of books that we inadvertently left in a shed for about ten years, so it has some water damage. Fascinating book, though.

More generally, I've read at least part of almost all of the books in my apartment (excepting reference books). The books I haven't read, mainly gifts and heirlooms, are mostly at my mom's house.

Not particularly discriminating in what they eat: in the sense of "They'll eat a turd right out of your ass and a chunk of your ass with it." No exaggeration.

And now, only partly inspired by this thread, I'm going to go to the used bookstore down the street.

I'm posting from the library, everyone! The library! I forgot my book list and decided to consult my earlier post.

I read a lot of age-inappropriate stuff as a child, most of which my parents found and restricted. (Perhaps you recall that Bleak House was forbidden until I was sixteen.) But it was "The Rocking Horse Winner" that scarred me for life.

And of course I found and read all of our very limited selection of Books With Sex In Them (Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess. That was an education, and not entirely a bad one.)

JG Ballard's Crash was a memorable Book With Sex In It. I got into trouble for lending that to a friend - I was 11, she may have been 12, and her parents found it and complained.

For me, it's about quality, not quantity. I've been seriously restraining my book-buying habits for the last 5 or 6 years, and I don't miss all the books that I would have purchased but never read. I like concentrating on certain fairly obscure subjects, so that I can feel really excited when I add a new volume. Not so many people have 60+ books on anarchism and anarchists, nor 12 books on Bunuel. Nor the full Nabat series of radical autobiographies. One of the things that makes my strategy easier is that I don't really like realist literary novels all that much. Especially not the flowering of post-WWI through late 1960s US writers. I read Catch-22 in 8th grade and that was about it for me. If one did like those kinds of novels, you could fill up whole apartments with them.

Can someone recommend a used bookstore or two in San Francisco? The Biophysicist and I are spending the 14th to the 19th up there, mostly attending a family wedding, but we will, of course, need books. [And if anyone is free for a meet-up, we're free Sunday and Monday evening].

A nice thing about living where we do is the Beverly Hills Library [Friends thereof] bookstore. The people in Beverly Hills evidently don't keep books [and, from appearances, don't read ones they buy]. Paperbacks are a quarter, HB range from $1 to $2500 [an autographed Faulkner].

Best house I ever had was a converted barn in Connecticut with wall-to-wall built-in bookcases in the living room. I miss the bookcases, but not the weather. Now, we rely on Ikea: 20 Billy bookcases so far. The high point of the Offspring's move out was that we now have a whole extra room we can fill with bookcases...

I confess to liking having books that I may never read. Things like multilingual dictionaries of languages I don't know -- e.g. the Rasulid Hexaglot, ca. 1300 AD (Arabic-Mongol-Persian-Greek-Turkish-Armenian, a mere $265). Some books are so awesome that you just want to look at them.

re: 246

Glad you sort of liked it. I have other recommendations in that general vein if you're interested. No problem if not.

Can someone recommend a used bookstore or two in San Francisco?

Green Apple Books
Dog-Eared Books
Some new bookstore that opened up near Absinthe

282: Green Apple, Green Apple, Green Apple. You can go over to Moe's in Berkeley if you feel like slumming it, but I cannot recommend Green Apple highly enough. They have an excellent selection, and their editorial taste is first rate. When I moved from San Francisco, I filled several bags and an external frame backpack with my books and hiked down to 6th Ave. The gentleman at the counter cast his eye over the collection and proceeded to remove each and every work of value from it. I walked away eighty five dollars richer with the feeling I had been intellectually raped. These motherfuckers know their trade.

283: Some books are so awesome that you just want to look at them.

For the Armenian alone. It's so cool looking! You've succeeded in making me want to look at that book, too.

re: good looking books.

My own ambition is to get hold of a decent set of USSR in Construction from the days with Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Stepanova.

Glad you sort of liked it. I have other recommendations in that general vein if you're interested. No problem if not.

Definitely more than sort of, I'd say. I was just trying to express that I wasn't head-over-heels thrilled.

Part of my problem with Finney is that I don't have a whole lot of experience with contemporary historical fiction outside of Patrick O'Brian, whose writing I adore. Another part is that my expectations were very high, both based on your recommendation and on the fact that I'm currently in the middle of a dissertation on Stuart England. I certainly hadn't read much non-Napoleonic historical fiction, in particular, and I was really looking forward to reading something closer, chronologically, to the era that I specialize in. The third and final part, I'll confess, entirely independent of Firedrake's Eye, is that something about Finney's website kinda rubbed me the wrong way.

That said, I did enjoy it, and I'll probably pick up her other Elizabethan novels at some point. I'd love to hear your other recommendations. Feel free to email me at nick (dot) franklin (at) hotmail (dot) com, if you'd prefer.

Pigs are unfairly maligned, that way. It's true that they are not particularly discriminating in what they eat

My mom (the forensic pathologist) had a case once involving a farmer who was slopping his hogs and fell into the pen. They ate him.

The gentleman at the counter cast his eye over the collection

You see, this is why the used booktrade continues in its noble vein: people helplessly describe it, in its proper incarnation, in these terms. "Gentleman" indeed.

The fucker at the counter when I went to sell an extra copy of Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald sure was no gentleman, and sure didn't offer me a gentleman's price, neither.

I'm certain I'll never read all of the books I own unless I stop buying books and read only those I have. But I can at least say why I bought each book that I own.*

*Excepting books I didn't buy but picked up for some reason or other.

I don't have bookshelves to impress people, I have a booklog. Which works much better, in that not just friends and relatives get to know your dodgy taste, but also random googlers.

In the physical world, the upside of living together with a bookloving woman with different tastes to me is plenty of good, unfamiliar reading material. She's into the Victorians, social history, geology and the deep sea. Me, I'm more the science fiction war and history type.

The downside is when she tries to guilt trip me into slimming down my collection because she did when we moved in together. Hasn't worked so far, as I still got two bookcases of unread science fiction in the bed room.

290. This is called getting your retaliation in first. There's a job waiting for them at Homeland Security.