I like how she says "now past 120 comments" as if it is noteworthy.
Were the two links in the post supposed to link to different things?
I also highly recommend LT. I paid for the larger account size (a one-time lifetime membership) and love it. Not only is it way fun to play with and find all the people who own your books, but it also links up with Amazon Associates, so you can display a random selection of your books on your blog, and if a reader buys them, you get a small cut.
Oh, sure, in my case, this has generated something like five bucks, but if you were more important than me, it could add up to something.
If we get a bunch of new commenters who are "readers," Labs, I'm holding you responsible.
Sort-of related, but very loosely (kind of like a LT for music, only not really at all): am I the last person in the world to have discovered pandora.com? This may be very old news, but I just ran across it this morning and am so far have an unbelievelably good time.
A couple of caveats: 1) I hate Bob Knight with a passion and 2) when the bloom of youth was upon me, I used to win awards for "most books read" and shit like that, but one of the great quotes of all time is Knight's "We all learn to read by the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things."
3: Am I the only person who is too embarrassed by my bookshelves to catalog them in public? I own the most godawful mismash of genre fiction of all qualities down to horrendous (mystery, sf, the occasional romance novel that I pick up from the free paperback shelf in the laundry room (they're absolutely filthy these days. Who knew?)) some literary fiction and a whole lot of Penguin Classics (I love Trollope, and I like pretty much anything originally published in three volumes), old college textbooks, law school, and various excitable books on current affairs (such as a couple of Florida recount books, etc.) I cringe a little when respectable people come over and look at the shelves in the living room, because I feel like such a flibbertigibbet.
7 - Even worse, I own a fair amount of crappy Terry Pratchett books to go with my Everyman's Library and pop history and Booker Prize winners. By not registering, I'm reinforcing the Terry Pratchett-is-the-opposite-of-everything unsuggestions.
Worse, there, means "exactly like me." I may own all of them, I'm not sure.
Not that they're crappy. I'm very fond of Terry Pratchett.
LB, I feel your pain, and, in my case, it extends to music shame, as well. There are very few people who have looked into the dark night of my iTunes. And the thought of putting that online (or worse, a "top played" list which I've seen from people) shakes me to the core.
AWB, you are very important. You just don't get a lot of traffic (if you know what I mean.)
LB, I'm the same. My books range from all kinds of genre fiction, through to 19th century literary classics, loads of 'foreign' fiction in translation, works of fairly abstruse philosophy, through to cook books, travel books, etc, etc. Pratchett, too. Loads of real rubbish in there, along with good stuff.
My music collection, on the other hand, is pretty good. Eclectic but good. I don't own much that's stinky* -- I'm much more ruthless about selling on or giving away music I don't like.
* Or that I can't argue for when some tasteless individual disputes its greatness.
(a one-time lifetime membership)
So, what, you don't believe in the resurrection of the bodylibrary?
10 - Ehh, he's been phoning it in for a while. They're good airplane books, though. I'm personally always a little suspicious of people whose books all skew a certain way (what, you read the entire Dalkey Archive but have no non-fiction? You've never purchased a book that didn't feature a barbarian princess in a chainsaw bikini on the cover?). Just remind yourself that flibbertigibbet s/b "refreshingly catholic in my tastes".
Let me second AWB's recommendation. I love it.
I realize that I am a hopeless redneck slob, and yes there are some books I put on more prominent display than others because I'm proud of them or I think they make me look smarter than I am, but deep down I really don't give a fuck what anyone thinks of my shelves as a whole. I find tremendous pleasure in reading and enjoy my escapist genre fiction just as much as anything else. People whose shelves are nothing but academia or intense criticism or "classics" strike me as being about as mature as and quite possibly more shallow than the scenester college kids who refuse to own a CD with a barcode on it and think they're clever for sitting around playing the Obscurity = Quality game with one hand down their own pants.
Oh, I am insecure even about my own insecurity -- a better person than I would say "fuck it".
Hey speaking of books is everybody sitting on the edge of their seat in anticipation of Tuesday? I know I am.
People whose shelves are nothing but academia or intense criticism or "classics" strike me as being about as mature as and quite possibly more shallow than the scenester college kids who refuse to own a CD with a barcode on it and think they're clever for sitting around playing the Obscurity = Quality game with one hand down their own pants.
If you have to pretend that obscurity is quality when you've got a hand down your pants, you're probably immature in more than one way.
I just get driven up the wall by people who want to make sure that every book/CD/framed print/whatever in their home trumpets how great they are, and seek to counter it whenever possible. I would much rather spend time among people who've read nothing but trash and have something substantive to say about that trash than with someone who just wants to wave their bibliocock at me. "You haven't read An Eye-Wateringly Dull Bit of Mental Masturbation in the original Greek? Tsk." is not meaningful conversation.
Now, that said, collections are always impressive and fun. Rah has more books than I'll ever own in my entire life and I own a lot of books. Many of his books are rare and valuable and he's very rightly proud of them, but he's not so proud that he thinks it's somehow beneath him to pick up a Raymond Chandler and read it so we can yuck it up over some particularly amusing bit of dialogue.
Wait -- Raymond Chandler is OK for anyone to read. A better example would by Nora Roberts.
There's nothing like lugging a new Pynchon cinderblock to make Thanksgiving travel more rewarding.
Reposted from wrong thread
I was completely obsessed with Unsuggest for about 24 hours. Results at my URL.
If they had more members (say a million) I really think that someone could design a bot and come up with a map or graph of The American Mind.
As it is the average library there seems to be 70 books, which apprently means that a lot of people catalogued about 10 books and some several hundred. (Though I an not sure if the 100,000 members catalogued 7 million books in all, or 7 million different titles.)
Wait -- Raymond Chandler is OK for anyone to read. A better example would by Nora Roberts.
OK, I would be interested in hearing why a Nora Roberts fan liked her books, but not interested in actually reading them and I wouldn't want to hear about it for very long. In all honesty my reverse-elitism would die quickly in the cold dark of that space.
My library is acceptably untrashy. I tend to be pretty picky.
>OK, I would be interested in hearing why a Nora Roberts fan liked her books, but not interested in actually reading them and I wouldn't want to hear about it for very long. In all honesty my reverse-elitism would die quickly in the cold dark of that space.
That is the problem with keeping it real; there is always some who can keep it realer.
20. - nice.
when the bloom of youth was upon me, I used to win awards for "most books read"
wtf? You must have gone to the gayest school ever.
You got me. It was just who could reread the Koran the most times. Something about a guy named Mohammed.
12 made me cry. Thanks, JE, I think.
Reminds me of a line I just saw in Newsweek: several times over the past few years the 41st president has mentioned to visitors that the 43rd president has read the Bible in its entirety—not once, the father says, but twice, sticking two fingers in the air.
the soft bigotry of low expectations begins at home.
Admit it: everybody else commenting on this thread fell a little bit more in crush with LB with #18.
I'm touched, but the economic argument in the other thread makes me wonder if praising me for being cripplingly neurotic mightn't qualify as a perverse incentive.
34: It's kind of you to pretend, in defiance of the obvious, that a crush from me could be considered an incentive, perverse or otherwise. More crush points!
but he's not so proud that he thinks it's somehow beneath him to pick up a Raymond Chandler and read it so we can yuck it up over some particularly amusing bit of dialogue.
"`I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.` What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?"
"Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good."
He smiled. "That is from the `Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.` Here's another one. `In the room women come and go/Talking of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?"
Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much about women."
"My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much."
"Did you say, 'nonetheless'?"
--The Long Goodbye.
Maybe I'm just trying to justify my love of trash by claiming it has serious! value!, but nonetheless, I think The Long Goodbye is one of the great 20th century American novels. If I were teaching this stuff, I'd assign it along side The Great Gatsby.
Anyway, I love a lot of what's usually considered trash, musical and literary. Only sheer laziness has kept me from putting more of my books on Library Thing.
I think The Long Goodbye is one of the great 20th century American novels
Honestly, so do I. I just grabbed that one out of thin air.
As a whole, of course, it's not as good as The Long Goodbye, but the very end of The High Window is my favorite passage of Chandler. (Now that I think of it, it's actually not so dissimilar to the parallel moment in Gatsby, but I find it much more affecting.)
Nuts to you Chandler-lovers, I'm a Hammett man. (Which is not to say that I don't like Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye and the rfts-cited end of The High Window a great deal.)
To be honest, the only Chandler I've found that I didn't love instantly has been a few of his short stories and only then because I'd read The Long Goodbye first and he was so much more skilled then. I liked The Long Goodbye better than The Big Sleep, and that better than the rest of his that I've read, but I haven't found one I wouldn't recommend to a friend.
Hammett is a master, of course. The Thin Man may honestly be one of the funniest books I've ever read. Hammett could write real conversations.
The only line I remember from Chandler:"Worn-out intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank."
altho is the conversation in 36 preceded by a description of pillows on the floor and "...looked like a room where no work was ever done." ?
I've only read one book by Jim Thompson but it was fun.
Jim Thompson is so revered as a modern American master in France that I've have a hard time picking his stuff up. Any recommendations?
43: The Killer Inside Me. It's the only one of his I could finish, but it's great.
Hey speaking of books is everybody sitting on the edge of their seat in anticipation of Tuesday? I know I am.
Clownae, I had to unsubscribe from the Pynchon list after 2 days--I was drowning in Pynchon email. Those people are worked up.
43: The Grifters. Savage Night is fascinating (and I think very good), but David Lynch-ian and not representative; Pop. 1280 is quite good (not as straight-ahead noir as Grifters, but much less weird than SN), and there's a good French adaption set in colonial Africa, Coup de Torchon. I confess that I've never read The Killer Inside Me, which is his most famous book, but people praise it.
Urrgh. Always preview! Always!
Jim Thompson: I've read only The Killer Inside Me and liked it; Barrah Hannah uses Hell of a Woman in his noir fiction class, and my wife liked it when she took the class, I think.