Tuesday Thingers: Because I'm Bored

Ok, I should probably be vacuuming before my mom's friends (including a couple mutual ones) get here for her Tuesday knitting circle. Instead, because I haven't been at this for a while, I'm going to do this week's Tuesday Thinger, followed by one or two old ones.

Have you explored the new Collections feature? Do you plan to use the new Collections? Are you going to add any special collections? If so, what are they?

I'll admit it, I've been waiting for Collections functionality ever since I joined and heard rumors about it, sometime back in 06 or 07 if memory serves. I don't plan to use them, I use them, all the preconfigured ones, as well as a couple I made myself. With the advent of collections I took my "Religion & Spirituality Library" tag and converted it into a collection. Its sort of the focus of my whole collection, so I thought it deserved its own. Someone's probably achieved more complete collection of this sort of literature, but mine is still growing, and it is rather specialized. I also created a collection for all the books I read last year, and for the ones I'm reading this year. I've considered converting my fiction and non-fiction tags to collections, but I'm a bit on the fence about it.

What other weekly memes or round robins do you participate in? Is this the only one? Why Tuesday Thingers and not some other weekly Tuesday meme? Or do you do more than one?

In addition to Tuesday Thingers, I do the Sunday Salon, Booking Through Thursday, and am planning to add Musing Mondays to the list. If anyone knows of a weekly meme for Wednesday let me know at romartin at linfield dot edu. I got into Tuesday Thinger because it was started at Librarything, which I absolutely love, and is quite honestly an avid reader/bibliophile's dream come true in some ways

Cataloging sources. What cataloging sources do you use most? Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources, or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most things through LT’s almost 700 sources?

I try to use the Library of Congress as much as I can. No reason really, just my own little idiosyncratic habit i guess. When I can't find records for a book in the LoC I usually use amazon.com

Sorry for the weird formatting on this post. Just getting back into the groove and finding I have to relearn some of this stuff.

BOOKSTORES!

Found this meme and I figured I'd get things going again:

What's your favorite bookstore?
I'd have to say Quest Bookshop in Seattle. Its a metaphysical bookstore that is run by the Theosophical society. The Seattle branch's lending library is in a big back room and open to the public (although there's a membership fee to actually borrow books you can literally sit there and read the whole couple thousand book collection if you wanted). You could find just about any book you could possibly want to read about western or eastern religion and spirituality in the store or library, its incredible. Its just a little hole in the wall store, but I've literally gotten lost in there!

Have you ever traveled out of state or out of the country, just to visit a particular bookstore?
No, I can honestly say I haven't. I've gone to Powell's in Portland a number of times, but I was always in Portland to visit friends anyway. I would love to go to the Strand, however, and my well see about going to visit a cousin who lives there just to have an excuse.

Have you ever gone on a date to a bookstore? Would you consider a bookstore to be a romantic place?
I wouldn't exactly consider a bookstore romantic, although I have ended up at the local Indie shop in the town where I go to college.

What's the latest you've stayed out at night at a bookstore?
I can honestly say I've never stayed that late at any bookstore. Usually I'm there during the day.

Do you like to go with friends or by yourself?
If its someone thats willing to be on their own and dialogue a bit, but doesn't mind me not following them around all the time, book shopping with someone can be kind of fun. Mostly when I shop I tend to browse, picking up interesting looking books and reading pages at a time, so I really prefer to be on my own.

What would your dream bookstore be like?
I've come close to it with Quest (see first question). It'd be a place that specializes in Eastern Religion, Metaphysics, spirituality, etc, with big comfy chairs for reading (which Quest has in the lending library, the retail store in the front is too small, and its pretty packed with shelves). I'd be on a first name basis with everyone working there, I'd be able to mention some obscure teacher no one's heard of, and they'd know who they were right off the bat and be able to tell me if there was anything in stock (somehow Indies especially don't really sit with me well when the people who work there don't even know their own stock.) It'd be well lit, mostly by big windows that let lots of light in during the summer, and good quality lamps (not those horrid halogen atrocities) in the summer.

What's your favorite specialty bookstore and what does it specialize in?
See the first question.

Have you ever worked at a bookstore or wanted to? Do people ever mistake you for a bookstore employee and ask you questions as you browse? 
Never worked in a bookstore, but would like to. However, I'd go for a job in an independent or used store before something like B&N, although I wouldn't pass up a job and Barnes and Noble were it offered, especially in this economy (employee discount DROOL). I can honestly say i've never been mistaken for an employee. However, at least in the religion area of the Barnes and Noble at the University District in Seattle I could probably do a better job of locating a book for someone than most of the staff. I've certainly spent enough time in that nook to know the stock pretty intimately.

Do you like bookstore cafes? Would you consider a bookstore a social destination as opposed to strictly a retail destination?
Honestly I'm not a big fan. People tend to bring stock up there before they've bought it from what I've seen. This usually results in the book getting damaged or food smudged on it, and when I go to a bookstore I usually expect to find the stock in good condition, minor shelf wear excepted. Shelf wear, however, does not and has never included food stains water marks, or any of a number of things I've found in books in some stores (not naming names).

What's the silliest thing you've ever done in a bookstore? Ever been kicked out of one?
I've been known to take books on Buddhism and Hinduism and mix them into the Christianity section. Christians do it all the time, so I figure its only fair. *evil grin* Never been kicked out of a bookstore though.

Booking Through Thursday Double Feature

Doing something a bit different this week. I'm doing two weeks of BTT at the same time! I missed last week's, so I'm doing it now just for the hell of it, and I'm also doing this weeks. The current BTT question is first, followed by the previous one.

Do you buy books while on vacation/boliday? Do you have favorite bookstores that you only get to visit while away on a trip? What/Where are they?

There are two mom and pop metaphysical bookstores where I live, Quest, run by the Theosophical Society, and East/West, run by Ananda. However, my favorite normal bookstore of all time, Powell's City of Books is in Portland Oregon. I try to at least go in and look around whenever I'm in Portland. The store is amazing. The flagship is a giant maze of a story that you could literally get lost in, thankfully they have maps available at the front door.


What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favorite source of books was unavailable?

While B&N is great, my two favorite bookstores of all time are run by religious brotherhoods. Quest, run by the Theosophical Society, and East/West, by Ananda. Given, I could probably get most of the books these two stores sell somewhere else, maybe even cheaper if they went out of business. However, part of shopping there is the experience itself. I know many of the people who work at both stores personally from going to church and other functions with them, and the buildings themselves seem to have their own life and energy that the books retain. Looking at my collection, I could probably tell you what I bought from one of these stores and what I got online simply because they "feel" different.

BTT: Trends in Reading

Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?


When I first started reading, it was mostly novels, adventure stories, Louis Satcher, Wayside, stuff like that. As I've gotten older, my taste in novels has advanced appropriately, I'm reading more "adult" authors, but I've also started reading more non-fiction than fiction. I'm more likely to pick up a Krakauer, than a Kostova, Zinn than Koontz. However, I do still read a number of novels. Comics are another thing. All through elementary school and highschool I read a bunch of Foxtrot and Calvin & Hobbes, and once I got into highschool, I started reading manga. I still read the funnies, and I'll read some manga on occasion, but it just doesn't hold my interest anymore. I should note that I started reading quite early. I was, I think, six or seven when I cracked my first book, a Berenstein Bears book, but give me a break, its still reading.

Tuesday Thingers!

Why LT?

Why did you choose to open and maintain an LT account? Do you/did you use other online cataloging/social networking sites, like GoodReads or Shelfari? Do you use more than one? Are they different or do they serve different purposes?

I pretty much stumbled on LT one day, and thinking, "This looks awesome" immediately signed up and started cataloguing my library. I hadn't heard of cataloguing sites before LT, and, from what I've seen of some of the others, I seem to have stumbled on the best one. GoodReads, which seems to be the next best thing to LT, also looks like a blatant copy. Although I'm on facebook, LT is the only book cataloguing/social networking site I use. I just never saw the need to use more than one site that did the same thing, which I guess is why I only use facebook, even though I also have a myspace account.

Tuesday Thinger

So the question this week is- how many books do you have cataloged in your LibraryThing account? How do you decide what to include- everything you have, everything you've read- and are there things you leave off?

I currently have 323 books in my catalog. My only real criterion is that I own the book. I've got books I've already read in there, books I plan to read. I've even got a couple I know I'm never actually going to crack open, like a copy of the DSM-IV I got from a book sale at my college library for free just so I could see the look on people's faces when they see it on my shelf.

Top 106 Books on LibraryThing

Thats right ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm bored and looking for excuses not to write my take home essays for finals, which means, ITS TIME FOR ANOTHER MEME! This one involves my absolute favorite book related website of all time, the one, the only LibraryThing. If you haven't already, you really should go check it out over at www.librarything.com.

Anyway, this particular meme is a list of the 106 books most commonly marked as "unread" on that most esteemed of websites. My only alteration to the rules as written, is that I have added comments to a handful of books, Nor have I underlined anything, as I am unable to do either in blogspot's text editor. I'd like to thank Christine over at shereadsbooks.blogspot.com for bringing this to my attention.


The rules: Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list.

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion [so! boring!]
Life of Pi: a novel [on my tbr pile]
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick [on my tbr pile]
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies [However I do plan to go back and read this cover to cover, as well as its sequel at some later date]
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods [Didn't find it to be that amazing]
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas Shrugged [started one of Rand's books on a relative's recommendation but never finished. I think it was Atlas, not sure. Reminded me too much of a poorly written 1984.]
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales [I really don't like old english. Had to read this for school anyway.]
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula [on my tbr pile]
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King [interesting, but slow. I do plan to revisit this and finish it at a later date.]
The Grapes of Wrath [boooring]
The Poisonwood Bible
1984 [freaky damn book.]
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses [I want to read this, if for no other reason than it's a banned book by an author who was famous before it was banned.]
Sense and sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest [the book is so much darker than the movie.]
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune [booooooooring -- but I finished it]
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes [on my tbr pile]
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present [on my tbr pile]
Cryptonomicon [loooooong. Didn't finish it, not sure if I'll go back and take another look.]
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter [holy cow, Hawthorne is prosy]
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed [on my tbr pile. I'm going wait to tackle this until I go back and finish GG&S.]
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye [hated it]
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics [on my tbr pile]
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers [on my tbr pile]

Sunday Thinger

Normally this will get posted on Tuesdays, but its Sunday today, hence the modified title line. Anyway, this is a weekly meme created by one of the wonderful people over on LibraryThing.

This week's topic: Discussion groups. Do you belong to any (besides Early Reviewers)? Approximately how many? Are there any in particular that you participate in more avidly? How often do you check?

LibraryThing is part book cataloging site, and part massive world spanning discussion forum. Within this most wonderful of sites I'm a member of about 20 discussion groups. However, of those I only check about five at all regularly. Those include the Green Dragon, the most active group on LT, which focuses on Tolkein's work, as well as fantasy/mythology/wonderful randomness.

Book MeMe

Instructions: In the list of books below, bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of. In the comments, let me know if you're up for it. I left some books in just regular old font, these are the ones I am not sure I want to read or not. Feel free to tell me I am totally wrong and should read something on this list.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (JRR Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (JRR Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (JRR Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. *Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. +Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. +Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. *A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. +Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. +Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. +The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. *The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. +Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. +East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell) - Didn't finish it, been meaning to go back and read it for a while.
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) - Tried to read it, got fed up and put it aside. Recently saw the movie and want to give it another chance sometime.
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. *I Know This Much is True(Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. +The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. *Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. +The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. +the Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. +Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. *She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. +The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. +Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. +Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58.* The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) -
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. *The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78.* The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. *Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. *Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. *Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. *The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. *Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. *The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. *The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98.* A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. +The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)