I really love librarything.com. You can see the 484 books I own. I just added 16 more books. I’m very thankful that we live in such an age where so many books are available in such a wide variety of topics. It’s truly amazing. I’m also very thankful that I have been able to have so many books.
Please borrow my books
The main reason why I post these books online is so that people can borrow books from me. I love sharing my books with people. So please, just ask me if you’d like to borrow something. I’m not at all picky about the condition of my books, so you can throw it in your bag and even beat it up. I love it when books get used. I love it even more when there are notes, underlines, and ideas written on the pages of books. It’s great to be able to engage with a book and then share it with others. If you borrow a book from me, it must just have a bunch of my comments written in the margins. I would encourage you to write and underline stuff in any book(s) you borrow.
Here’s a neat widget that updates itself with the ten most recent books I acquired. Or if you are really fancypants, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of my recently-added books.
(Disclaimer: The Amazon links in this blog post are affiliate links, so I can make a few extra coins to help pay for a fraction of the cost to host this website. #CommissionsEarned)
I like beat-up books too 😀 I take it as a sign of how much they were enjoyed. There have been some books I literally didn’t want to put down, so they’ve been fallen asleep on, had food splashed on them, and been dropped in wet sinks and so on. Now, by contrast, my sister is very uptight about that kind of thing – she doesn’t even like the spines to be cracked on her books. I think she’s missing the point! You know what’s really great? used book stores! Lately I’ve actually been trying to downsize my book collection. I try to only buy books that I’ve already read and enjoyed, and think I will definitely want to read again a few more times. Otherwise I try to just borrow them from the public library. That cuts down on stuff I’ll have to store and move. I’m also trying to give away books that I already bought, but it’s proving easier to not buy a book in the first place than to get rid of books I already own. I tend to assign feelings to inanimate objects and I don’t want them to feel unloved. Does librarything account for books you’ve read but don’t own? I’ve been using some book application on Facebook to track what I’ve read recently, but it’s not very satisfying.
Yeah, I was joking around this weekend with my family about borrowing books and how when I borrow one of my mom’s books, I have to carry it around in a ziploc bag. Then my dad chimed in joking, “if you borrow on my photo books, you’ll need to carry it around with TWO ziploc bags.” In grade school we would make brown paper bags to cover our books. That was a lot of fun, because then we got to draw and doodle all over the book cover while in class. BUT YES. Used book stores rule. There’s one in Milwaukee called “Downtown Books: Two and a half floors of Used Books, Comics, Videos, Magazines, and More” http://www.downtownbooksonline.com It was sooooo cool exploring their building. The books just didn’t stop! And then I had a simliar experience just today as I discovered Myopic books in chicago. They have three floors (actually 3 and a half floors, that third floor, i swear is just plywood, i thought that i was gonna collapse through the floor!–that’s the quality you want in a used book store!), but they didn’t have nearly as many books as Milwaukee’s Downtown Books. But still. Oh! And so I took a photo of the room that had just mystery books. There was a single chair in the middle of the floor with a long shadow. And the room was just mystery books. THE MYSTERY ROOM! But then later I saw a sign saying, “no photography, flickr users you wouldn’t want us messing with your account.” EEPS. No I don’t want them to mess with it! Can you imagine if flickr just cancelled your account cuz someone complained? YIPES! So it ends up that photo will be just like the room–a mystery! I hear ya about trying to use the library more. My thing is that I like to write notes in the book, and I don’t want to lose those. But then again, chances are the book will stay at the library, and if I really need those notes, I can just go back to the library. Does your area have a good library system? Chicago’s totally rocks. And I live by Chicago’s 2nd biggest library (or at least i think it is the 2nd biggest). I just ran out of room in the comments box (limit 2,500 characters! Thankfully flickr doesn’t limit the comment count–or maybe they do?). I’m putting the rest of the comment in the next one.
(continued from previous comment) You can enter books into librarything that you read but don’t own. I just make up a tag for those books: borrowed. I haven’t been very good at entering in the books I’ve read from the library. I would love it if the library kept record of all the books we’ve taken out. People get so freaked out by it, but I personally would find it so handy. Plus wouldn’t it be cool to see what books you took out when you were five years old? When you mentioned the facebook app for books, I thought you were referencing the GoodReads app (which is an alright app), but you are talking about the “Books” app. Whoa. I never knew that one existed! But “Books” looks pretty plain vanilla. I started to write about librarything and goodreads here, but it got so long, I just made it a blog post at: https://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts_comments/4823_0_3_0_C/
Good list, thanks for sharing.
“For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women”. Seriously?
It was so fun decorating the paper book covers! I do remember those. We had to make them out of paper grocery bags. They sell stretchy fabric book covers at my store for back-to-school now, but that’s not as fun. Kids today, they don’t know how to have fun! Kids today *grumbles* There’s a bookstore in Columbus, in the German Village neighborhood, that sounds like that one you mentioned, (Myopic)… I will have to look up the name of it… it claims to have “32 rooms of books!” but some of the rooms are just tiny nooks or parts of a hallway, and it’s a little bit mazelike… It’s definitely not handicap-accessible. http://www.bookloft.com/ Oh wait, it’s not even a used book store. what! I guess I have only been there once. Thanks again for recommending librarything. I like it!
Yeah, what’s up with those stretchy book covers? I’ll have to ask some of my teacher friends if kids actually use those. That Book Loft bookstore sounds/looks really cool! I love the “danke sch n” banner that hangs on their exit. haha. Isn’t funny how bookstores don’t use a system like the library? I suppose it’s cuz the library system is very sterile, but a book store’s looser category system encourages one to browse around more. But then I don’t really buy that theory, because I love browsing the library shelves too. I’ve often wanted to organize my bookshelves to the dewey decimal system–or whatever it is that libraries use now. What is it called? It’s not dewey decimal, is it? Cuz libraries (at least the Chicago ones) use some sort of letters at the beginning of the call number. So anyways, I don’t do that, because then I can’t really categorize my books by book size. Having the books all jumbled in size on the shelf is kinda chaotic looking. But then again, my books right now are all over the place! One of these days. One of these days. I’m glad you like librarything. I’m glad to see you on it. Hey, I was going to ask you, what books are you currently reading? I’d like to get into reading more fiction again (I was in a book club a couple years ago, but then it disbanded). I’d like to read along with something you are going through. (heh. although i’m betting you are able to burn through a book much faster than me! I pick up way too many books at once to read. But maybe i’ll be able to focus. Yes. Focus.)
I really don’t know for sure about the library classification system… I looked at the ALA website and it looks like some of the academic & larger libraries use the Library of Congress classification system. So that could be it. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/ hmm? You really organize yours by size? heh. That’s really funny. I do mine by how much I liked them, like all my most super favorites are on one shelf at my eye level, and then I have some of the others grouped by the author’s nationality, and some grouped by themes (like fairy tales & mythology). One bookcase is mostly children’s and young adult books, and the other one is regular literature (but in my closet I still have a big plastic bin of books from my childhood that I have not gone through in a while. I have an idea that I want to do, you know how a lot of people on Flickr do their 365 days of self-portraits? I thought I would do a year of books.) I’ve seen where some people organize their books by color, but then how do you know where to find a particular book when you want it? I’ll admit it looks cool on the shelf though. I did notice when I looked through your book list that almost all of your books are nonfiction! That seemed really weird to me. I only have a few nonfiction books on my shelves – mostly things I had to buy for school. It’s just not something I usually ever think of buying. Book clubs sound like fun. I miss being in school and discussing books with other people who are actually interested. …WAIT A MINUTE. Did you say you wanted to read a book WITH ME? Oh mister. You had better not be kidding around. But, ok. Currently, I am about 1/3 of the way through Suite Fran aise (Ir ne N mirovsky) and about 1/4 into Portrait of a Lady (Henry James). I can’t recommend either one yet (but I guess Suite Fran aise if you want to pick one of the two), or well, what do you like to read about? or is there anything you’ve been wanting to read? I should check my list of things to read, and then if you really want to read along we can start something new at the same time 🙂
Yeah yeah! the LOC classification system. That’s it! Well, i organize mine by several systems, not just size. I have a favorites shelf too. And then a loose category system. But some of the books are too big for some shelves, so they get their own shelf. Although it would be nice to have all the books by size, then you could make each shelf a specific height, and it would make a nice block. The color idea is neat! I suppose one could use librarything to tag the color of each book. Then you could find the book via color. Although I still like having them by category. But right now now I don’t really have much of a system, because I built some shelves, and I still haven’t organized the books. I just kinda threw them up there. Yeah, I do have a bunch of non-fiction books. I’m a perpetual student. 🙂 I get the feeling you are a perpetual student too. Oh yeah! I’m serious about reading a book WITH YOU. Anything is good. Seeing that you are 1/3 and 1/4 through other books, maybe we’ll start when you start a new one. I’m open to anything. (oh wow, the captcha word for this comment is anything07. How funny!)
Oh great, now the pressure is all on me to pick out something good! I’ll let you know when I find something suitable. I can’t believe you want to read with me. Where did you come from??? 🙂 I’m flattered to be thought of as a perpetual student. I think sometimes I get in a rut though, and read the same things over and over or don’t know where to look for something new. Sometimes the captchas on your blog are so weirdly appropriate, I’ve noticed! I think it must be pulling keywords from the comments! My captcha for this is “club72”!