rigorousintuition.ca

barracuda wrote:Dude, I own several thousand books, not to mention pamphlets, leaflets, one-sheets, xeroxes, 'zines, etc. I wouldn't know where to begin. I'll have to think on this one for a while.

Also - don't you own a dictionary? I think I have at least four, including a second edition of Websters. I think you're being selective here...

ON EDIT: Okay, I checked with a more discerning eye and I don't have several thousand, but let's just call it "a fuckload" I'll see what I can do if I have a fit of insomnia.

Stephen Morgan wrote:What's the point in having more than you could read in a year?

I don't own a dictionary, no. I do own a computer, though. I left out a book of selections from Pliny's letters because I couldn't see it from where I was sitting, a book about how to speak Polish, maybe a Latin-English dictionary which may or may not still be under my bed, a few books I only own due to university (four set books, I think, and the same number of readers), some books I have on the computer but not on paper. Also a book I got from work which I can't remember the name of. Also some things which aren't books, 'zines as yo say. Half a dozen or so of Shavertron. A few Paranoias. A private Eye and a WSC. A few Fortean Times. An old computer game, a point and clicker, called Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars. Some notebooks full of my scrawlings. A building society pass book. A co-op share account book. Instruction booklet for digital camera. Owner's manuals for two bikes. A pamphlet about tuning a guitar. There, comprehensive enough methinketh.

According to the numbers at the side of gedit my list above was 163 books. By my estimate it takes up about fifteen cubic feet against the wall. 5'x3'x1'.

Walter Benjamin wrote:And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of all collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. Experts will bear me out when I say that it is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, “And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?” “Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sèvres china every day?”

barracuda wrote:I have more than one book in my library which I suppose might take more than a year to read by themselves, if one were to be conscientious about it. This one, for example:

I have any number of books which require patient translation which I am saving for a later period of my life when I may just grow some patience. I also have books which I hope to read when I get around to them some day, as well as books which I have no intention of ever reading at all, some of which are simply beautiful objects as objects.

Ah ha - I knew you were holding out on me.

Some quick figuring around my living room just now revealed about twice that number, with a huge group uncounted in my bedroom, and several large stacks in the basement,

not to mention the shared family

library at my mothers home a few miles away, which I have availed myself of since birth and which holds many of my personal books, consisting of two 7' x 5" shelving units filled to capacity and one smaller 5' x 3' unit. My collection of paper ephemera is a whole 'nother story.

I don't particularly think I have a lot of books. I have lost equal numbers of volumes more than once due to evictions and various scenes of dispossession. It's actually looking like I have around five hundred or so here at my house if I don't include the shelf of childrens' books. But I am certainly not the hard-core collector of books in my family. My brother has two sixty-foot storage units which hold the overflow from his collection, and they are tightly packed, awaiting a more permanent home. I kid you not. Compared to him, I'm a piker, strictly small-time. But you have raised an issue for me, which is that I either need to build some more shelving in my house, or edit down the collection, as the piles on the living room floor are beginning to grate on my nerves. My daughter builds little play houses out of them which I try to discourage. Bad for the bindings.

Stephen Morgan wrote:Decadent. Inefficient use of language. Poor communication skills that Lawrence. Probably all that time he spent talking foreign.

Decadent. Content is the important thing. Except with the illustrated Sherlock Holmes.

Just saving my typing hands.

Oh, bedroom, is it? "Basement", is it?

Oh, family, is it ...

I live in the same town as a library too.

Stephen Morgan wrote:Looking at some of these makes me thing I should start a "list all the books you've given away/sold/lost" thread. Trouble is I haven't kept a list. I used to have about twice what I've got now and then got it down to five or six. And most of the ones I've got now have replaced others.

barracuda wrote:

Stephen Morgan wrote:Decadent. Inefficient use of language. Poor communication skills that Lawrence. Probably all that time he spent talking foreign.

I'm missing the reference here - "Lawrence"?

I must admit, I find your taste in books to be more than somewhat dry. I can see that we'll have very little overlap.

Just saving my typing hands.

Decadent. Who are you, Bernie Taupin?

Oh, bedroom, is it? "Basement", is it?

Yes, my home has both a bedroom and a basement. Weird, huh? Surprising what they could do with a 650 sq ft building in 1906.

Oh, family, is it ...

Sorry, I realized only in retrospect that I shouldn't have brought that up around you.

I live in the same town as a library too.

Really? Are the librarians still surprised when the very image of Rubeus Hagrid walks in the door looking to check out the latest socialist romance novel?

Stephen Morgan wrote:Looking at some of these makes me thing I should start a "list all the books you've given away/sold/lost" thread. Trouble is I haven't kept a list. I used to have about twice what I've got now and then got it down to five or six. And most of the ones I've got now have replaced others.

I was thinking of the list of books I consider myself as still yet owning, but which have been lent out to friends for years. I need to get some of those back. Well, as Shakespeare famously said, "To borrow, to borrow and to borrow, the creeps in this petty place from day to day keep taking my goddamn books and never bringing them back." Another inefficient user of language. He could have said it just once, ferchrissakes.

Stephen Morgan wrote:DH, as in your picture of the book of.

Presumably your books are wet, soppy, effete, not filled with honourable tales of derring-do.

But I'm sure you don't want to hear about my problems.

I've got a family. One of my earliest memories is of being in the bath while my grandad tried to use a screwdriver to unscrew the lock. And I've got a relatively rich uncle, used to be in regular employment and everything, who won't act as a guarantor on a rental agreement because he's too worried about his credit. That sort of thing, you know. The usual. Still, there's one agreeable member of my family which is myself. MYself virtually brought me up single handed, you know, as my mother was mostly an alcoholic after she got out of that mental hospital, or perhaps ward.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, especially of books. Money I don't care too much about, if I don't get it back it don't worry me, but I wouldn't be lending people books.