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This is what I want for Christmas.
Well, probably. I imagine he didn't have a good way to work in the weird stuff about Rodriguez into a previous article. I mean, what kind of article would you fit a little nugget like that in there? Or maybe it was in a previous article but was cut out by an editor as superfluous, which it probably is. Perfect for a chatty blog post.
By the way, if you're wondering there is very little more soul crushing than dealing with rich people who want to buy thousands of dollars worth of books chosen strictly by color and volume.
The National Lampoon once had an absolutely hilarious ad parody for something like the "Bookends of the Month Club," or "Great Bookends of the Western World," where every month you'd be sent a two foot wide row of phony book ends a la Pudge. The pitch was aimed at those who never finish any book they start, but still want to impress their neighbors with their good taste in literature, apparently just like Pudge.
By the way, if you're wondering there is very little more soul crushing than dealing with rich people who want to buy thousands of dollars worth of books chosen strictly by color and volume.
Better than that was an American University film teacher / mystery book ghostwriter I knew in the 80's who once commissioned me to get him 500 hardback books at two bucks apiece---"no dust jackets---dust jackets look tacky"---in order to fill two bookcases in a suite at the Watergate Hotel that he was renting to entertain some visiting Hollywood moguls.
At the end of the evening, he hauled them all into the dumpster. I wasn't too surprised that this guy wound up dying broke.
This is how pretty much ALL members of the media operate. They hide at least as much as they divulge, and probably more in many cases.
That makes, sense, yeah. But I guess I think of Pearlman as the kind of gossipy d-bag who can't wait to tell everyone that Pudge's bookshelves are filled with blank books.
I can understand (though don't recommend) acquiring many of the great classics in order to fool others that you actually read them all, but books with empty pages makes no sense to me.
I also check out people's books when I visit, and judge accordingly.
I have a huge bookcase for all of my sports books (baseball books take half of it). I have two others for non-fiction (mostly history) and the other two for fiction (a good chunk of that portion of my library is horror and science fiction, but I have many classics, too).
Primarily on the massive quantity of bookshelves spread throughout the house, although there are a couple piles around that are largely composed of things that I'm currently reading. Basically, every six months or so, I buy another shelf, and load all the stuff that was piled on the floor (or desk, or table) into the shelf, with some attempt to sort them by category, and then start the process again.
At some point, I should really sit down and figure out how much I've spent on my library, but I'm scared that it would work out to be something similar to what I spent on the down payment for my house (and I wasn't one of those people who only put 5% down).
I wish I could display more of my books, but I live in a pretty small place at the moment. I have boxes and boxes of them still in storage, but I've read most of them. Of the books currently on my shelves, I've probably read 70%, which I feel like is a good number. Most of my actual reading books come from the library, but occasionally I'll read something from my shelves if it sticks out at me one day. It just seems odd sometimes to surround yourself with books you've already read, unless they're reference books or something. What's the point? I rarely go back to novels I've read. It's weird, I enjoy having those books around, but in some ways it's like people who keep all their old hair or fingernails around and just can't bear to let it go.
I do too, but given that I like to have a good number of books I haven't actually read yet, I wonder what people think of my taste.
*sigh*
That's a line of reasoning that Seinfeld used to use, but if you've enjoyed the books the first time around, who's to say that you might not enjoy them again?
And once you dispose of them, what do you replace the books with? Empty bookcases? Blank walls? Pictures of flowers? Concert posters? Everyone generally surrounds themselves with things that they like, and books are simply one of many such objects.
I also have a couple boxes of books in my closet, and I admit to being selective with what I display on my shelf and what stays in the closet. I will judge you on your bookshelf, just as I'd expect you to judge mine, especially if I let those old Michael Critchon paperbacks see the light of day.
Maybe it's just the former bookseller in me, but my answer to that would be simple: Would you rather die surrounded by books that have given you pleasure over the years, or would you rather die with another few thousand bucks in your bank account for your kids to fight over?
I re-read a lot, so I like to have the books around. Also, being surrounded by books just feels like home to me.
Sure, you might enjoy them again, but I think it's pretty rare that people read the same books several times. There are just so many other books out there. Although, most guys stay with the same woman for many years, even though there are lots of women out there. Maybe that's why I'm not married yet.
It's not the idea of surrounding yourself with books that seems odd to me, it's surrounding yourself with books you've already read. Why aren't we more forward-looking and surround ourselves with stuff we haven't read yet?
A blank Pearlman book is the only kind worth having!
There is literally no chance that I'm going to read a book again less than a decade after reading it the first time, unless the experience of reading it was some sort of groundbreaking epiphany. There are too many other books to read!
Most of the books on my shelves are reference books (or can be used as reference books), or are collections of short pieces, or are books I haven't read yet. Except for the small category that is my baseball book collection. I don't understand people who want to actually own, say, Elmore Leonard's "Killshot", rather than getting it from the library, or buying the paperback for $1 and then giving it away after reading it.
I've gone away from buying books if I can access them in a library. I have roughly 8 full bookcases. But i don't rearead that many of them because there's always something new that I want to read. Here's some recent reads.
Hey, I'm not saying I'm unhappy with the books (I'm not, and I'm continuing to accumulate them at an unhealthy rate), but rather that I have this strange urge to work out what all those $10, $20, and $50 purchases have added up to over the years.
And if your store had been located in the same area as me, you would have never considered closing it.
So do I, and Terry Pratchett falls into a similar category. I'm also fond of periodic re-readings of assorted Rex Stout stuff. Basically, they're all just books that I can pick up and enjoy in 15 or 20 minute chunks, when I'm not in the mood for whatever new things that Eco, Rushdie, Irving, or whoever have written lately.
At the Christmas party I was at last weekend, the host's bookshelf contained books by William F. Buckley, Ayn Rand, and Barack Obama. I did not use this info to start any conversations.
That's not how I read at all. I usually have at least two or three books going at once, and most of the time at least one of them is the equivalent of comfort food. I'll get a weird vibe and think Austin or Tolkien or Glory of their Times and dig it out. I may not finish it on this read or even start at the beginning. I use the library for stuff I don't expect to reach comfort food status, but if it's something I'll want to read again I'll keep an eye open for it used or on sale.
Alas, my wife is the sort who goes through her clothes twice a year and gets rid of anything she hasn't worn in six months, and I have a hundred various t-shirts. But we've been married long enough that she's stopped asking if I have enough baseball books and I stopped receiving catalogs from book sellers. Space limits the display of books to what the kids are reading and whatever fits in the shelf by my bed. Oh well.
I just spent a couple weeks this past summer looking up all my books Library of Congress Number and sorting them accordingly. I have a collection of short stories about Cricket that apparently the L of C has never heard of, so I am at a loss where to put them.
All of which explains, of course, why I have ten million #$%& books to carry. I can only imagine what someone would think of me from my bookshelf, besides that obvious baseball dokery.
Man, Greg, I have no idea if you're kidding or not.
My favorite book shelf has all my dinosuar and paleontology books stacked at varying heights with these realistic to-scale dinosaurs interspersed among them. I love that shelf. The brachiosaur takes up a lot of room, though.
Reading is for chumps.
My wife thinks I am insane, but I can't stomach throwing away or giving away or selling a book that I've read. It's the only thing in life that I'm packrattish about. I backpacked in Asia and by the end of the trip my bag's weight was probably 70% used books, which is an absurdity, but now when I spy those on the shelves I remember the beach/jungle/temple/redlightdistrict where I was reading it.
Another problem with this is that I absolutely prefer paperbacks, because of their ease in carrying (I am the sort that always has a book, and I do most of my reading waiting for elevators and sitting on trains, as opposed to actually hunkering down at home for an hour at a atime), but paperbacks, especially when already bought used, don't have the durability wanted, so some of these books that I'm adamant about keeping are almost in tatters.
You have to sift through a lot of crap, but he's managed to dig up a lot of stuff for me. A first edition Kipling, several Histories of England from the Victorian eras top guys, and my favourite, an all encompassing History of the World written in the 1780s. I'm quite proud of my old books that I haven't read for fear of them falling apart!
I am in fact being quite serious. It actually didn't take too much work. Half of them have the L of C number in them, I only had to manually look up around 250 titles on the L of C search catalogue.
I like books like this, too. I like to buy random old books and see if they're any good. Usually they are not.
I tried to arrange my collection by the Dewey Decimal System, but there's way too much 796.357, 974, and 330.
Reading is for chumps.
Says one of the guys who reccomended Perfect. I wound up buying it as an office Christmas present.
I'd make fun of you for having a shelf like that, but I've got a shelf at home dedicated entirely to biographies of scientific figures from the middle ages.
Well, that, and dinosaurs are awesome.
Hell, I'll probably get drunk tonight and end up doing this myself.
When you finish it, send it to me!
This is the truest thing that will ever be posted on BBTF.
I used to live around the corner from a place like this when I was in University. The guy just dumped everything randomly on shelves at the back of the place (giving him the room up front for things like displaying his custom made and painted D&D;/Warhammer figures) and sold them for $1 or $2 each - I bought most of Stephen Gould's writings from there.
I will not be sharing this particular detail with her.
Yes, it's like stargazing for someone who hates stars and light and stuff.
I have big piles of books in my storage closet. I've simply got way more books than shelf space -- and I've got a fair amount of shelf space.
I try to arrange the piles by theme. The bookcases are arranged by theme. I've got two bookcases full of baseball books behind my computer. And a pile of books beside it. Gods I'm hopeless.
I'm the same way. Still have all my comic books from thirty years ago in a box and couldn't think of parting with them, despite not having read them in years.
Not by the standards here. It sounds like most of us have at least some piles lingering around, and more books than space. I've currently got about 40' worth of 6' high bookshelves throughout my house, and I'm going to need to pick up more over the next couple weeks because I'm out of space, despite stacking things two deep wherever possible.
They're accumulating so fast that I'm beginning to suspect they're breeding.
Jeez. It sound like she's the uninteresting one in your office.
I have a friend who's a serious record collector. He ended up starting a simple database. Here's what I own -- and where it's stored.
Don't go there Ryan. He was able to get a pretty fair notion of what he'd spent.
I've always found it strange that there seems to be a segment of the population that believes being interested in things makes you uninteresting.
Any of these you would particularly recommend? I've been doing a lot of science history reading lately, and would like to branch out of the more modern period.
You should see my office right now. I barely have enough room to walk to the computer. I need AT LEAST three more floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in here.
-- MWE
Alas, I failed.
I'm a younger guy and (at this point) still 'in transit' between my current location and where I'll ultimately end up. As a result I haven't gotten around to unpacking or shelving most of my books. And my god, do I have too many. So to answer RB in NYC's question: yeah, in stacks all over the floor or in corners, or in unpacked boxes. Only my Indo-European philology books, Russian & Roman history books, and David Foster Wallace novels/essays get what's left of my uber-limited shelf space after the lion's share has been consumed by various law books.
And I'm just like you, Shooty, in that if I'm a guest in someone's house I inevitably gravitate towards their bookshelf, examine closely, and start to draw pratty conclusions from there. Know it's wrong, know it's shallow, just can't help myself.
From a serious exploration of the early Christian Church and Roman Catholic theology in the Vazquez thread to book-objectification in the Pearlman one...man I love this site. Merry Christmas you humps.
All of a sudden I wish Andy's bookshop was still open. I'm finally home in DC for a little while, and this thread makes me want to go poke through a great used book stack.
That was a large part of my motivation for my L of C project. I also compiled a database while I was doing it. Mostly because I can't seem to find this great book on the History of the Smile that I KNOW I own. But now it is lost to the mists of my garage I assume.
It's too bad really...it had some great pictures of 17th century Dutch paintings of old men with creepy smiles molesting ducks.
I'll take a look at the shelf later tonight and send you an email via the BTF service. There are a bunch of decent books in there, but I can never remember the specific titles off the top of my head.
I cannot put into words how happy it makes me to have you running my fan club.
I think you need to invent a word which suitably combines the meanings of both "excited" and "alarmed."
apparently the Dutch found it riotously funny.
Chicken Gropers
I wonder if we worked together. It was my first job in NYC, and I ended up spending a year and a half there. Us employees got crazy discounts, of which I took advantage.
Has he considered going once a day, maybe around 3:00 with a crisp five dollar bill? Or is this such a wildly busy goodwill store that he cannot risk missing out? BTW, I picture rows and rows of Louis L'amour. It's not a pretty thought.
I find that I'm much more likely to want to reread or look something up in my baseball books than is true with most of the rest of our personal library. For example, we save very few fiction books because one seldom re-uses them.
The best book storage device is obviously a spinning wire rack.
I kind of miss it myself sometimes, but there's still one very good shop left in the area: Bartleby's, which is at 1132 29th St. in Georgetown, just below M St. Unfortunately that's about it for good used book shops in DC (Second Story is pure crapola), especially if you're looking for baseball books. I sold him my surplus when I closed, and even though it was only what I had left over, that was still better than every other shop in the area combined when it comes to baseball books. And for all other subjects, it's one of the best shops in the country.
BTW if you ever want to accumulate a great book collection at the expense of nearly everything else in your life, open a shop of your own. Nothing beats getting first crack at everything at wholesale prices. Just be sure to sell posters on the side so that you can pay the rent. (smile)
EDIT: Don't let Bartleby's website scare you off. He puts a big table of history paperbacks out in front of the store that beat any online prices when you figure in the cost of the postage.
Oh, and as for book storage: besides those on shelves I usually store an impressive collection of books in a semi-circle around my desk, so that any book especially relevant to what I'm writing will be at hand. And I've read very few of the books I own all the way through, because most of them are for research.
I would like to finish Infinite Jest over my Christmas vacation. That's a hell of a tall order, though.
I've been dripping then on FB, but I'll have the complete list up tonight or tomorrow.
The saddest thing about Infinite Jest is how, in retrospect, it is so clearly an emotional autobiography for Wallace in several places.
This is about the only system in my life where I tolerate a meaningful level of anarchy.
Nope. My baseball book collection is only slightly larger than yours, in that it also includes a couple of the BP annuals. It'll increase slightly when Chris Jaffe's book on managers is released.
I've found that my collection has grown a lot through two sources--books I receive as gifts and books I buy when I need something to read on a trip. If not for those two sources, my collection would be a lot like yours. In fact, I think Moneyball is the only baseball book I've gone out of my way to buy without having a trip coming up.
Well, you've already got the one book I'd probably keep (the BJNHBA) if I had to reduce my collection to one, and anything by Neyer is worth reading. (I don't have Tango's yet.)
And as for all those books you don't have, j ust remember what Jack Webb once said in Red Nightmare: In America, there's always a tomorrow.
Ironically enough my dad has shelves full of baseball books (especially Yankees ones...hmmm I think my dad and Andy would have a lot to talk about over coffee...).
Probably so, but if we met at one of our houses we'd probably be frisking each other, both on the way in and on the way out.
Office: Five 8' shelves, about 35% of the shelf space is for sports books. Most of that is double stacked. Little of it is organized. Have another 16' or so of book shelves in a bedroom closet, mostly 3rd tier baseball stuff (so, if I'm wondering what Jay Johnstone hit against groundballers type stuff). Have been slowly ditching as much as I'll permit myself to ... it's 2009, I can use the internet for a lot of research + I live near a library. My wife fancies herself a collector of Victorian kid lit, though we don't have enough for that to be true yet. Now that we've two young kids (3, 1), we're buying books for them at an alarming rate (many at a $7/bag sale from said library system). They've each got overstuffed mini-bookshelves too.
I'm a pretty fast reader (though my retention can be doubted), but am terrible about putting a book down. I tend to read novels in two or three sittings, which means I no longer read many novels. (In HS, I would regularly go on 24-, 36-hour reading binges - just me, a stack of books, and a two-liter of soda. I .... didn't have much of a social life.) Trying to stick to easy fluff for now - Infinite Jest (unstarted) is taunting me, though.
I devoured baseball books as a kid, but I haven't bought a baseball book in a long time, and don't really read them (I will buy Dag's at some point, even though I've read more than half of it already).
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