Member: Antipodean

CollectionsYour library (1,675)

Reviews171 reviews

Tagsfiction (809), twentieth century (806), non-fiction (736), novel (501), australian (427), british (395), american (254), twenty-first century (223), nineteenth century (208), poetry (176) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsAsian Fiction & Non-Fiction, Australian LibraryThingers, BBC Radio 3 Listeners, BookMooching, Italians - Italiani, MyPeopleConnection Book Clubs, Nabokov!

About meI hand-enter details, tagging non-fiction with the century of the subject (eg a book on the 19th century written in the 21st is tagged 'nineteenth century'). I tag fiction with the century in which it was written.

The tag 'irish' included Northern Ireland before 2007 movements and the tag 'british' English, Scots, and Welsh. I'm yet to encounter a writer from Douglas.

About my libraryMany, including first-edition Black Sparrow Press Bukowskis and pretty much the complete works of Calvino, go walkabout when I leave for Tokyo in Septmber 1992. I try not to regret it and conserve what remains.

Though mine are 'quality' bookshelves they have no bezel-glass door insets, no rich smell of camphor or mahogany. Apart from the hybrid, which is made of any old thing found lying around, they're all made of pine stained a light curry colour.

In December 2005 I drive north to get boxes of books from mum and dad's garage. They were stowed by my uncle -- who dies in February 2009 -- in a brown station wagon and taken up when I was overseas. They go in a unit made for the bathroom hall.

There's a big two-column unit against the north wall of the study that I bought in September 2005 from an Italian with miles of ceramic tiles. In September 2006 a Hungarian installs a new shelf in it.

A fifth unit - in August 2006 - is made to fit in the south-east corner of the living room. Book-buying is addictive. Not just the text - antisocial, reckless - but the sensation of trimmed paper, the heft of pasted spines.

In September 2006 I take delivery of a sixth unit for the study's south wall - from a Central Coast workshop.

Books line a shelf in a sideboard sitting beneath the living-room window, and delivered in November 2007. The second-hand, hybrid bookcase I hand-stripped with a heat gun and chemicals after I bought it, in the late 80s, is placed, to make room, in the kitchen. This takes place in late 2008.

To make way for additional books, any books read go straight into polyethylene boxes which I start placing on the balcony in December 2008.

In August 2009 I relocate the entire library north to the Sunshine Coast, including bookcases. It is an expensive business getting these into the apartment, which has three bedrooms one of which becomes the library.

Homepagehttp://matthewdasilva.com/

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Real nameMatt

LocationQueensland, Australia

Emailhappyantipodeangmail.com

Favorite authorsNone

Account typepublic, lifetime

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Member sinceAug 14, 2006