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The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century According to Dated Texts (Harv by Beatrice Gruendler

A turn in the South by V. S. Naipaul

The pattern on the stone : the simple ideas that make computers work by W. Daniel Hillis

The book of buildings: A panorama of ancient, medieval, renaissance, and modern structures by Richard Reid

Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett

Beyond alfalfa sprouts & cheese : the healthy meatless cookbook by Judy Gilliard

Baralam and Yewasef: Being the Ethiopic Version of a Christianized Recension of the Buddhist Legend of the Buddha a by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge

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Friends: belleyang

Interesting library: Fogies, Foodhistorybuff, languagehat

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MMcM's reviews

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Member: MMcM

CollectionsYour library (10,510), Digital (37), All collections (10,547)

Reviews41 reviews

Tagsart (1,092), language (673), literature (575), history (514), biography (409), plants (373), poetry (357), food (348), fiction (345), computers (287) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud, tag mirror

GroupsAlexander the Great, Anarchism, Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts, Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient History, Arab, North African and Middle Eastern Literature, Art Books, Art History, Beat-itific —show all groups

Favorite authorsJorge Luis Borges, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Pliny the Elder, James George Frazer, John Gerard, Edward Gibbon, Henry James, James Joyce, Hugh Kenner, Athanasius Kircher, Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, Plutarch, Ezra Pound, Thomas Pynchon, Sir Herbert Edward Read, Gertrude Stein, Laurence Sterne, Oscar Wilde, P. G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresAvenue Victor Hugo, Boston Book Annex, Brattle Book Shop, McIntyre and Moore Booksellers, New England Mobile Book Fair, Raven Used Books, Rodney's Bookstore, Schoenhof's Foreign Books

Favorite librariesBoston College - O'Neill Library, Boston Public Library, Boston University - Mugar Memorial Library, MIT - Hayden Memorial Library (Building 14)

About meMathematician. Classicist. Entrepreneur. Art collector.

About my libraryAreas include language and literature. Many of our books relate to our other collecting interests, such as African and Gandharan art and Chinese furniture. Some books come close to forming collections in their own right, such as vegetarian cookbooks from around the world.

All the books we have at present should be entered and I am trying to keep up with new ones. Tags are still in progress, sometimes only recording where books came from when entered. In particular, tags that subsume others are often missing.

Our house is also full of magazines. So far, I am only cataloging special issues, complete runs, bound volumes, etc. I do not have a good strategy for the rest yet. The same goes for auction catalogs.

I have some bound material from the early days of the ARPANET and AI that I will try to catalog as I uncover it.

Also onBlogger, Flickr

Real nameMike McMahon

LocationChestnut Hill, MA, USA

Emailmmcmcomcast.net

Account typepublic, lifetime

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/MMcM (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/MMcM (library)

Member sinceOct 2, 2005

Most recent activity

MMcM added:
Music in the medieval world by Albert Seay

MMcM added:
New Oxford history of music. Vol.1, Ancient and oriental music

MMcM added:
Harmless drudges : wizards of language--ancient, medieval and modern by Israel Shenker

MMcM added:
Apologies to the Iroquois by Edmund Wilson

MMcM added:
The natural history of nonsense by Bergen Evans

MMcM added:
Alexandria: a history and a guide by E. M. Forster

Mike,

Many thanks for your History posting!

Wow we share (26)!

Ur.

posted by Urquhart at 4:52 pm (EST) on Jul 21, 2010

Thank you for your reference to Seymour Martin Lipset, whose work I was previously unfamiliar with. I have been looking through his [It Didn't Happen Here] and I find his thesis cogent and convincing.

posted by Toolroomtrustee at 7:04 pm (EST) on Mar 23, 2010

Hi Mike, just a note to let you know that LT author Jonathon Green (LT name abecedary) is conducting a month long q&a thread from 1 March in Le Salon Litteraire du Peuple pour le Peuple.

I noticed you have a number of Jonathon's books so thought you may be interested. You do not need to be a member of Le Salon group to contribute (although you would be most welcome to do so). The thread link is here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/84831

posted by zenomax at 11:17 am (EST) on Feb 27, 2010

hi there, I'm a local Northboro librarything.com member and saw you on the list for other members close to me. I wanted to tell you that I have just recently opened up used/new bookstore right in Northboro at Times Square Plaza right next to Romaine's restaurant at the junction of W. main st and Rt 20. If you love books and talking books, and talking librarything.com come on by and check out the store. I was introduced to librarything by one of my other new store customers who also lives in Shrewsbury. Not too many people know about my store yet so I'm trying to reach out to all the local avid readers and collectors. You can also check out my ad and some store pictures on craigslist. Hope to see you soon and would love to meet new avid reader friends.

Jeannie Mancini
Jeannie's Book Emporium
10 SW Cutoff #4 TImes Square Plaza
Northboro, MA
508-393-2511
vernefan@verizon.net

posted by vernefan at 5:57 pm (EST) on Feb 5, 2010

Thanks for your help on æøåÆØÅ conversion. I'm using MacOS (because the
Palm Desktop does the job for me. I've downloaded the xls file and
lt_import.sh --record-encoding ISO-8859-1 gives me the most useful version,
but æøå turns into (3/4) (? bottom up) (large OE ligature).
I've seen this kind of garbage before though, so this may or may not be
the PalmThing applications fault. The Palm Pilot character set is based
on Windows codepage 1252? If I'm correct, this means that
Unicode æøå are utf-8 encoded as Ã¦ Ã¸ Ã¥ and I'd hoped that they ended up
as codepoints 230 248 229. What appears on my Zire 71 looks like codepoints
190 191 140 to me.

I haven't looked so much on what happens without the record-encoding option since
that looked worse.

This is not a bit deal since I can easily recognize my books and PalmThing is
a great help. I'd just like to look a bit nicer.

posted by bnielsen at 10:06 am (EST) on Jun 24, 2009

Hi
I really like the PalmThing application. Some of the Danish characters æøåÆØÅ don't survive the trip though and turns into rather weird characters instead. Could you spare a minute or two to explain which character conversions are involved? I use linux and can easily convert the .xls file if only I knew what was going on :-)

posted by bnielsen at 6:37 am (EST) on Jun 15, 2009

scanned, posted cover of the Max Ernst MOMA 1961 exhibit catalog

posted by chuck_ralston at 10:38 am (EST) on Mar 8, 2009

Speaking of Roubaud, I was thinking to his book entitled Mathématiques : (he insisted on the colon at the end), which is partly autobiographic (his early days when he studied maths in Paris short after WWII). I don't know if there is an English translation.

Yours

posted by Pepys at 12:22 pm (EST) on Nov 4, 2008

Hello Mike,

Thanks for your ever appreciated contributions in the different groups both of us belong to.

I'm very impressed by the size and content of your library... Is the picture made of several snapshots you did at home?

Also, I wonder if you ever read anythink by Jacques Roubaud, qui était un mathématicien comme vous, mais aussi un membre de l'Oulipo fondée par Queneau.

Yours,
François

posted by Pepys at 10:47 am (EST) on Nov 3, 2008

Thanks - I didn't know about A Covey of Partridge. I'll look into that - might be an easier book to get my hands on.

My interest in Partridge is from a lexicography point of view but I am also interested in WW1. Additionally his autobiography apparently includes childhood/youth in New Zealand and Australia, which are collectively where I come from. So the book seemed a good fit all round!

posted by zenomax at 12:01 pm (EST) on Sep 2, 2008

Hi - you are showing as having listed Eric Partridge In His Own Words. Is this an autobiography?

And if so, what period of his life does it cover?

The only autobiography I was aware of was Frank Honywood: Private which I have been seeking for some time.

Thanks.

posted by zenomax at 12:19 pm (EST) on Aug 31, 2008

Yes, when you see me scrub the pages quickly, that's using an eraser to get rid of pencil lines that show. Thanks for watching.

posted by belleyang at 1:45 pm (EST) on Jul 4, 2008

http://www.redroom.com/video/forget-sorrow-a-china-elegy
Mike, I wanted to share this video I made with you.

posted by belleyang at 8:26 pm (EST) on Jul 3, 2008

I am curious about "Myths,Mountains and Mandalas" by Bill Kite. This may be my brother-we have lost connection.

Roy Kite
Roykite2004@yahoo.com

posted by roykite111 at 7:02 pm (EST) on May 18, 2008

Hi, MMcM--Hi, I'm glad you saw the display. It looked a bit haphazard but I am glad they were able to have it up. I've been to Boston 4 previous times but with this trip I was able to spend an entire week and fell madly in like with the city. I hope I'll have another chance to visit. I loved the Driscoll School and the Commonweath school. The students were super. Thank you for asking.

posted by belleyang at 9:33 pm (EST) on Jan 14, 2008

I was just looking at your blog. Very interesting. You should post more!

Laura

posted by perodicticus at 4:53 pm (EST) on Sep 26, 2007

Your initials keep popping up on shared books. Surprisingly, though we both have many books tagged "plants" these are rarely amongst the coincidences. Your photo of book shelves is alarming, I'm still trying to find a home for mine and probably only have about half as many.

Gerald, Sintra, Portugal

posted by botanica at 10:35 am (EST) on Aug 27, 2007

I did not think that there were very many others in this world who had copies of the history of magic and experimental science by thorndike!....but it seems we share similar interests.... Someday I will have my entire collection catalogued...it used to number nearly 12,000 but I sold the bulk of it to a private collector a number of years ago. Now, it is about 3,500 titles and quite a few on my 'virtual' listings.

posted by oldmanriver1951 at 7:47 pm (EST) on Jun 26, 2007

Thank you for the wonderful posts about the Sapho fragment in 'Poetry in Translation'. The references were very helpful. ( I liked the literal translation the best. ) You are lucky to have Greek.

posted by almigwin at 10:52 pm (EST) on Mar 30, 2007

Thanks! You are right, this bad info comes from a variety of sources. I am glad that most of my favorite authors don't have this ambiguity, but the few who do, drive me crazy!

posted by oregonobsessionz at 3:13 am (EST) on Feb 24, 2007

I thought you had taken a photo of my library for a minute.
Best wishes,
Menarue

posted by Menarue at 2:45 pm (EST) on Feb 20, 2007

Thanks (belatedly) for your advice on Bookchin!

posted by jacr at 3:30 pm (EST) on Feb 17, 2007