Member: Pepys

CollectionsYour library (155), To read (14), Currently reading (2), Favorites (19), Available for trade (6), Given (1), Paperback (66), Hardback (22), Second-hand (12), Folio Society (62), Leatherbound (28), Facsimile (2), Limited edition (12), Dedicated (7), Signed (2), All collections (156)

Reviews53 reviews

TagsEnglish literature (60), 20c. (42), Novel (39), 19c. (32), History (28), England (27), London (24), Reference (22), 17c. (21), In French (19) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsAnnus mirabilis, Folio Society devotees, I Survived the Great Vowel Shift, Oulipo's Virtual Headquarters, Pedants' corner, The Turk's Head, Vaillantes

Favorite authorsJames Boswell, Italo Calvino, Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Anatole France, Graham Greene, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Pierre Loti, W. Somerset Maugham, Guy de Maupassant, Samuel Pepys, Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud, Stefan Zweig (Shared favorites)

About meFrench, b. 1952. Geophysicist. I like l'humour anglais, especially the Monty Python's—sorry for those who hate them.
Picture credit: John Hayls painted my portrait in 1666, long before the computer era. I have allowed The National Portrait Gallery, London to display it in their room 7.

About my libraryThanks to my subscription to The Folio Society from 2003 onward, I discovered classics I had never heard of before—easy enough: I'm illiterate. I'm amazed by the genre diversity of English literature, especially in the 17c. & 18c. I almost never read books twice. (So why do I keep them?) There are so many works to discover, & I'm such a slow reader that I'm doomed to die facing a mountain of books I would have liked to read. (This last sentence influenced by my reading of The Anatomy of Melancholy. ;-) However, I don't buy too many books in advance. I try to keep my TBR pile minimum.
    My main interest lies in diaries & biographies, sometimes—but not always—linked to scientific discoveries or explorations.
    We (my wife & I) own an indeterminate number of books in French (she's a much quicker reader than I), plus some books in German. Since most books I read now are in English, my LT catalogue includes mostly those books (and, however, a couple of books in French I bought lately). I feel ashamed of my poor collection as compared to some others'...

My rating
Some books are left unrated. The reason is that either I read them too many years ago, or I haven't read them yet. I don't see the point in rating all books with 4 or 5 stars. The following guidelines allow me to keep the average rating close to 2.75:
 
***** = I have re-read this book
****² = Sure, I will manage to re-read this book
  **** = I'd like to re-read this book if I could find time
  ***² = I loved this book
    *** = I liked this book very much
    **² = I liked this book
      ** = Some passages were interesting
      *² = Some rare passages were interesting
        * = Boring
     1/2 = On the fringe to give up
------------------------------- 
For reference books:
***** = daily use
  **** = once a week
    *** = once a month
      ** = once every 4 months
        * = once a year

 visits

Real nameFrançois

LocationGrenoble, France

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

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

Common KnowledgeSeries (11), Awards (56), Characters (604), Places (133)

Member sinceDec 5, 2006

Currently readingThe New Fowler's Modern English Usage by Robert W. Burchfield
Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal