Random books from alibrarian's library

Drive [CD] by Robert Palmer

Astounding science fiction. No. 264 (Nov. 1952) by edited by John W. Campbell

The autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain

Ancient slavery and modern ideology by M. I. Finley

On the line [LP] by Gary U.S. Bonds

Astounding science fiction. No. 307 (June 1956) by edited by John W. Campbell

Armies and societies in Europe, 1494-1789 by André Corvisier

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Member connections

Friends: AsYouKnow_Bob, eighteleven

Interesting libraries: bookiemonster81, jbd1, msmith3914, WilliamDorr

LibraryThing authors: John Reed (easyreeder), Martha Wells (marthawells)

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Member: alibrarian

Library4,560 books — see library

Reviews14 reviews — see reviews

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

TagsLiterary work (2,280), 20th century literature (2,064), Book (1,832), Science fiction (1,535), Single issue (1,372), Non-fiction (1,339), Literary periodical (1,279), Science fiction periodical (1,163), Paperback (983), Hardcover (854) — see all tags

GroupsAmerican Civil War, Ancient History, Biblical History, Board for Extreme Thing Advances, Combiners!, Fans of Russian authors, Genealogy@LT, Historical Mysteries, History Readers: Clio's (Pleasure?) Palace, Homer, the Trojan war, and pre-classical Greece — show all groups

Favorite authorsPaul Auster, Mikhail Bulgakov, Joseph Conrad, Lindsey Davis, John Putnam Demos, John Fowles, William W. Freehling, Joan Hess, Christopher Hill, John P. Meier, D. W. Meinig, Mark D. Nanos, Gary B. Nash, Iain Pears, Ellis Peters, Mark Twain (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresBarnes & Noble Booksellers - Fifth Ave, Barnes & Noble Booksellers - Nanuet, Posman Books @ GCT

Favorite librariesNew York Public Library - Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Nyack Public Library

About me Yeah, I am a librarian. One of the things you wind up doing when you have a history degree and you really don't want to teach. I work in a major library in an unidentified East Coast city. I have gotten to meet Abby in person.

Last ten books read:

Lamb : the gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal / Christopher Moore (novel, 2004, c2002)
The Russian Civil War / Evan Mawdsley (history, 2005)
Bloodsucking fiends : a love story / Christopher Moore (novel, 2004, c1995)
Purity of blood / Arturo Pérez-Reverte (historical novel, 2006)
The battle for New York : the city at the heart of the American Revolution / Barnet Schecter (2003) (American history)

Copperheads : the rise and fall of Lincoln's opponents in the North / Jennifer L. Weber (American history, 2006)
Lincolnites and rebels : a divided town in the American Civil War / Robert Tracy McKenzie (American history, Knoxville, Tennessee in the Civil War, 2006)
The several lives of Joseph Conrad / John Stape (biography, 2007)
The great warming : climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations / Brian Fagan (climate and history, 2008)
Our savage neighbors : how Indian war transformed early America / Peter Silver (American colonial history, 2008)

Reading now:

The singular Mark Twain / Fred Kaplan (biography, 2003)
Soviet-American relations, 1917-1920. Volume I, Russia leaves the war by George F. Kennan (history)
Soldiers' pay / William Faulkner (novel, 2006, c1926)

New piles to read:

The Hollow Crown by Miri Rubin (medieval British history)
The New Testament code : the cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the blood of Christ by Robert Eisenman (Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls)
Joseph Conrad, life and letters. Volume 2 (Biography)
The first circle by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (novel)
Of human bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (novel)
Our times : the United States, 1900-1925. VI, The Twenties by Mark Sullivan (American history)
The far ends of time and earth by Isaac Asimov (science fiction collection)
Mark Twain on the damned human race (essays)
The Pelonponnesian War by Donald Kagan (ancient history)
The story of civilization. Part III, Caesar and Christ by Will Durant (Roman and Christian history)
The road to disunion. Volume II, Secessionists triumphant, 1854-1861 / William W. Freehling (American history, 2007)
Northwest passage / Kenneth Roberts (historical novel, 2007, c1937)
Death by Dickens / edited by Anne Perry (Dickens inspired mysteries, short stories, 2004)
The big book of hell : a cartoon book / Matt Goening (collection of Life in Hell comic strip, 1990)
Five novels / Thomas Hardy (2006)
Jubilee Jim : the life of Colonel James Fisk, Jr. / Robert H. Fuller (biography, 1928)
The week-end book / Francis Meynell (2006) (miscellanea)
Reading the man : a portrait of Robert E. Lee through his private letters / Elizabeth Brown Pryor (Biography, 2007)
The man in the jury box / Robert Orr Chipperfield [i.e Isabel Egenton Ostrander] (Mystery, 1921)

December 2007
Possession : a romance / A.S.Byatt (novel, 1991, c1990)
War and peace/ Leo Tolstoy ; translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (novel, 2007)
The great upheaval : America and the birth of the modern world, 1788-1800 / Jay Winik (1790s in world history, 2007)
Almost a miracle : the American victory in the War of Independence / John Ferling (American Revolution, 2007)

January 2008
Richard and John : kings at war / Frank McLynn (English history, King Richard I and King John, 2007)

February 2008
This republic of suffering : death and the American Civil War / Drew Gilpin Faust (American history, 2008)

March 2008
Life on the Mississippi / Mark Twain (1992, c1883)
The first total war : Napoleon's Europe and the birth of warfare as we know it / David A. Bell (Napoleonic Wars, 2007)
Team of rivals : the political genius of Abraham Lincoln / Doris Kearns Goodwin (Lincoln, 2005)
Personal memoirs / Ulysses S. Grant (1999, c1885)
The Aeneid / Virgil ; translation by Robert Fagles (2006)
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain (1992, c1884)

April 2008
Lincoln and the decision for war : the Northern response to secession / Russell McClintock (Civil War, 2008)
Polk : the man who transformed the presidency and America / Walter R. Borneman (American history, 2008)

New Music
Hot tamale baby / Marcia Ball (1986)
Keb' Mo' / Keb' Mo' (1994)
Beyond good and evil / Matt Haviland (jazz, 2006)

About my library Okay, I'm one of the persons who has added non-book items. The breakdown is:

Actual real live books: 1802
Serial titles: 57
Single issues: 1177
Indexed entries: 384
Moving image recordings (VHS, DVD): 128
Sound recordings: 693

Ranking

September 16, 2006: # 500 with 1409 @ 9:47 AM
January 1, 2007: # 136 with 3280 @ 10:23 PM
March 27, 2007: # 117 with 4096 entries @ 1:47 PM

Tags used on 10% or more of collection:

Literary work (1879), Book (1790), 20th century literature (1690), Non-fiction (1315), Science fiction (1233), Single issue (1096), Literary periodical (984), Paperback (975), Science fiction periodical (931), Hardcover (819), Novel (783), Sound recording (673), Music recording (665), American literature (613), 20th century music (581), American novel (562), acq2006 (474), Rock music (470), Vinyl (434)

Also onLast.fm

LocationNyack, NY

Emailalibrarianoptonline.net

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

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

Member sinceJun 26, 2006

Comments from other LibraryThing-ers

(Leave a comment.)

Like your approach to LT 'comments' column. How do you add the Wikipedia, IMBD url's?

--Chuck Ralston

posted by chuck_ralston at 3:01 pm (EST) on Mar 25, 2008

Thanks for adding so many Alaskan places to Local -- you really got a lot of them! Have you ever been up here?

posted by akjubie at 2:57 am (EST) on Mar 11, 2008

I assume that you added the upstate NY libraries to "LibraryThing Local" - so I'd just like to add my thanks.

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 6:14 pm (EST) on Mar 9, 2008

I'm not sure how many libraries are in Ireland. But there are a fair few and I'm only currently dealing with the Public Libraries.

posted by wyvernfriend at 8:52 pm (EST) on Mar 6, 2008

Mountrath library made it as 10000. Very cool. I've been trying to get many of the Irish Libraries up as it is Library Ireland Week.

posted by wyvernfriend at 8:46 pm (EST) on Mar 6, 2008

I found After the ice about the most boring book I've ever read—and I like what other people think is boring.

posted by timspalding at 2:11 am (EST) on Mar 1, 2008

Juneau? Why are you going insane on Juneau. There has to be a story!

posted by timspalding at 2:10 am (EST) on Mar 1, 2008

Ok, I'm inviting you to the BETA group where we're playing with Local. So you can report your bug there... :)

posted by ablachly at 6:13 pm (EST) on Feb 26, 2008

Libraries, bookstores, events/festivals... All of it.

posted by ablachly at 11:27 pm (EST) on Feb 24, 2008

Ha - venues is part of "Local" - a very beta feature right now, that will hopefully be live tomorrow morning. I'm just playing with it tonight. I didn't realize the venue photos were showing up on the same recent photos page as for authors. And coming up with the wrong headings too!

posted by ablachly at 11:17 pm (EST) on Feb 24, 2008

Hey. I see you're adding pictures. I'm making changes to the author-picture adding system. (You'll also see I'm adding lots of pictures of myself, that's because I need to test the system out, not because I'm vain.) If you get caught in a glitch, my apologies. I'm able to do most of the work on the development server, so you shouldn't see problems.

Best,
Tim

posted by timspalding at 1:25 pm (EST) on Feb 9, 2008

Looking at your library, I suspect that you are the "Alibrarian" who has been active over on ISFDB. If I am right, could you please check your Talk page at http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User... ? If I am wrong, sorry and please disregard the message :-)

posted by ahasuerus at 9:56 am (EST) on Oct 22, 2007

I know that you must be busy, but could you have a look at my catalogue and see my entries for a few DVD, CD and academic journals (tagged as such), to let me know whether I am doing it "right" or not? Many thanks!

posted by Romanus at 10:46 pm (EST) on Sep 20, 2007

Your library makes me drool. I'm not much into history but the sheer SIZE!
Question: is there an easy way to add CDs to the catalog, or do you do it manually?
Thank you.
J :-)

posted by lilbrattyteen at 2:31 am (EST) on Sep 18, 2007

Hi alibrarian,

Thanks for adding me to your interesting libraries list! You've got quite an interesting-looking library too, which I'll have to peruse at my leisure.

bookie

posted by bookiemonster81 at 5:52 am (EST) on Sep 12, 2007

I have enjoyed reading about your library. Actually the few books we share are all quite conventional. What I was looking for is how you handled your tagging. Amongst the hundreds of single occurances, there is a need for some super tags. I was very surprised to see one of yours was "book", until I read your apologia for non-book items. I have been experimenting with adding my historic postcards (timidly tagged "pc"). I think that librarything has organisational potential for more than just books.

Your star constellation map is quite unique. I'm writing at the moment from the Atlantic island of Madeira, but since I'm using a dedicated mobilephone connection it will probably show up somewhere in Portugal (or Ursa minor?)

Botanica

posted by botanica at 5:01 am (EST) on Aug 12, 2007

We've both listed "Ellis Peters" as a favorite author. But if Edith Pargeter had only written the Brother Cadfael mysteries, I wouldn't list her among that select few. I do enjoy the mysteries, but it's her Heaven Tree Trilogy, on top of The Brothers of Gwynedd quartet, that lands her on my favorites list. So it kind of bugs me that I can't list her under "Edith Pargeter," her real name and the name under which she wrote these marvellous books. Do you have any idea how to fix this feature?

posted by margad at 8:57 pm (EST) on Jul 22, 2007

alibrarian,

Another picture credit line break request -- this time Tom Wolfe, in celebration of my adding The Electric kool-aid acid test.

posted by DromJohn at 8:02 pm (EST) on Jul 7, 2007

Just a note that let you know how much I appreciate your massive author photo effort. The author photos add so much to the author pages, and most photos I see are thanks to you, leebot, or lilithcat. Much appreciated.

Os.

posted by Osbaldistone at 11:21 am (EST) on Jun 22, 2007

Thank you! In the meantime, I look at your library and learn ...

posted by Romanus at 8:24 am (EST) on Jun 5, 2007

Hi there,

Hope you had a great holiday weekend.

When you get a moment, could you please line break the photos for Suzanne Farrell and George Balanchine? Many thanks!

posted by leebot at 12:19 pm (EST) on May 29, 2007

Hi, I love the useful helpers links in the combines group heading. Another link to suggest is the disambiguation notices log. It's under Misc in the All Together log but I've not seen any other way to get to it.
All the best, ryn

posted by ryn_books at 9:15 am (EST) on May 28, 2007

I definitely will give it a shot!

posted by miss_read at 3:06 am (EST) on May 7, 2007

@ lilithcat : Akim Willems is indeed studentica ;-)

posted by studentica at 4:39 pm (EST) on May 6, 2007

P.s. Love the Jim Henson/Muppet sculpture. That is VERY cool!

posted by leebot at 1:15 pm (EST) on May 6, 2007

Thank you for taking the time to compose that wonderfully in-depth explanation! It all makes sense to me now.

posted by miss_read at 5:22 am (EST) on May 6, 2007

Thanks for letting me know about the quarantined pics. I just assumed that if I provided the URL (giving credit) that it would be OK. My mistake. Sorry!

Just curious, though. Given that most author pics are hosted somewhere on the web, how do people ever obtain permission to post them on LT?

posted by miss_read at 11:41 am (EST) on May 3, 2007

Hi! Just wanted to let you know that I removed a flag from the image of Akim Willems that was uploaded by studentica. Looking at his profile page, it appears that studentica is Willems!

posted by lilithcat at 11:51 pm (EST) on Apr 27, 2007

Well, it seems like the name disappears when that particular author page shows "no works listed." I have wondered why that happens, and have theorized that maybe if an LT member adds a work but then deletes it for some reason, or perhaps makes some edits that moves the work to a different page but the original author name is left intact, kind of like a "ghost page." I know when I see an author page with no works listed and I click on the "add picture" box, I then see the "Add Picture For" heading but with the name field blank. It is easy to miss that. Yep, sometimes separating the names is the way to fix that but it is frustrating.

posted by leebot at 6:37 pm (EST) on Apr 22, 2007

Still an impressive page.
Please try breaks in the Kahlil Gibran photo.

posted by DromJohn at 9:30 pm (EST) on Apr 11, 2007

Nice page.
Are you willing to experiment with the F. Scott Fitzgerald picture credit. I wonder if inserting breaks could shorten the Credit line and send everything back to the top of the page.

BTW, I'm a librarian who wanted to teach, and found that the library was the back door into the classroom.

Only 20 books in common, but one of your random is my "to catalog" list.

posted by DromJohn at 2:59 pm (EST) on Apr 3, 2007

Yes, I've noticed that too -- it happened to me a couple weeks ago when I was trying to combine Dr. Laura Schlessinger entries. And I've also noticed that depending on how you get there, some secondary pages aren't intuitive, that there's a "main page." One other thing that is glitchy (and I think it may only apply to those of us who use Mozilla Firefox as a browser) is that when the credit is overly long, the picture jumps to the bottom of the page, often completely out of sight. It took me awhile to figure that out.

posted by leebot at 8:05 pm (EST) on Mar 31, 2007

RE Rex Stout: I had given up hope ever hearing back. It was nice of the family to respond. I think the picture is public domain anyway, but this way we have permission to point to. Thanks! And I still marvel at your totals...

posted by xorscape at 1:44 pm (EST) on Mar 21, 2007

Whew! Thanks for diving right in to those changes. I was daunted by the potential scale of the separating and re-combining and was worried there was an 'obvious' pseudonym that I'd be castigated for. Let me know if there's something I can do to help tonight (aussie time)

posted by ryn_books at 3:08 am (EST) on Mar 7, 2007

Hi, I noticed you added photos for Gordon Korman. I've noticed that his name and some books have been combined with Lynn Hall. I don't know enough about his other books to know if it's a pseudonym or an author-combining error. Do you have any other knowledge about him? You'll see what I mean if you search for "Korman" and see 2 listings for his name.

posted by ryn_books at 11:33 pm (EST) on Mar 5, 2007

Well, you deserve a medal. The email writing takes time (for those not public domain or copyrighted)!

I contacted the webmaster at the fan site as soon as I saw these pictures quarantined. She said she never worried about copyright, but she would check with the family. So maybe, someday...Rex Stout will have a picture. I really did assume that presidential signing photos would be federal government issued and thus public domain, but I don't know that.

posted by xorscape at 4:53 pm (EST) on Feb 22, 2007

Well, Rex Stout has defeated me. I was sure that a presidential signing photo was public domain... As well as the one from the Navy onboard the presidential yacht from 1906. As I said, this picture stuff is hard work. I am impressed by what you have done.

posted by xorscape at 1:20 pm (EST) on Feb 21, 2007

I like the 1906 Rex Stout pic too. I made it the default. I wonder what it is like to spend two years in the Navy on the presidential yacht...

posted by xorscape at 1:12 am (EST) on Feb 15, 2007

This picture stuff is horrible! I am really impressed that you have found so many!!

posted by xorscape at 9:21 pm (EST) on Feb 14, 2007

What a cool site!!! I did some surfing and came up with the same photo elsewhere with no reference. So the original guys probably did think there was no copyright. I have come up with a couple of other photos that I think will work.

posted by xorscape at 8:59 pm (EST) on Feb 14, 2007

Re Rex Stout picture: Will you please send me the url at which you found the picture? He died in 1975 and so a picture used in 2003 must have been from someone's archives. I will post a different picture in the meantime from the original source. Thanks for finding a different source. I let the Wiki linked site know of your finding also.

posted by xorscape at 8:29 pm (EST) on Feb 14, 2007

Hi alibrarian, You seem to have a wide range of interests, and a lot of time to read. A good combination!

posted by MissUSA at 12:30 pm (EST) on Feb 12, 2007

LOL, regards fm another non-teaching history majors. Happy New Year! A

posted by Ammianus at 10:24 am (EST) on Dec 30, 2006

Thanks.. I am on a bit of a roll. If I can stay at 10% of your total, I'm pretty happy!

posted by jjlong at 6:09 pm (EST) on Nov 15, 2006

Hi!

Is it my imagination, or did you at some point get permission from the Nobel Prize people to use images from their website?

posted by lilithcat at 5:18 pm (EST) on Oct 30, 2006

How come you are listed # 1 on the largest libraries on the Zeitgeist, but show up as # 2 if you click on more to see the top 100 (i.e. 500) ? Another LT bug?

I've been wondering that myself. My best guess is that "bluetyson" (and there are other 'Top 500' users not on the 'Zeitgeist' front page) is on LT under the "organization" terms-of-service. I suppose if I were a bit more curious, I could just ask him.

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 8:32 pm (EST) on Oct 26, 2006

I was browsing your library and discovered that you're cataloging the SF magazines.

I'm impressed. I'm impressed that you're doing it at all, and I'm impressed that you're doing it at such a professional level.

Magazines on LT, hmm.... I guess I'm waiting for LT do a better job of handling multiple-author works before I contemplate adding my magazines here. (I guess it almost goes without saying that I have a big SF magazine collection, too....)

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 11:15 pm (EST) on Oct 25, 2006

I'm dubious, particularly in cases where an image that is arguably public domain has been altered in some fashion. And many books say, "No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission." I have to assume that "no part" includes the cover! Personally, I wouldn't do it.

posted by lilithcat at 9:15 pm (EST) on Oct 25, 2006

Hi, fellow attempter-t-keep-image-posters-in-line!

I "unflagged" the image of Clifford Pickover because it appears to have been uploaded by the photographer.

posted by lilithcat at 5:19 pm (EST) on Oct 23, 2006

She does, doesn't she? I was lucky to stumble across them (that's my preferred method - stumbling - as opposed to your obviously amazing research skills) :)

posted by jjlong at 9:11 pm (EST) on Oct 21, 2006

Just wanted to let you know why I "unflagged" the photo of Joan Druett. It appears, from the poster's screen name (druettjo) that it was the author herself who uploaded it. So I figure it's okay with her!

posted by lilithcat at 11:18 pm (EST) on Oct 5, 2006

(from your profile, above): Where did you ever find the time to read them?

There's a quote that was sent to me (I know nothing at all about the person that it's credited to) that applies here:

"Book collecting is a full-time occupation, and one wouldn't get far if one took time off for frivolities like reading" - A.N.L. Munby

Which is more than a little true: for the past couple of months, I seem to have been spending more time cataloging my books and reading the book groups on LT - and now book-swapping - than I have spent actually reading.

- Bob

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 11:33 pm (EST) on Sep 30, 2006

RE: Bertrand Russell/Bertrand Russel

That wasn't actually a duplicate. Even though the misspelled author "Bertrand Russel" was combined with the correctly spelled "Bertrand Russell", he still has his own author page, and I decided he should have an image, too.

It would be very nice if somehow the same image would automagically attach to all the "authors", but it doesn't. So I sometimes do this.

posted by lilithcat at 7:48 pm (EST) on Sep 27, 2006

Thanks so much for posting that you are reading After the Ice......I thought it looked interesting - so have just spent a weekend in London searching the bookshops for a copy...and having found it cannot put it down - amazing book. It has, of course, made a mess of my 'to be read' pile - as everything else now has to wait - but I am really grateful, and hope you're enjoying it as much as I am.

posted by lynne.litchfield at 3:50 pm (EST) on Sep 26, 2006

RE: Elias M. Stein

Your copyright info on this image got truncated. I didn't flag it because I assume it's the same permission as the other photos from Princeton. But you might want to fix it.

Lilithcat

posted by lilithcat at 11:51 pm (EST) on Sep 23, 2006

RE: Queen Noor

Oh, the poor woman! To be haunted forever by your college yearbook photo is a fate not to be wished on one's enemies. (I suppose it could be worse though. It could be one's high school yearbook photo!)

;-))

posted by lilithcat at 2:01 pm (EST) on Sep 23, 2006

That sounds very problematic to me. I don't think I'll remove what I've already posted, but I also think that I won't use that site as a source anymore. It's too bad, because they've had a lot of useful images (though perhaps that should have been a clue that something was wrong!). Thanks for letting me know about this.

posted by lilithcat at 3:04 pm (EST) on Sep 16, 2006

A site you might enjoy. I sent this to lilithcat, too. Figured you two would be the ones to most appreciate the work/art.

http://www.galleriamia.net/index.htm

Dan

posted by danbrady at 1:43 am (EST) on Sep 12, 2006

alibrarian, yes, aren't they wonderful portraits? I believe permission granted includes any of his portraits of authors. That was the wording in my request to him. Below is the copy of the email - perhaps our resident intellectual property advisor can comment. (Lilithcat, are you listening?) :-)Dan

>Hi Dan

>Thanks for your message & taking the trouble to ask. Sure, no problem
>- can you use the address www.chrismsaunders.com though

>Cheers
>Chris

>From: Dan Brady
>To: chrismsaunders@hotmail.com
>Subject: Fwd: Photo permission
>Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 15:46:39 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Sorry to be a pest but it occurs to me that it would be easier if you
would
>respond in kind about any of your author photos rather than having me
>pester you with individual emails. Thanks for your consideration.
> Dan Brady

posted by danbrady at 2:07 pm (EST) on Sep 6, 2006

Re: On the banks of the Hudson

Hello again: we seem to be crossing paths.

I'm not in Rockland, but I do look out upon the Hudson from my office window up in Albany. And, as has been said, America only really begins on the west shore of the Hudson....

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 7:13 pm (EST) on Aug 18, 2006

Someone has cleaned it up again. You? Keeping some authors like in King in decent order could be a nearly a full time job!

posted by quartzite at 10:23 am (EST) on Aug 6, 2006

"Saw your new group for Ace Doubles. Man, does that bring back memories. '

Doesn't it, though? The marvelous thing about the old 'rack' system of distribution is that cheap paperbacks (such as the Ace Doubles) made it into places where kids could find them - small-town drugstores and whatnot. Today, we have big-box bookstores in the suburbs, but kids can't really get there on their own - now they need their parents to buy them books.

I discovered some Philip K. Dick Ace Double at about age ten, and it changed my life.

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 2:23 am (EST) on Aug 5, 2006

"Hope you don't take my starting group New Model Army the wrong way. "

Oh, heavens no, not at all. The more, the merrier - I was thrilled to see a 'NMA' Group. Not only is it "all the same 17th century", but it's a BIG 17th century: Winstanley and Wilmot probably belong in different groups. (You found a really great picture, BTW.)

See you around the Groups!

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 7:07 pm (EST) on Aug 4, 2006

Hello - I see whatyou're sayingabout the Twain.I was matching ISBN#'s on the Oxford series and a number of them have the author of the introductions and afterwords as the "author" of note.I'llclean themupeventually but that was someone else's error that I just perpetuated with the stroke of an enter key. Thanks and regards - Barney Dannelke

posted by Dannelke at 10:07 pm (EST) on Aug 2, 2006

Thanks for stopping by!

I figured your 17th century books were mostly colonial U.S. and Britain. If you're looking for a good introduction to the 30 Years War I would recommend C.V. Wedgwood for readability and Geoffrey Parker or Ronald Asch for accuracy.

I've been paying a fair amount of attention to obscurity levels for other users too. If you want to see some really obscure libraries check out lycanthropist or antimuzak. They have more than 50% of their collections shared by no one else (though I tend to discount antimuzak's some because s/he includes music cds and sheet music which most libraries don't). Lycanthropist must have 3500 unique volumes. There are only about fifty libraries that large in all of LT.

John

posted by johnandlisa at 4:48 pm (EST) on Jul 30, 2006

alibrarian. Good to see someone else self-consciously keeping track of book obscurity and the like. I've been making periodic observations in the comments section of my profile rather than the about my library section.

I will say that if you had a really serious 17th century collection you probably would have risen a bit higher on our common users list. I do note that you are a bit higher on our list than we are on yours.

I'll be curious to see how many books we have in common when we're both done adding them.

John of...

posted by johnandlisa at 6:58 pm (EST) on Jul 28, 2006

alibrarian, maybe we share so many books because we have exquisite taste. :-) Watching this site develop since November when I joined, I have been astonished at the number of books I thought were rather obscure that have turned out not to be. Conversely, I'm amazed when it turns out that I'm the only one listing a book.

Casaloma is my top match; we share 871 books. Recently Quartzite has become my second-top match, with 628 in common. I know nothing about either of these readers, but I still feel they must be my soul mates. But there are plenty of users with whom I share very little or nothing, which makes me realize just how many books there are in the world.

You have a very interesting library. Actually I wish I had many more of your books and the opportunity to read them.

posted by carminowe at 5:29 pm (EST) on Jul 15, 2006

Welcome! My top match has changed on LT over time. Originally, it was ellenandjim by a mile (that was before carminowe had entered a couple thousand more of her books). Then it was carminowe for quite a few months. Now it's debweiss, who shares an astonishing 467 books with me thanks to her large holdings in classics (she owns the entire Penguin collection), Judaica, and children's books.

I look forward to browsing your books. Since I'm a literature person on the look-out for history books, I have a tough time finding recommendations.

posted by chanale at 10:24 am (EST) on Jul 14, 2006

Dear fellow librarian, please keep entering your obscure history books! So far you and I have 12 books in common (at least) and I see some really interesting looking titles in your collection. I haven't read Nash's Unknown American Revolution yet although I have read some of his other books. How do you like it? If you plunder in my library, I use the tag "history" for American history and only modify it when the book is not American history. (Obviously my collection is ethnocentric.) Also I use "Indians" as a tag without bothering to add "history" since they're almost all history.

posted by Dragonfly at 8:20 am (EST) on Jul 5, 2006

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