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About meI have a tendency to find authors that I like and subsequently go on a spree reading everything that they've written. I've already exhausted Isak Dinesen, Daphne du Maurier, and Dorothy Sayers. I may even be close to exhausting biographies about Isak Dinesen.

I like works in the Romantic vein, Dinesen and Hugo especially. I also like novels about early flight (Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Beryl Markham) and Arctic/Antarctic exploration (Ernest Shackleton).

I can get compulsive about reading, and often find it hard to put down a book to do things like sleep, shower, eat... I remember reading the entire Lord of the Rings (plus The Hobbit for good measure) over a three or four day period during Christmas vacation once. This is one reason why I like short stories; it's much better for my hygiene. (Also because a good short story is an elegant, tightly-written exposition of a theme, in a way that even well-written novels often are not.)

About my libraryMy library is skewed toward books that I love, or at least like enough that I have been willing to move them from apartment to apartment. Now that I own my home, I expect my collection will grow and probably begin to include books that would have previously found their way to a used book seller.

Many of my favorites are not represented in my catalog. I'm only a few years out of graduate school, and made ample use of the library during my student days.

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Favorite authorsJane Austen, John Buchan, Willa Cather, Raymond Chandler, Isak Dinesen, David Hackett Fischer, W. Somerset Maugham, Daphne du Maurier, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Dorothy L. Sayers, Sarah Susanka, Edward R. Tufte (Shared favorites)