Member: keristars

CollectionsBooks I own (477), Read but unowned (107), Use for Recommendations (90), Fix Cover (241), Currently reading (7), Wishlist (74), Other than English (112), To read (88), Needs Review (58), I have read this book once (or more) in the past (30), First read/acquired for school (166), American Girls Collection (66), No recs/No connex (12), All collections (748)

Reviews208 reviews

Tagsfiction (546), 21st century (302), 20th century (281), _amazon cover_ (234), children's fiction (180), series (169), historical fiction (164), fantasy (144), ya (115), school (114) — see all tags

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Recommendations25 recommendations

About meI am one of those English Majors (for life), with a BA and everything. In general, my interests are in folklore, linguistics, history, and children's books. Also, I love YA fantasy.

Currently I'm enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the SOIS, intending to earn an MLIS degree on-line with an archives and records management concentration.

I have a disorder which may or may not be Asperger's syndrome (I can't afford a diagnosis, and when I was last examined, girl children generally weren't eligible for the label). Just an FYI as I participate more in Talk...

My absolute favorite things ever in fiction? Unordinary narrative structure, unreliable narrators, and well-done time travel. Lately I've been getting into manga and anime, as reflected in the more recent additions to my library. I also am struggling to come to terms with my enjoyment of romance novels.



My 2010 75 Challenge thread - 2011 75 Challenge Threads ★1★, ☆2☆

About my libraryMy library pretty much represents the books I own or have owned while a member of LT. I collect American Girl and other series books, so there's a huge skew that way. Also, I used to want to be a children's or YA librarian, and I never got rid of books I bought as a kid or teenager, so they fill another chunk. And then there are the books I had to get for my undergrad courses - lots of English and American lit.

Eventually, I would like to add all the books I have read or enjoyed (in a separate collection from those I own), but that's nowhere near the top of my list.

I'd love recommendations based on what I already have, whether they're similar or not. I love reading so much and am always interested in branching out.

If I've entered incorrect information, please let me know so that I can correct the entries in my library!

My rating system:
5: it's a book I would take to a deserted island, or, at least, would drag around with me for as long as I can
4: I loved it and plan to reread it
3: it was enjoyable or useful, or I'm more-or-less ambivalent about it
2: either I read this a long time ago and don't care to ever pick it up again, or it was only a mediocre book that I'm less than enthused with
1: I didn't like these books, but there is something redeeming about them
1/2: this is reserved for books I hated
0: I only use zero stars for books I have not read

Sometimes there are books that I think are great and interesting and represent things I like, but I didn't actually like the reading experience for whatever reason - those might have lower ratings, but are in my "use for recommendations" collection. "3" is my baseline rating, so the vast majority of books in my catalogue have three stars.

I'm not very strict to this, and I use half stars to give a bit of a buffer. I used to have like 25% of my library at 5 stars and felt that was overkill, so went back to re-rate things to make the ratings more indicative of how much I like the book and would reread it. It's more of a bell curve now. :)

(This is to say - my ratings were useless to me, so I fixed them to have a better noise to signal ratio for my purposes.)

My Collections
I have four primary collections.
My Library - books I own and want to admit to
Read But Unowned - I don't own them, but feel a connection to them, want recs/connex for them
I Have Read This Once (or More) in the Past - I read this book and want a record of having read it, but don't really care one way or the other about them; mostly this is because my LT recommendations were like 60% books I'd already read and I thought it was kind of useless like that
No Recs/No Connex - books that I own but don't want associated with me or that I don't want to have included in my statistics (but I don't want to not have them in my catalogue, because they're on my shelves...)

Groups20-Something LibraryThingers, American Girl Books, Ask LibraryThing, Awful Lit., Bug Collectors, Combiners!, Common Knowledge, WikiThing, HelpThing, Graduate Students, Happy Heathens, I Survived the Great Vowel Shift —show all groups, Librarians who LibraryThing, Light Novels, Literary Snobs, Manga and Anime Addicts, Pedants' corner, Taggers!, Tattered but still lovely, To List or Not to List (now that it's a feature)

Favorite authorsKozue Amano, Kathleen Ernst, Eliza Fowler Haywood, Karen Hesse, Robin McKinley, Louis A. Meyer, J. D. Salinger, Mark Twain, Yumi Unita (Shared favorites)

VenuesFavorites

Favorite bookstoresChamblin Uptown, Librairie Kléber

Favorite librariesJacksonville Main Library (Duval County), Jacksonville Public Library - Southeast Regional Branch

Also onAIM, Flickr, Google Talk, LiveJournal, Twitter

Membership LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway

Real nameKeri

LocationJacksonville, FL

Emailunreliablenarratorgmail.com

Account typepublic, lifetime

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

Member sinceJan 6, 2007

Currently readingThe Naming: The First Book of Pellinor by Alison Croggon
The Innocents Abroad (Penguin Classics) by Mark Twain
Charlotte Temple - Norton Critical Editions by Marion L. Rust
The Map that Changed the World : William Smith and the birth of modern geology by Simon Winchester
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Lawrence Sterne
Yotsuba&!, vol. 11 by Kiyohiko Azuma
Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (Revised Edition) by James W. Loewen
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