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Member: ludmillalotaria

CollectionsYour library (1,472), Currently reading (2), Read but unowned (37), eText (32), All collections (1,541)

ReviewsNone

TagsFiction (903), NF (334), Fantasy (241), General Literature (237), Juvenile (190), Historical (187), Children's (171), Science and Nature (115), 2009 Read (109), 2008 Read (96) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsAncient History, Best Anthologies, Books Compared, Children's Fiction, Fairy Tales Retold, Feminist SF, Geeks who love the Classics, Historical Fiction, History at 30,000 feet: The Big Picture, Magical Realist and Fantastic Literature — show all groups , Newbery Challenge, Non-Fiction Readers, Read YA Lit, Reading Globally, SFFWorld, Short Stories, Travel and Exploration literature, Undiscovered Gems, US Presidents Challenge, What Are You Reading Now?

Favorite authorsJane Austen, John Bellairs, Judith Berman, K.J. Bishop, Octavia E. Butler, Italo Calvino, Jacqueline Carey, Angela Carter, Julio Cortázar, Karen Blixen, Clare Dudman, Hal Duncan, Dorothy Dunnett, Michael Ende, Louise Erdrich, Nancy Farmer, E. M. Forster, Mary Gentle, Robert Graves, Shaogong Han, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Milan Kundera, Michelle Lovric, Margaret Mahy, George R. R. Martin, Daphne Du Maurier, Sarah Monette, Irène Némirovski, Scott O'Dell, Mary Renault, Rafael Sabatini, Dan Simmons, Mary Stewart, Sean Stewart, Catherynne M. Valente, Sarah Waters, Ysabeau S. Wilce (Shared favorites)

About meAverage citizen here, married with children, work full-time... try to fit in reading whenever I can. I'm a slow reader, much more likely to sip my books than inhale them.

Favorite Categories
I read a little in most major fiction categories – but literary, classics, historical, fantasy and science fiction are primarily what I gravitate toward. For non-fiction, I enjoy history, bios of historical figures, travel literature, and the occasional natural history or popular science selection. Topics of special interest to me are mythology, folklore, archaeology, and anthropology, though I really haven’t scratched more than the bare surface in most of those categories, and I bear no specialized knowledge of any particular subject. My guilty pleasures are adventure novels, and one of my first loves was the Gothic.

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Photo: The minions, June 2009.

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About my libraryI started this profile to keep track of what I own, but have decided to also use it as my primary tool for recording what I read. I don't use the library anymore (bad/inconvenient location and limited selection) so I own most of what I read. I occassionally swap books or read eText from the public domain, so the only ones I would not own physical copies of anymore are tagged Swapped or eText.

Most of the Physical Science, Engineering and Business/Management books are my husband's. Most of the Literary/SF/Fantasy/History/Other are mine. Most of the older (pre-1950s) books belonged to my husband's grandmother, Jeanette, and are tagged Jeanette's Collection. I've also cataloged our daughters' books in an effort to decide what to keep and what to cull as they get older.

To see what I'm reading, you can refer to Currently Reading in Collections above. Below are my reading lists by year.

Annual Reading Lists (three years rolling):
2009
2008
2007


Housekeeping Notes:
1) Rated most books that I can remember reading; I don't post reviews (too many people already do that and far better than I can) but I do make comments in the comments field -- mainly first impressions, notations I want to remember, and ramblings to my future self. Readers should be warned they might be spoilerish as they are designed to help me remember. I often enter my thoughts piecemeal, as my time is never my "own", often interrupted, and I'm a deliberative (slow) thinker who can't resist tweaking things after mulling it over. My ratings usually fall between two and four; if it's a one, I've likely abandoned it and I usually need time to let a book digest before I award a five.

2) Century tags = period covered in the book (not author's lifetime)

3) eText = text in the public domain (or via CCL) that I've read/downloaded online but don't own physical copy.

4) I haven't quite decided how I'm going to define the tag, General Literature. Mostly, I'm using it to indicate what section of the bookstore I'd expect to find the book.

5) Children's books are those I think appropriate for toddlers through 1st or 2nd grade, and which are not chapter books (for the most part).

6) Juveniles are chapter books and those I think appropriate for roughly age 7/8+.

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My Ratings:
5 -- Excellent/Sui Generis/ a book that endures as one of my favorites for its category.
4 1/2 -- Very good; possibly a contender for 5 stars after further reflection.
4 -- Good/Enjoyable/Satisfying/Resonates; or, rounded up to four because in spite of some issues, still does something quite nice.
3 1/2 -- Good, but some quibbles or personal aesthetics prevent me from giving it a full four stars.
3 -- Mixed/uneven; liked some things, not others; or, rounded down to three because not quite up to my expectations for the author.
2 1/2 -- Mostly meh, but I recognize that it has some qualities that I probably am not fully appreciating.
2 -- Meh… not my cup of tea or too problematic; others might get more mileage out of it.
1 1/2 -- Makes me groan; possibly a wall banger.
1 -- Fundamentally flawed or unforgivably formulaic; a waste of time.

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Also onPaperBackSwap

LocationGeorgia USA

Emaildc10320yahoo.com

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

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

Common KnowledgeSeries (323), Awards (408), Characters (4745), Places (1112)

Member sinceMay 11, 2007

Currently readingThe Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry Adams
Gosta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlof