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About meI'm quite an active fellow and participate in a lot of activities in doors and out. My favorite past time is to read a book at a coffee shop on a Sunday morning. I'd love to meet people that love good science fiction.

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"What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books."
- Thomas Carlyle

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My favorite book store in the world happens to be Powell's Book Store in Portland, OR. I go visit family up there maybe once or twice a year and come back with as many used titles as I can for $50 - $100. Most of them are science fiction/fantasy, but occasionally I find really great science or math selections. I especially enjoy the really old copies of physics or math texts. And I always return with an old medical book for my Dad, my only rule being that it must be at least 100 years old.

About my libraryMy library consists of a lot of Science Fiction and some Fantasy. Primarily I'm working through the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, and Prometheus award winners. I also have a selection of hard non-fiction science, math, history, philosophy, art, and war books.

As far as bibliophiles go I want to believe that I actually put in an effort to read all of my books. That becomes a bit difficult when the amount of material I want to read exceeds my speed at finishing books. There are some books I'll collect for purely historic reasons or even to say I just have them on my shelf. One example is the 1952 Edition of Britannica's Great Books of the Western World.

My books are in generally good condition. I take good care of them and rarely lend them out. If I do lend out a hard cover I'll generally remove the dust jacket as the jackets always get destroyed by friends. I used to try and not crack spines or fold pages, but with the increase in the number of used books in my collection I find that nearly impossible to come across. Any book I bought new and read still looks new, however. I'm not a big writer in my books, but in certain cases I'll take a pen to a book to highlight passages I find moving or important to me. It adds a little of my personality to a book to that someone might find should they read the book later.

Right now I live in a much smaller place. Most of my books are safely in storage and the ones on my shelf are the books I haven't read yet. My goal is to eat through at least half of that list before I move again. That way I can put them in storage and have less to move.

Someday I really hope to build a house with a real library in it. I want a whole room dedicated to books with a big table in the middle for studying and a huge comfy chair by the window for reading. Whoever I marry had better like books or I'd better earn enough money to get a big house. My books are probably my most important possessions.

GroupsScience Fiction Fans, Star Wars Books, The Prizes, Used Books

Favorite authorsIsaac Asimov, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, James Blish, John Brunner, Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, C. J. Cherryh, Arthur C. Clarke, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joe Haldeman, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Daniel Keyes, Larry Niven, Alexei Panshin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Neal Stephenson, J. R. R. Tolkien, Joan D. Vinge, Vernor Vinge, Kate Wilhelm, Connie Willis, Timothy Zahn (Shared favorites)

VenuesFavorites

Favorite bookstoresBook Castle's Movie World, Boulder Book Store, Powell's City of Books (Portland), Red Letter Second Hand Books, Tattered Cover Book Store - Colfax Avenue, The Bookworm

Favorite librariesEdward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library, Norlin Library, University of Colorado

Real nameChris

LocationSan Francisco, CA

Account typepublic, lifetime

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

Member sinceDec 4, 2006

Currently readingHow to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie