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Member: nog

CollectionsYour library (663)

Reviews29 reviews

Tagsbeat (4), mystery (3), fantasy (1) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsAmerican Postmodernism, San Diego Bibliophiles

Favorite authorsJorge Luis Borges, T. C. Boyle, Italo Calvino, Don DeLillo, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ken Kesey, Thomas McGuane, A. A. Milne, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, George Saunders, W. G. Sebald, John Steinbeck, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Watts (Shared favorites)

About meI am a Californian; born in 1953. I have developed my world view based primarily on the events of the 60's. Sadly, the day JFK was killed is clearly etched into my memory forever, and I was only 10 years old. I attended a prestigious university in Northern California, where they attempted to brainwash me into overachievement and overconsumption. Yes, at one time I had really long hair. I am watching the deterioration of American democracy from my home (aka The Custerdome) in San Diego (a town that Gore Vidal once called "The Vatican of the John Birch Society"), which I share with my German wife and our two cats. I have walked through a bat guano-encrusted Hindu temple in Madurai, India. I was living in Berlin on 9/11. My user name is taken from the novel Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer.

About my libraryPretty self-explanatory. I don't read nearly as much as I would like, especially in regard to non-fiction. Truth be told, I'm a slow reader. Not long ago, I decided to stop buying books and just get them from the library if I can, so some of the books I've added to the list lately aren't physically in our home. We've simply run out of room. The only reason I would buy a larger home is so we can have more books.

By the way, I got flamed in one of the forums here because I ventured an opinion about how I think LibraryThing can be of optimal use to other members. I said that merely making lists of books that had not been read or that the member did not intend to read was pretty meaningless. Thus, the Zeitgeist stats don't necessarily reflect people's reading habits. I think I did something rude, which was to pick out the folks with the largest libraries and venture my skepticism that they had read every single book (I did the math, and I couldn't figure out how you could read that fast and still have time to do things like eat or sleep.) Boy, was that unpopular! So, excuse me. Anyway, I feel compelled to point out that my modest library reflects what I have actually read, or have on the shelf waiting to be read. Unrated books are the latter, or I just can't remember how much I liked it. (Actually, to list all the books I'd like to read would just depress me. Remember, I'm a slow reader...)

LocationSan Diego, CA

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

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

Common KnowledgeSeries (86), Awards (248), Characters (2942), Places (633)

Member sinceSep 29, 2006