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Member: preater

Books1,194 books cataloged

Favorite authorsMargaret Atwood, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hermann Hesse, A. M. Homes, Primo Levi, Karl Marx, Octave Mirbeau, George Orwell, Sylvia Plath (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresChevin Books, Dawn Treader Book Shop, Motte & Bailey, Booksellers, Westwood Books

About meI do not own enough books, but I am still sometimes asked why I have more books in the house than I have read. I ask these people how they could possibly avoid this. What are you going to do if you finish your last book, have forgotten to buy or borrow another one, and are facing a two-hour train journey? What do you do when you have an opportunity to buy many books at once, e.g. walking past a bookshop? Hmm?

I mention this as an excuse to quote a joke Mark Steel tells about his exposure as a young man to the book-filled houses of his fellow left-wing activists:

I'd never considered that you could have more than about twenty books. It was quaint and charmingly eccentric, but you just didn't need that many books. Having 300 books was like having fifty kettles. And how would you ever read them all? It took me three months to read a book and then three months to work up to the next one. Three hundred books would last me 150 years. These people were wasting their money. (From Reasons to be cheerful.)

In the cartoon I am holding the logo of Vim, the best text editor.

About my libraryNot just books from my shelves, I add borrowed books following a suggestion on Karen Schneider's blog (tags: library book, borrowed). This is for LibraryThing's recommendations, which are excellent.

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Real nameAndrew

LocationUnited Kingdom

Account typeprivate, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

Member sinceApr 7, 2006