Member captbirdseye

These days, a much-reduced library of ~600 books - I needed
the space!

My books are largely related to sailing, naval architecture
and yacht/ship construction; marine biology/ecology; board
games, particularly shogi, xiang-chi and go; computing;
fiction - Mark Twain, P G Wodehouse, Jack London, John
Steinbeck, Joseph Conrad, etc.; books dealing with postcards
and stamps both of which I collect.

At last, after a far longer interval than I would have
liked, I have moved on to catalogue biography, fiction,
history, Folio Society, cookery, miscellaneous, etc. In
fact, the rest of the library...

It is also my intention to flag those books which are
available as free audio-books at Librivox (https://librivox.org/).
The tag will be 'librivox'.

Only a few of other the tags I use should should need explanation:

'sailing' will cover anything which might be of the
slightest interest to a sailor/yachtsman, so this will
include books on marine biology, oceanography,
meteorology, climatology, fluid- and hydro- dynamics,
yacht and ship design and construction, lighthouses, etc.

'collectable' means that the book is one I have seen on
the shelves of second-hand bookshops at a reasonable price.

'stinker' means that the book is not fit for purpose - I
will always justify such an outrageous claim.

Most of my 'star ratings' are above average. This is because
I do not keep books which I rate poorly - except for the
'stinkers' I refer to above - these are so memorable that
they deserve special mention and retention in the listings,
if only to serve as a warning to others.

Retired from one of the computing departments of the
University of Edinburgh. After 10 years in the West
Country returned to my roots in N-W England, but still
spending as much time as possible sailing while at the
same time learning to play the concertina...