Member: mfd101
CollectionsYour library (10,431), Digital library (1,467), CDs (699), DVDs (350), Decommissioned (70), All collections (13,013)
ReviewsNone
Tagsreview article (1,542), eBook (1,459), article (994), CD classical (639), Plato [Plátōn] c429/3-c348/7 BCE (497), Aristotle [Aristotélēs] 384-322 BCE (496), Martin Heidegger 1889-1976 (469), Immanuel Kant 1724-1804 (439), natural language (372), Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900 (353) — see all tags
Cloudstag cloud, author cloud, tag mirror
About meRetired Australian civil servant
About my libraryLargest sections are: (1) history - mostly Europe from Ancient Greece to C20th, Americas C15th-18th, Pacific C18th-19th contact, & WW2; wars & warfare are big; (2) philosophy - mostly Greeks, C17th-18th Anglos, Kierkegaard & C20th; and now we have speculative realism to delight us after the decades of tedium called deconstruction & postmodernism ("30 years lost to navel gazing"); (3) literary theory & literatures - mostly Eng-, Fr- & Ger-language, others in translation except for some It, Sp & Lat; (4) linguistics - mostly text linguistics, semantics & Paris School narrative semiotics; (5) anthropology & comparative mythology - lots of French structuralism; (6) religions & theologies - mostly Christian & Jewish - considered both from a secular historical point of view & as discourse (mythology, historiography, oral literature, narrative structures).
What's growing? 'History' has been out of control for years, and 'Philosophy' continues to expand at a great rate. Almost all my buys these days are digital books (Kindle & Kindlized PDFs): no space to place more print books aesthetically, and this is reinforced by both the heat & humidity here in rural Thailand & the difficulty of receiving print books by mail or carrier.
Since mid-2017/2560: Still sorting the print books onto the shelves of our new house in Surin province. The usual headaches of (i) space (absolute) (ii) space (relative) & (iii) order [I tend to be chronologically obsessive] ... Taking the opportunity to decommission a few more pointless acquisitions from the remote past.
Intellectual curiosity: a manifestation of the sin of Greed.
Library: velleities of knowledge; v. under 'Control: freaks'. Combining in the present century the classical with the post-modern pleasures, blindness with obesity. Like Montaigne I speak as one who inquires and is ignorant. The unread books of my library are the horizon of my ignorance, an ignorance that expands, like the cosmos, ever faster. But they were, these unread books, like those I have read, chosen for my library on the basis of their content and my interests, so they have a useful function organizing my ignorance through demarcation, turning mysteries into problems. The unread are, like the unready, a tribute to optimism.
Motto: Et in veritate vinum
GroupsAmerican Revolution & Founding Fathers History, Ancient History, Australian LibraryThingers, Biblical History, Classical Music, Combiners!, French Connection, Gay Men, German Library Thingers, HMS Surprise —show all groups, Homer, the Trojan war, and pre-classical Greece, Japanese Literature, Language, LibraryThing en français, Lingua Latina, Literatura en Espanol, Medieval Europe, Military History, Naval History and Fiction, Philosophy and Theory, Philosophy of Science, Political Philosophy, Second World War History
LocationSurin province, Thailand
Favorite authorsNot set
Account typepublic, lifetime
URLs
/profile/mfd101 (profile)
/catalog/mfd101 (library)
Member sinceJan 15, 2008
