Member thorold

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Joined: Apr 17, 2007

Real Name

Mark Hodson

About My Library

The result of several decades of changing whims, an unnecessarily diverse academic background, and - above all - a disinclination to get rid of things once they are on the shelves.

A lot of what I read is in English, but I enjoy reading in other languages as well, especially French and German, but also Dutch (of course!), Spanish and Italian.

Points of interest include: Eng Lit, poetry, European history, engineering/transport history, natural sciences, vintage travel, and much else.

Fiction is weighted a bit towards European literary fiction, but there are also fairly heavy accretions of (euro-)crime, LGBT fiction, classics, and fifties/sixties British fiction. Odder interests include the role of bicycles in literature and philosophy, and the literature of the former German Democratic Republic (DDR).

Follow my current reading in my Club Read threads.

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I’m (experimentally) in the process of reorganising my shelving.
Books in the Your Library collection are shelved according to the MDC/DDC symbols in the “other call number” field. Arbitrary exceptions shelved out of order are indicated by a prefix letter as follows:

A — anthologies of prose fiction by multiple authors (all languages and topics)
C — selected children’s fiction shelved separately
F — prose fiction, all languages and genres sorted alphabetically by author (provisionally, books with empty call number field are assumed to be F)
G — local walking and cycling guides
M — maps
P — poetry, all languages and forms. anthologies are shelved ahead of the single-author works, which are sorted by poet
X — over-height works shelved separately (also includes a few decorative books or frequently used reference works)

About Me

English expat in the Netherlands, walker, lazy cyclist, incompetent sailor, indolent linguist, occasional bookbinder, P.G. Wodehouse fan, ex-bureaucrat, ex-physicist, ...

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