Memberthorold

4,844 Books 10 Collections 2,214 Reviews 100 Recommendations

Collections: All collections (4,844), For disposal (5), Deaccessioned books (161), In 1970s catalogue (178), Read but unowned (902), Ebooks (217), To read (100), Your library (3,569), Lent out (11), Wishlist (13)
Tags: fiction (2,744), poetry (374), crime (362), LGBT (322), 19th century (266), railways (216), short fiction (213), history (210), historical fiction (202), detective (196), France (192), travel (192), memoirs (187), literature (178), Germany (172), Netherlands (158), 1930s (140), 1950s (140), 1960s (139), 1990s (121), biography (121), 1970s (119), 1980s (116), 2010s (114), London (105), Paris (102), Wodehouse (101), essays (99), World War II (96), 18th century (93), humour (92), 1940s (91), 20th century (91), women (87), children (85), science (79), Africa (74), maps (73), music (72), 2000s (71), Italy (71), naval (69), USA (66), walking (66), 1920s (65), Spain (63), Switzerland (62), Australia (62), Yorkshire (60), Berlin (58), DDR (57), India (57), Scotland (57), satire (56), language (55), Austria (54), Russia (52), guides (51), villages (51), families (50), South Africa (49), sailing (49), 17th century (48), Canada (48), Japan (46), New York (46), cycling (45), religion (45), fantasy (45), Folio Society (43), Greece (43), World War I (43), politics (43), Belgium (43), Sweden (43), German (42), England (41), drama (41), farming (41), theatre (41), reference (40), Britain (37), Amsterdam (35), Oxford (35), Boekenweek (35), Ireland (33), Caribbean (33), 1900s (33), anthologies (32), trams (32), postcolonial (31), law (31), engineering (30), 1910s (29), diary (29), philosophy (29), 16th century (29), CH-Autoren (27), obsolete (27), colonialism (27), postmodern (25), feminism (25), modernism (25), working-class (24), journalism (24), Vienna (24), Seven Seas Publishers (23), French (23), 1870s (23), Shakespeare (23), medieval (23), schools (23), Europe (22), childhood (22), military (21), Holocaust (21), metros (21), AIDS (21), mental illness (21), atlases or bound maps (20), Wales (20), visual arts (20), 2020s (20), 1890s (20), Nobel laureates (20), experimental fiction (20), old age (20), Portugal (20), marriage (20), theology (19), thriller (19), communism (19), Middle East (19), Dorset (18), Spanish (18), mathematics (18), Iceland (18), Patricia Highsmith (17), women's writing (17), 1880s (17), Jews (17), Cambridge (17), architecture (17), aviation (17), Turkey (16), Denmark (16), metafiction (16), servants (16), novella (16), Spanish Civil War (16), Argentina (16), Suffolk (16), poets (16), painting (16), campus (15), clergymen (15), canals (15), Hamburg (15), Narrow Gauge (15), refugees (15), teenagers (15), social history (15), Poland (15), China (15), Venice (15), Sicily (15), Roman Catholicism (15), Rome (15), Cornwall (14), Great Britain (14), opera (14), Madrid (14), Edinburgh (14), artists (14), alcoholism (14), fascism (14), Hungary (14), classics (14), Mexico (14), Normandy (13), writers (13), Roman (13), education (13), dogs (13), San Francisco (13), poverty (13), letters (13), cookery (13), workplace (13), photography (13), students (13), 1860s (13), 14th century (13), romantic movement (12), geography (12), Istanbul (12), Islam (12), criticism (12), terrorism (12), 2012 ROOTS candidate (12), immigration (12), exile (12), socialism (12), adultery (12), Lancashire (12), class prejudice (12), South America (12), romance (12), classical (12), translations (12), populism (12), industry (12), biology (11), parents (11), migration (11), Norway (11), 1830s (11), German literature (11), racism (11), Romania (11), archaeology (11), Edwardian (11), Manchester (10), physics (10), transport (10), prison (10), books about books (10), Christmas 2020 (10), waterways (10), political satire (10), Virago (10), Bible (10), Lake District (10), computing (10), cultural studies (10), slavery (10), Iran (10), English (10), doctors (10), Proust (10), 1850s (10), Lisbon (10), Dutch (9), surrealism (9), Algeria (9), lawyers (9), Unread 2011 acquisitions (9), Luxemburg (9), spies (9), hotels (9), model railways (9), Yugoslavia (9), prostitution (9), cruising (9), literary criticism (9), Maigret (9), spy (9), science fiction (9), BBC (9), Barcelona (9), islands (9), Church of England (9), Asia (9), adventure (8), Judaism (8), translation (8), cinema (8), Egypt (8), barristers (8), dictionaries (8), Israel (8), Zimbabwe (8), mining (8), Goethe (8), small town (8), bourgeois (8), Balkans (8), suburban (8), absurd (8), fishing (8), nature (8), Prague (8), magic realism (8), New Testament (8), Sussex (8), Melbourne (8), booksellers (8), Provence (8), ethnology (8), African-American (8), 15th century (8), suicide (8), menhirs (8), Croatia (8), signals (8), yachting (8), Rhine (8), gender (8), narrative verse (8), police (8)
See All Tags
Clouds: Tag Cloud, Author Cloud, Tag Mirror
Media
Groups: (BOMBS) Books Off My Book Shelves 2012 Challenge, 18th Century British Literature, 2015 Category Challenge, Anglophiles, Awful Lit., Barbara Pym, BBC Radio 3 Listeners, Best of British, Bikes and Bicycles, Cycles, Cyclists and Bikers, Book Recommendations Requests, Books Compared, Books in 2025: The Future of the Book World, Books off the Shelf Challenge, British & Irish Crime Fiction, BritWit, Bug Collectors, Club Read 2016, Club Read 2017, Club Read 2018, Club Read 2019, Club Read 2020, Club Read 2021, Club Read 2022, Club Read 2023, Crime, Thriller & Mystery, E. F. Benson, E=F flat, Flashman and Fraser, Geeks who love the Classics, Geoguessr Challenge Group, German Library Thingers, Historical Fiction, History Fans, HMS Surprise, Humor, Independent Scholarship and Research, Kipling wasn't (just!) an imperialist, Language, Le Salon Littéraire du Peuple pour le Peuple, Legacy Libraries, Librarything Railroad (The LTR), List Five Books Parlour Game, Literary Snobs, LT's list of great books you should read, Maps and Atlases, Nobel Laureates in Literature Challenge, Open University, Pedants' corner, Poetry Fool, Reading Globally, Reading Globally II, ROOT - 2013 Read Our Own Tomes, Science, Skeptics and Rationalists, Snooping through Shelves of Fictional Characters, Starting Your Own Personal Library, Tattered but still lovely, The City and the Book, The Drones Club (all things P.G. Wodehouse), The Silent Screen & Early Sound Film, To List or Not to List (now that it's a feature), Trollope lovers unite or fight, Victoriana, W.G. Sebald fans
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.

————
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, ...

Location