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Words, And The Consumption Thereof
Gosling
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
I have no idea how well this will work out, but if it doesn't, eh, I've had threads fail before.
Your task: Give a representative sample of your bookshelf. Unless you take a picture of it, you won't get the whole thing- I certainly didn't- but do what you can. Give preference to the stuff you pull off the shelf more often than others.
Then laugh at other's bookshelves, or make a shopping list, or pick some samples out and marvel at the good or bad selections, or whatever it is you do.
I will start.
*Twenty different Bathroom Readers
*Eight different Dave Barry books
*At least five different books of nothing but trivia questions
*Five different stupid-government books
*Four different Darwin Awards books
*Four different The Onion books, one of which is Our Dumb World
*An uncounted number of assorted stupid-people books, estimate about fifteen
*An uncounted number of Dilbert, Foxtrot and Calvin & Hobbes books
*It's Not News, It's Fark (Drew Curtis)
*Elephants On Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments (Alex Bosse)
*The Ridiculous Race (Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran)
*The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years (M.I. Finley and H.W. Pleket)
*Military History's Most Wanted (M. Evan Brooks)
*Soccer's Most Wanted (John Snyder)
*Football's Most Wanted (Floyd Conner)
*I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie (Roger Ebert)
*Your Movie Sucks (Roger Ebert)
*The Mad Dog 100: The Greatest Sports Arguments Of All Time (Chris Russo and Allen St. John)
*2008 World Almanac
*The Worst Person In The World and 202 Strong Contenders (Keith Olbermann)
*The All-Time All-Star Baseball Book (Donald Dewey and Nick Acocella)
*This Book Will Change Your Life (Benrik)
*This Book Will Change Your Life Again (Benrik)
*I Am America And So Can You (Stephen Colbert)
*America: The Book (Jon Stewart)
*The Nasty Bits (Anthony Bourdain)
*Dispatches From The Edge (Anderson Cooper)
*Television Without Pity (Tara Ariano and Sarah Bunting)
*The Know-It-All (A.J. Jacobs)
*The Year Of Living Biblically (A.J. Jacobs)
*So You Want To Be President? (John Warner) (not that John Warner)
*Anything For A Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (Joseph Cummins)
*Unpopular Science: An Unnatural Book About Unnatural Phenomena (Arthur Rosenblum)
*Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Alex Steffen)
*The Worst Of Sports (Jesse Lamovsky, Matthew Rosetti, Charlie DeMarco)
You will note a strong attraction to non-fiction. The rationale here is, whatever a fiction author can come up with, it's usually no match for real life. There's also a strong attration to random trivia, aka "intellectual masturbation".
By the way, Unpopular Science? It's a compilation of about 50 newsletters Mr. Rosenblum drew up as part of his Aquarian Research Foundation between 1969 and 1974. Rosenblum was your quintessial New Age whackjob. Among the subjects touched on: "Three Years Of Hydrochloric Acid Therapy", "The FDA Attempt To Stop Vitamins", "Real Book Of Fairies", and pyramids pyramids pyramids.
Your turn.
Your task: Give a representative sample of your bookshelf. Unless you take a picture of it, you won't get the whole thing- I certainly didn't- but do what you can. Give preference to the stuff you pull off the shelf more often than others.
Then laugh at other's bookshelves, or make a shopping list, or pick some samples out and marvel at the good or bad selections, or whatever it is you do.
I will start.
*Twenty different Bathroom Readers
*Eight different Dave Barry books
*At least five different books of nothing but trivia questions
*Five different stupid-government books
*Four different Darwin Awards books
*Four different The Onion books, one of which is Our Dumb World
*An uncounted number of assorted stupid-people books, estimate about fifteen
*An uncounted number of Dilbert, Foxtrot and Calvin & Hobbes books
*It's Not News, It's Fark (Drew Curtis)
*Elephants On Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments (Alex Bosse)
*The Ridiculous Race (Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran)
*The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years (M.I. Finley and H.W. Pleket)
*Military History's Most Wanted (M. Evan Brooks)
*Soccer's Most Wanted (John Snyder)
*Football's Most Wanted (Floyd Conner)
*I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie (Roger Ebert)
*Your Movie Sucks (Roger Ebert)
*The Mad Dog 100: The Greatest Sports Arguments Of All Time (Chris Russo and Allen St. John)
*2008 World Almanac
*The Worst Person In The World and 202 Strong Contenders (Keith Olbermann)
*The All-Time All-Star Baseball Book (Donald Dewey and Nick Acocella)
*This Book Will Change Your Life (Benrik)
*This Book Will Change Your Life Again (Benrik)
*I Am America And So Can You (Stephen Colbert)
*America: The Book (Jon Stewart)
*The Nasty Bits (Anthony Bourdain)
*Dispatches From The Edge (Anderson Cooper)
*Television Without Pity (Tara Ariano and Sarah Bunting)
*The Know-It-All (A.J. Jacobs)
*The Year Of Living Biblically (A.J. Jacobs)
*So You Want To Be President? (John Warner) (not that John Warner)
*Anything For A Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns (Joseph Cummins)
*Unpopular Science: An Unnatural Book About Unnatural Phenomena (Arthur Rosenblum)
*Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Alex Steffen)
*The Worst Of Sports (Jesse Lamovsky, Matthew Rosetti, Charlie DeMarco)
You will note a strong attraction to non-fiction. The rationale here is, whatever a fiction author can come up with, it's usually no match for real life. There's also a strong attration to random trivia, aka "intellectual masturbation".
By the way, Unpopular Science? It's a compilation of about 50 newsletters Mr. Rosenblum drew up as part of his Aquarian Research Foundation between 1969 and 1974. Rosenblum was your quintessial New Age whackjob. Among the subjects touched on: "Three Years Of Hydrochloric Acid Therapy", "The FDA Attempt To Stop Vitamins", "Real Book Of Fairies", and pyramids pyramids pyramids.
Your turn.
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
Gosling on
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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
A handful of Neil Gaiman Books and Graphic Novels
2 Tom Holt Books
The 7 Harry Potter Books
The Northern Lights Trilogy
As a literature student I always feel bad about reading other non-work books as it feels like I should be reading my work. I also should be reading work when I watch TV, but for some reason my brain hasn't cottoned on to this fact.
So... all mild fantasy books I guess.
*About a shelf of fantasy, some WoT, some other stuff, mixed with my wife's historical fiction.
*A smattering of Modesitt, a few Varley and Niven works.
*Other assorted sci-fi
*The hardcover of the first PA book, along with a little bit of Dilbert and Peanuts, plus a whole bunch of Far Side, Get Fuzzy, and Calvin and Hobbs.
*A bunch of textbooks, including, Biology, Calculus, Linux, Networks, C++, Java, Databases and windows.
EDIT: Also a bunch of Japanese textbooks and random stuff.
Assorted classics, including Les Miserables, Anna Karenina, The Inferno, Tom Sawyer, and some other things I can't remember
Five or six Chuck Palahniuk books
House of Leaves and Revolutions, by that guy with the name I always forget.
America: The Book and I Am America: And So Can You!
Some non-fiction books on politics, of which I can't actually remember any names right now
A few coffee table books of art from Disney films
Some Dave Barry
Some Scott Adams
A bunch of other stuff I can't remember.
I'd take a picture but I just packed my bookshelf, since I'm moving. If this thread is alive in a week, I'll take a pic.
edit: Just remembered:
The complete collections of Harry Potter, Series of Unfortunate Events, Narnia, and HHGttG.
Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick
It, Christine, Cujo, Dark Tower (All 7), Firestarter + many others - Stephen King
A Case of Need to State of Fear (Almost all his fiction works excepting the most recent) - Michael Crichton
Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune - Frank Herbert
Battle for Corrin - Herbert's son, whatever his name is.
A bunch of John Saul books that I haven't read in many years.
Magic Kingdom of Landover series - Terry Brooks
Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion - Dan Simmons
I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch, but those are the ones I can think of off hand.
EDIT: Oh shit - The four Revelation Space books by Alastair Reynolds (The fourth being the Chasm City spinoff).
The Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, and pocket New Testament/Book of Psalms
The His Dark Materials trilogy
A collection of essays by George Orwell
The complete works of Edgar Allen Poe
The Audacity of Hope and Dreams of My Father
World War Z
No End In Sight
I Am America And So Can You
And that's about it
Most of my book collection is either packed up at my parent's house or with my sister in college; this is all what I've purchased since moving. I'm currently looking into apartments in the area; one of the first things I'll do after moving in is have the entire lot shipped up.
mtvcdm, what's that Year of Living Bibilically book on? Is it like a journal about a life experiment taken by the author?
As for myself, most of my "literature" books are at my parents' house, because I acquired most of them during high school. Right now I have Prydain Chronicles, Chronicles of Narnia, Simarillion, a couple of the last Harry Potter books, and some trashy romance novels. Oh, right, and some Ender's Game/Shadow novels. And the original Foundation trilogy. Cold Comfort Farm is probably in there somewhere.
About the same amount of classics (hers)
And again of architecture and art (ours)
Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (ours)
The Disc World series (ours)
Most of Brian Jacques Redwall novel's (his)
An assortment of comic books, mostly Transmetropolitan (his) and Sandman (hers)
Too many Role playing systems (his)
Looks like most of our stuff is centered around college stuff, but I suppose that has more to do with being fresh out of school than anything else. I'd like more comic books, she'd like more fantasy novels that didn't involve mice.
ph blake: Do you have a set of books for Poe or one anthology?
I don't own a single Heinlein novel;o(((.
As any other bookshelf, it's insufficient. It's fucking hard to move countries for extended periods and maintain your book buying habits at the same time;o(
You'll also notice a strong bias towards fiction, the rationale being that anything a "real life" author can come up with is something a fiction author can push one step further.
@nova:
I read Hyperion, I liked the sci-fi world he created, I like the book, but I never quite got a hold of some of the more surreal parts.
My book shelf is pathetic, I make good use of libraries. I could go through it when I get home, but mostly it contains books I or my girlfriend bought for each other. It is decidedly lacking in calvin and hobbes and assorted books of my past which are in a box somewhere at my parents place.
A set of three books: one for his poems and stories, another for his essays and various unfinished works, and the last for his two novels (one of which is sadly incomplete).
Douglas Adams - nearly everything
William Gibson - ditto
Poe - complete works
HP Lovecraft - ditto
Chaucer - some anthology
Blake - some anthology
Aristotle - Complete Works
The Divine Comedy (Inferno is the first part of it) - Dante
Bravo Two Zero - Andy McNabb
Immediate Action - Andy McNabb
Spycraft - Robert Wallace
OSS Of Spies and Stratagems: Incredible Secrets of World War II Revealed By a Master Spy - Lovell Stanley
Delta Force: The Army's Elite Counterterrorist Unit - Charlie A. Beckwith
The Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football (both editions) - Paul Zimmerman
Offensive Football Strategies - AFCA
Defensive Football Strategies - AFCA
The Football Coaching Bible - AFCA
Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman -Richard Feynman (sorta)
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter - Richard P. Feynman
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawking
Black Holes and Time Warps - Kip S. Thorne
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene
Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space - Henning Genz
A lot of CS books
Bulfinch's Mythology
Gothic Architecture
Baroque Architecture
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
Team of Rivals - Doris KearnsGoodwin
The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawking
Complete Stories Volume I - Isaac Asimov
The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks
World War Z - Max Brooks
Th Call of Cthulhu and Other Tales - HP Lovecraft
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
The Varieties of Scientific Experience - Carl Sagan
I Am America - Stephen Colbert
America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction - The Daily Show
Luxemborg (The Pamphlet): A Citizen's Guide to Constitutional Monarchy Inaction - The Daily Show
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Collapse - Jared Diamond
If Chins Could Kill - Bruce Campbell
Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual - Wizards of the Coast
And many graphic novels, inc. Batman Year One, Kingdom Come, Red Son, Birthright, Invincible, The Dark Knight Returns and other assorted nonsense
Okay, more like 'threw a pebble at him', but technically that works.
EDIT: Holy crap, they actually made the Luxembourg pamphlet?
Novus Ordo Seclorum - by Forrest MacDonald
This Side of Brightness - by Colum McCann
The Making of the Georgian Nation - by Ronald Gregor Suny
A Little Book on the Human Shadow - by Robert Bly
My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy - by Robert Bly
The Genius of the People - by Charles Mee
The Tools of Empire - by David Hendrick
Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga - by Hunter Thompson
The Botany of Desire - by Michael Pollan
The Firebrand: William Lyon MacKenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada - by William Kilbourn
EDIT: Duh, Quid, you're right. I got the dictionary and encyclopedia mixed up.
A heap of Larry Niven books, Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers and Protector being emphasized.
Wheel of time up to book 8 (I think I only bought the last one, and didn't finish it)
Most of the Culture books by Iain M Banks
Neuromancer, and some assorted Gibson
First three Dune books
Brief History of Time
On Intelligence, can't think of the author
There's more, but that's a good cross section. I read sci-fi pretty much exclusively, with some non-fiction of various sorts thrown in. Mostly I just borrow books from the library now instead of buying them.
* 4 Goon, 4 Walking Dead, 1 Futurama, 1 Uncanny X-men and Watchmen graphic novels.
* The 7 Harry Potter Books
* 13 A Series of Unfortunate Events books
* Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin
* About 90 PC magazines, mostly PCGamer UK and PCZone.
* The first 4 Discworld books
I'll double check that I have the right one tonight (I was using Amazon help me with exact titles and authors).
The author was a tech/scientist with the OSS during WWII and much of the book is about the tech and technique used by the Americans and slipped to resistance forces. Each chapter is more or less separate from the others. It's a good read.
Interestingly enough, while the book was written in the 60s, some of his opinions on US defense spending and policy are relevant this decade.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
The complete works of Ann Coulter
A year's worth of Better Homes & Yours
Every Playboy since 1998 with cigarette burns through all the girl's faces because they're harlots
God is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
Replay - Ken Grimwood
Faust - Goethe
My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk
Adverbs - Daniel Handler
Confessions of a Falling Woman - Debra Dean
Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
The Basic Kafka - (well...Kafka)
Bad Dirt - Annie Proulx
The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Diary - Chuck Palahnuik
Choke - Chuck Palahnuik
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
Consider the Lobster - D. Foster Wallace
World War Z - Max Brooks
The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks
Barrel Fever - David Sedaris
Naked - David Sedaris
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
No Country... - Cormac McCarthy
Jesus' Son - Dennis Johnson
Exile - Blake Nelson
Hey, Joe - Ben Neihart
Demian - Hesse
Amazing Grace - Kozol
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
The Catcher in the Rhye - Salinger
Loving in the War Years - Cherrie Moraga
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Invisible Man - Ellison
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maitenance - Robert Pirsig
Nickel and Dimed - Ellen Ehrenreich
Slaughterhouse-Five - Vonnegut
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene
Zami - Audre Lorde
Roughin' It - Twain
That's pretty much my top shelf... the rest is stock English major lit: anthologies, plays, composition theory, and numerous young adult literature.
Nah, cheap joke on my part.
I'm assuming this iis a very non-subtle joke.
I have yet to unpack my books after moving into my new apartment, but I wanted to participate :oops:
But I have tons of Uncle John's Bathroom Readers for... well, you know.
I don't know, please elaborate and elucidate!
Hey, I have the same set of LotR from the Quality Paper Back club!
I have a really hard time justifying keeping them to myself.
Baseball Books:
Ball Four
The Echoing Green
The Boys of Summer
My Prison Without Bars
I Live For This!
Bronx Bombers
Moneyball
Three Nights in August
Win Shares (by Bill James, picked it up for a dollar!)
and various other coffee table reference books and stat books
Fiction:
V. by Thomas Pynchon
USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
City of Glass by Paul Auster
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Illuminatus Trilogy
various Hemmingway
Complete Edgar Allen Poe
Harry Potter series
various crappy fantasy from high school
various Star Wars crap
Other Non-Fiction
Lies, and Lying Liars Who Tell Them
What Liberal Bias?
Game of Kings
A Jew in America
various other books relating to Judaism
jazz theory book
I have a lot more than this, but I don't really feel like writing it all down.
Cryptonomicon by the same.
War and Peace by Tolstoy
His Dark Materials by Pullman
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynn Jones
The Book of the Malazan Fallen by Steven Erikson
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by the above
The Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny
and a bunch of reference textbooks for Molecular Biology and Genetics
Lone Wolf and Cub -- whoever wrote it, the manga series. It's great.
Sin City -- Frank Miller
some collected Spawn -- whoever wrote that shit
Ghost in the Shell -- Masumune Shirow
Akira (in Danish) -- whoever wrote that shit
Akira (in English) -- HA! I was totally just showing off right before then
Oblivion -- David Foster Wallace (seriously it's lying right on top here)
The Great Big Book of Tomorrow -- Tom Tomorrow
Calvin and Hobbes -- varied stuff
The Far Side Gallerys -- Gary Larson
Complete run of Bloom County -- Berkeley Breathed, easily one of the most influential works in my life
Nufonia Must Fall -- Kid Koala
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth -- whoever wrote that, I love that book
Native Son -- Richard Wright
July's People -- Nadine Gordimer
Things Fall Apart -- Chinua Achebe
A Portrait of an Artist Yadda Yadda -- James Joyce
Smoke and Mirrors -- Neil Gaiman (haven't actually read this)
City of Tiny Lights -- Patrick Neate
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass -- Guess Who
Monkey -- How did I get this book?
Go Tell the Mountain -- James Baldwin
Going to See the Man -- James Baldwin
Nobody Knows my Name -- James Baldwin
Out of the Shadows -- also not my book
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha -- Roddy Doyle
The Poisonwood Bible -- Barbara Kingsolver
How We Are Hungry -- Dave Eggers
A Streetcar Named Desire -- Tennessee Williams
Catch-22 -- Joseph Heller
Uncle Tom's Cabin -- You'll Never Guess
Another Country -- James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son -- James Baldwin (conservatives, if you haven't read that shit...)
If Beale Street Could Talk -- James Baldwin
Can't Stop, Won't Stop -- Jeff Chang
A History of English -- Fennell (textbook)
Portofino -- Frank Schaffer
Fever Pitch -- Nick Hornby
The Devil in the White City -- Erik Larson (go on, get paid Erik)
American Beer Can Encyclopedia -- 1983-1984 Values (I'm not making this up)
Built to Last -- Nelson (some Christian shit)
Red Dwarf -- Grant Naylor
Red Dwarf: Better Than Life -- Grant Naylor
Naked -- David Sedaris
In Cold Blood -- Truman Capote
Babbitt -- Sinclair Lewis (I am absolutely mystified how I came into possession of this book)
Jane Eyre -- god I regret reading that
The Kin of ata Are Waiting for You -- haven't read it
Ceremony -- Leslie something or other I hated that book
Drug Crazy -- Mike Gray
Women in Love -- DH faggotty-ass Lawrence, just fuck your boyfriend already
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius -- Eggers
No Logo -- Naomi Klein
Rogue State -- William Blum
Mao II -- Don DeLillo
Smilla's Sense of Snow -- some Danish dude
The Alcoholics -- Jim Thompson
Bias -- that horseshit book about the media by that conservative sellout
The Twenty-Seventh City -- Jonathan Franzen
How to be Alone -- Jonathan Franzen
On the Rez -- Ian Frazier
Out of the Furnace -- ain't read that shit
Crime and Punishment in America -- don't think I read it, but sounds good
Longitudes and Attitudes -- Thomas L. Friedman (ha!)
Theodore Rex -- god I put that down
30 Satires -- Lewis Lapham
Banana -- Yoshimoto Lizard (awwww -- I really like this one!)
Then a bunch of issues of the Believer, like a lot, a lot
Because I know you cared.
The Last Light of the Dying Sun
The Virtues of War
Seven or so AD&D 2nd Edition books + supplementals
The Button Man advance uncorrected copy
The Brief History of the Dead
Some Stephen King stuff + On Writing
ASOIF books
The original Police Quest and King's Quest for Amiga (not books, but still awesome.)
Days and Nights
Death of a Politician
Couples
Some Bukowski, including Women (fuck yeah) and the 1st edition of The Captain's Out... etc (fuck yeah+1)
Slaughterhouse Five 1st edition 5th print
Warfare in the Classical World
Why do Men have Nipples?
The Essays of EB White
The Wilderness
Those Amazing Electronic Thinking Machines
The Bible According to Mark Twain
Grendel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being + Laughter
A signed copy of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
Some John Grisham
Some early to mid 20th century technical books
Various other stuff I picked up at garage sales and have no actual intention of reading
I had the 1st edition of Animal Farm but like a jackass I sold it on Ebay.