****QUESTIONS for the Avid Reader 2014, Volume II

This question is based on suggestions by AnnieMod and Steven.

QUESTION 10.

Have you ever had to start building your library a second time from scratch? If so, how different were the versions before and after? And, if you've never had to do this, try a thought experiment. If your library were completely destroyed, and you had the financial means to replace it completely, how different would your current library be from the one you have now? Why?

I have about a third of my books catalogued on LibraryThing, and I don't know that there are any I don't want, so I'd replace them. I'd replace a bunch I remember from the rest of the lot. But one guideline I might try is all of the Library of America, all of the Norton Critical Editions, all of the NYRB books, almost all of the Cambridge Companions, almost all of the Oxford Handbooks, and a handful of reference books. That would probably give me more than I could read in the rest of my life.

Robert

I haven't had to replace it, but when I moved across continents I did leave all my stuff I'd already read back with my mom, and only took my unread books, so my shelves were pretty bare, to me, for a while, as we slowly accumulated more over time. I'm not much of one for rereading, so most things that I've read I probably wouldn't bother replacing; the classics I enjoyed more, most of the non-fic, and my favorite authors/titles I'd want. Everything unread I would of course need back!

Q10 - a) When I was 19 I moved to Australia for a year. Before I left I divided my book collection into two boxes--one to keep and one to donate. While I was gone a family member gave away the "keep" box. Oh well, it turned out not to be a big deal. Any book that was important was eventually replaced.

b) I've recently culled my book collection, so for the most part I'd replace it. However, I have a large number of books in my TBR that I have because I found them for free or very cheap, and not because I really wanted them. I probably wouldn't bother replacing most of those.

I am not sure I would replace that many novels. I would replace some of the poetry books and of course all of D H Lawrence's works, but mostly I would continue to collect/gather books in the higgle de piggledy way I have always done.

As long as there are still books out there, I imagine I wouldn't replace, but just get new books and maybe cry about unreplaceable stuff like my master's thesis. One advantage of reading slow is that it doesn't impact my budget.

If LT shut down, I would be a lot more distraught - bookwise.

If your library were completely destroyed, and you had the financial means to replace it completely, how different would your current library be from the one you have now?

Nooooo! What a terrible thought. Avert! Avert!

Well. I obsessively keep pretty much every book I read, but if they all disappeared overnight, the percentage I'd replace is probably fairly low. I'd replace the old favorites and the five-star reads and the cult classics and the useful reference books, no doubt. And I *would* probably try to reacquire most of the stuff I'd bought but hadn't read yet, which would be a large and daunting task in itself. But otherwise, I think I'd put most of the money towards buying entirely new books.

I would still miss the old ones, though. I like having them around.

I've never been forced to start my library over, but I've done so voluntarily a couple of times when my interests changed. Buying books at sales and on clearance isles because I "might want to read them someday" led in recent years to my having a library cluttered with books I was unlikely ever to read, so I purged them by the hundreds earlier this year. As a result, the books I have left would probably go right back on the wishlist if they were somehow destroyed. If I made any changes it would be to add a bit more non-fiction to the mix. I would also replace many of my hardcopy books with ebooks, again because of limited shelf space.

When I left home my mother had a big garage sale. The books I especially loved i have replaced over time, including finding a few on ebay. The one thing I regret having lost is the mass market boxed set of the first three in the Anne of Green Gables series. They were read to the point of falling apart and the pages were brittle and yellow, but I'd love to have those specific copies back.

If I did lose my books, I'd replace many of them, but slowly, over time, as I realized which books I would like back on my shelves, taking the time to find either the edition I'd lost or one I liked.

My personal books (meaning books not sent to me from my Mom) are mostly on my Kindle, except for a few dear books that I've bought in hard or paperback format. If I had to replace my books, though, I wouldn't even know where to start, because I honestly don't know what all is on my Kindle. If I had unlimited money to just spend on books, I can think of a few series that I would buy up the complete sets of so that I would have them. But I have never catalogued the most desired and beloved books on my Kindle, except for the ones that I've already read, so outside of that, I could never replace even half of them. It would be a slow process, done over time as I ran across books that I wanted at a price I could tolerate, because I'm a cheapskate.

I keep almost all of the books I read, sometimes replacing one edition with another, but in some cases I have more than one copy of the same work. I love the search for a surprise bargain, so haunt used bookshops and library book sales. This means a lot of books on shelves, but it's an addiction I don't mind. If I were to lose them, God forbid, I think I would look to upgrade the editions in some cases, but in others I like having the same version that I first read because it evokes a time and place for me that were highly influenced by the book. Like in college when I read Atlas Shrugged in two and a half days and then went night swimming the minute I finished.

I did lose many books when I was away at school and my parents' basement flooded. It's a continuing pain, because even after all these years, I'm not quite sure whether I own a book I read long ago, or whether it was one of those lost to the waters. Leon Uris books for instance. Have I replaced Mila 18 and Exodus or not?

This discussion is making me think I could really go through my library and cull a lot of books: books I read that didn't mean much to me and books on the TBR that I realize I will probably never get to. But it would be such a big project because I have almost every book I ever read or bought since I got out of college, and many books from my school years and college as well.

I feel pretty good about my reading so far this year, I guess. It's been the usual odd mix of stuff -- the word I like to use is "eclectic" -- with a good number of books that I really enjoyed and few that I actively disliked. My only dissatisfaction is that I always, always feel like I'm not reading enough, because no matter how many books I get to, the unread ones overwhelmingly outnumber them.

I do have goals for the year, although not in the sense of having picked out specific books to get to. Over in my thread on the ROOT group, I've got a couple of goals intended to encourage me to read more stuff that's been sitting on my TBR shelves for a while, with a point system set up to encourage me to read the books that have been languishing there for an especially long time. I'm on target for that for the year, and I think it's working pretty well, in that when I'm standing in front of my shelves pondering what to read next, it gives me a little incentive to not just look at the shiniest, newest stuff.

I was just recently looking back at some of my reading logs from many years ago, and I think it's pretty clear that my fiction-reading habits, at least, has changed a lot since then, becoming broader and less dominated by science fiction and fantasy. That's been true for a while, though. I think LT has had a lot to do with that, turning me on to books I otherwise never would have known existed. Although it's probably not the only thing that's influenced me in that direction.

As for the expectations... I want to say, no, they don't make a difference at all, I read what I want to read, and it would be silly to tailor my reading to someone else's expectations or to change my reading habits in hopes of securing someone else's good opinion. But I don't think I can deny it entirely. I do know I sometimes find myself looking over my thread and thinking, despite myself, "Oh, that's a lot of SF (or light escapist reading, or books with zombies in them, or whatever). People will think that's all I read! Gosh, sometimes everybody else seems so much more serious than me. Maybe I should get to something more literary (or more "serious," or less nerdy, or more of a "classic," or whatever it is I'm feeling insecure about) soon." And that probably does indeed influence me some when I'm deciding what to read. That may not be a bad thing, though.

I started off really well this year, but have hit a reading slump in the last few weeks. This is due to my saxophone playing which is now taking up more time as I am starting to get to grips with musical theory and practice. There has also been a lot of work to do in the garden with the onset of good weather. It has been a very wet winter, but now the rain has stopped and my vegetable patch has needed to be dug over. I have heavy clay soil so it is impossible in the wet.

We are also having a major refurbishment in the house and work started last week, however I am determined to get back on track with my reading; I will just have to sleep less.

I am still keeping to my reading plans for the year although I am behind on my schedule. I thought I might get to Spenser and Shakespeare in my reading through the ages project, but that seem unlikely this year.

I will have to just say ditto to what baswood said, except that in my case there's no musical instrument involved, just home re-painting and all the moving and cleaning that goes with it. I haven't even had a chance yet to work in the garden, but I won't be doing much this year anyway. We are in the fourth year of severe drought, and are only allowed to water twice a month. Rainfall has been negligible, so most homeowners are giving up on flowers and vegetables and just trying to keep their trees and shrubs alive. Anyway, with our painting now finished and my books back where they belong, I'm starting to pull out of my reading slump. I'm pleased with what I've read so far, but hopelessly behind the reading pace I had expected to maintain.

My reading interests have been pretty constant. About a year ago I started dividing my reading between several themes, including chronological readings of classics and science fiction inspired by baswood's projects. I've tried to maintain a balance between these personal themes and the various theme reads going on in LT.

LT has definitely been a major influence on my reading in terms of book selection, largely through participating in theme reads in groups such as Reading Globally. As far as expectations, that's difficult to say. Even before I joined LT, I was reading some pretty serious stuff, so I can't say I've ever read a book just to impress someone here or because I thought it was expected of me. If I read a book that might be considered embarrassing, I simply don't mention it, so LT hasn't inhibited my darker side either. If any thing, seeing other readers intermix light genre reading with more serious stuff may have encouraged me to do the same and steered my reading in a lighter direction.

I'm content with my reading so far. It'd be nice to be further ahead, but eh, I'm on schedule with my goals, so all is well. Aside of the 24 titles for my TBR Challenge, I don't pick specific titles ahead (and I'm way ahead of schedule on those, at least, with 13 of the 24 done). Most (not all) of my reading so far has been classics and non-fiction, which I'm happy with, because one can't read enough of either of those! Given that I'm interested in practically everything, no, I can't say I will be finding anything new to specifically delve into. I do think I've made good strides at reading more non-fic, which I'd always meant to do, but good fic is a lot quicker so I can read more of them (yay more books! haha), and more "entertaining," generally. But I love to learn things, all kinds of things, so it's not like I'm lacking on the non-fic, I just usually read a much smaller percentage of it. But so far this year I've managed 1/3rd non-fic. :)

No outside factors really influence my reading, ever. Like I said, I tend to read a bit of everything (and if I don't read it at all, chances are nothing could make me), so... Group reads or themes or whatnot may influence when I pick up a certain title, or may get me to seek out one title by an author I'm not really familiar with, or great reviews may clue me in on specific titles, or whatnot, but no major shifts or anything. And, anything I read I have no problem mentioning here; I think the whole concept of "guilty pleasure" books/music is kind of absurd. Who says reading is required to be all heavy-lifting? There's nothing wrong with some reading being for nothing more than fun, a Dean Koontz or Stuart MacBride or whatever. People can "expect" for me to read, anything more than that is on them, not me! ;P

I use the amount of reading I do and the type of book that I read as a barometer of my health (both physical and emotional). When I am sick, have surgery, or am out of sorts/stressed, I read less and I read genre fiction. When I am healthy and happy, I tend to read a lot of translated fiction and history/memoirs. So when I look back over my reading in February and March, I am not surprised to see almost all genre fiction, but I am disappointed. Not because I don't enjoy genre fiction from time to time, but because it means I've not been my usual self. (I actually took a graph of the number of books I read per month to a doctor's appointment as proof that something was wrong!)

I spent many years happily in academia reading history and literature, then there was a dry spell when I was busy with life. Since joining LT, I've felt a bit like I'm back in school, discussing great books with friends for fun. It has inspired me to return to the type of books I love most and challenged me to read more globally (not just Russia and Eastern Europe, France, etc.). So in a way LT has returned my reading self to its natural state.

I am less of an iconoclast, perhaps, than some of you. I am conscious that I am writing for an audience and not just myself. Otherwise I wouldn't bother put it online, and I would make my library private. The opportunity to discuss books with (usually ;-) ) like-minded people is what makes LT fun and challenging and social. When I read books that are unnoteworthy, there is less to talk about and things get dull on my thread, thus making LT less fun. So I see the cross pollination, the group expectations, and the desire to read books that are fun to discuss as being a valuable part of the experience.

Not sure I could be classed as an avid reader, but LT reviews have introduced me to lots of interesting books I otherwise would never have heard of, which is not entirely a blessing as the To Be read heaps grow ever higher, and there are still more books I've simply noted without purchasing.

I was really pleased to see the WWI reading group, as I had been hoping to find a group of people to read WWI with, but after a good start I've ground to a halt while I hare around reading other things yet because of good recommendations the WWI reading heap has taken over a good deal of the living room. I really must buckle down and get more of it read. I think perhaps it's such a large subject with such a mushrooming quantity of books it's difficult to discuss, so it does seem like a solitary slog.

The monthly author read is useful in getting me to read people I've meant to get around to or used to read long ago and have almost forgotten.

To some extent I limit my thread reading in order to avoid temptation.

I would never set myself targets for reading; there's enough pressure in life without making up more deadlines to meet. I read to get away from it all!

Mixed. It's been an odd year (yet another one?) and I never made a plan and reading The Book of Psalms is killing me. But then my only real "goal" I'm pursuing is to make progress in OT, so Psalms represent progress.

As for new interests - I'm looking for them.

LT expectations did funny things to me when I first joined. But I have since mostly shed myself of those (really self-imposed, so maybe LT-inspired) expectations. LT now serves as a place to keep me focused, whatever focus I have now anyway.

Thoughts about expectations...for me it works this way. A book gets praised on LT or CR, someone I like, or many someones rave about it. So I sense something wonderful in that book, then I read it with high expectations. Then, somehow it just turns out to be a book of words. My reaction is stilted and confused. In trying to figure out my reaction, I become super critical of the work. Book ruined.

Q11 (and sorry I missed Q10!)
I started off pretty well compared to recent years, but lately have slowed down again. I'm not entirely sure why, though I think a lot has to do with some stutter starts on books - either taking longer to get into than expected, or just not grabbing me and becoming more of a slog than expected. I had a good string of books to look forward to, and now am not as well prepared once one book is done.

I'm reading more or less the same way I usually do - trying to go for what interests me at the moment; mostly fiction, but throwing in occasional non-fiction; mixing languages both out of interest and hope to keep the skills fresh &/or alive. I'd say I'm more willing to walk away from a book that isn't holding my interest - more so than in the past, at least. As a result, I'm fairly happy with the selection so far - even if I didn't like the book, it was likely one I've wanted to read.

I always hope someone will a) read some of my posts and b) think something I've read (or said about what I've read) is interesting or odd or funny, etc. However, I don't (think I) target what I read or what I write; then again there's probably a group-think psych experiment somewhere that would prove otherwise.

>22 ljbwell: You can still answer Q10 if you want to, you know. There's no statute of limitations!

QUESTION 11.
We're a little bit more than a quarter through the year. How do you feel about your reading so far?

I do have some goals, but they are relaxed to the point of being almost useless. I decided to go free-range reading this year, and so far I feel like I'm floundering. I'm not sure I can exactly connect the two--I've been distracted by other things and reading is not getting my usual passion. I hope things pick up in my own personal book world soon . . . .

I have mixed feelings about my reading this year. On the one hand, I've read some great books and discovered some new authors. On the other hand, I've felt more like reading very "readable" books and haven't ventured for the most part into the more "challenging" books I often read in the past, and despite my best efforts to go with the flow I feel a little guilty about that. Thanks to the Author Theme Reads group, I've been enjoying several previously new-to-me French authors, thanks to Reading Globally theme reads I've been introduced to several South American and African authors I hadn't previously read, and thanks to comments on LT threads I've been reading the Spanish mystery writer who inspired Camilleri's Montalbano character. But I haven't been reading the Eastern European and Russian books I previously read, although several are staring at me from the TBR shelf.

As for expectations, I do feel a little like I'm not keeping up with the "serious" reading I've previously done, but I guess we all have reading moods!

This question came from one posed recently on a Club Read thread.

QUESTION 12.
Do you rate books with stars as you review them? If so, what is your rating system and how do you deal with comparing different kinds of books? If not, why not? Also, do you look at the star ratings for books on LT, and how does that influence your reading decisions?

I do rate books, but I'm frustrated with my rating inconsistency. It seems like it changes book-to-book. I guess my ratings are decisions of the moment, which means I don't fully understand what they mean.

I'm also ambivalent about the idea giving ratings. A review should tell what you need to say and shouldn't require a rating. Also, sometimes a book's rating depends entirely on the readers interests - so that any single rating is misleading. But, I still find myself using other peoples ratings to get a sense of how much I'm likely to like a book, or even to decide whether their review is one I want to read.

This maybe explains why I don't add them to my thread posts.

I rate books, but with some reluctance for reasons similar to Dan's. There's always the ambivalence about whether a rating should reflect how good I think a book is or how much I actually enjoyed it. As Dan said, it depends entirely on the reader's interests and aptitude for that particular level of book. A rating of 3 stars can either mean it's an average book with broad appeal, or a fantastic book for a limited audience.

I use LT reviews (especially those from Club Read) in making reading decisions. Only if there are no useful reviews will I even glance at the ratings. Instead of the average rating, I will usually look at the chart showing the spread of ratings. If a book has a lot of 1 and 5-star ratings, that suggests something challenging or innovative, and I might look into it further. If the ratings cluster in the 2-4 star range, then I'm less likely read it, even though the average rating may be higher.

I most definitely always rate. I don't use any special formulas, it's just how much I enjoyed reading it, and, where applicable, the accuracy of the content. I look at ratings, but don't put tons of stock in them, it's more of a curiosity thing.

I always rate books and I try to keep up with writing reviews for each book I read. My ratings are usually just a momentary expression of how I liked a book shortly after I finished it. So my ratings are actually very inconsistent and should definitely not be used to compare books. I usually do not use other members' ratings but rather their reviews to decide if I should read/wishlist a book.

I rate books in order to give myself a quick reference, so useful when someone asks you what have been your best reads over the last quarter.

Of course ratings are inconsistent, but I usually agree with the ratings that I give to my books.

I will be influenced by other peoples ratings, but always read the reviews if there are any.

I do rate books, but it's just about how much I eprsonally enjoyed something. Obviously writing skill comes into play to an extent. With old fiction, random 1930s books aimed at teen girls and Edgar Rice Burroughs and such, it's just about how much I enjoyed it. Is Princess of Mars an incredibly solid, well-written book? No. Was it fun and hilariously ridiculous for me? Yes. Thus, four or five stars. It's probably pretty pointless for me to rate them with stars (and I don't use them in sloppy reviews on my thread), but oh well.

The star ratings don't influence me that much, I definitely look at reviews more. If I'm posting a review on the book page I'm more hesitant to give it a star rating.

I rate books but it's arbitrary. Useful in seeing at a glance in my library which books I've read and for books read before I reliably wrote reviews. I don't use it when deciding whether to read a book -- for that I use the reviews, especially when they are written by someone whose opinion I respect.

QUESTION 12. Do you rate books with stars as you review them? If so, what is your rating system and how do you deal with comparing different kinds of books? If not, why not? Also, do you look at the star ratings for books on LT, and how does that influence your reading decisions?

I have been confidently assigning stars since I joined LT in 2007. My system was based on my enjoyment, and I compared the book to other books of its type. Hence, both Bridget Jones's Diary and Survival in Auschwitz earned 5 stars from me, even though they are on an incomparable scale. But recently, I've had a tremendous struggle trying to assign stars. Often I see the merit of a book, but something in it didn't work for me on a personal level. The last while I've ended up giving 4 star ratings to books I didn't enjoy that much just because it seemed unfair to knock them down for one of my pet peeves.

I do look at the stars a book is assigned, but it's only one of many things I look at when making book decisions. If I'm interested in a book, I like to read the one-star reviews here and at Amazon. Sometimes they are people who completely fail to understand the book, but other times they can be enormously insightful (especially when a super-popular book gets one-star reviews).

I almost always star the books I've read. I'll leave the stars blank if I think I can't give it a fair shake. I see my ratings and my comments as going hand in hand (though don't often post those together). I may give a book I really enjoyed reading a higher rating, even if I don't think it is the best quality or has clear faults; I may give a lower rating to a well-written book that just didn't click for me. I try to explain that in what I detail out in a review or comments. That said, I'm sure I'm inconsistent and would be loathe to go back and see my past star allocations; I'd end up second guessing myself and re-rating.

I look at a number of things, or different things for different books - such as the combination of the reviews that go with the star ratings - to get a sense of whether I might like a book. Most often, though, I still rely on browsing the bookstore and grabbing what feels right, or going by recommendations from people whose reading tastes I trust or that run along similar paths to mine.

I do rate, almost obsessively, even though I'm all too aware of how limited the usefulness and even the meaning of such ratings are.

In my mind, I have something of a system for what each star rating means. Something like:

1 star: Really thoroughly awful. Pretty much no redeeming qualities, or too few to make up for some really offensive flaws. Or it just pissed me off.

2 star: Not good. Not entirely without redeeming qualities, maybe, but they don't overcome its flaws. Didn't enjoy it, wouldn't recommend it.

3 star: Not great, but not really bad. May have a complicated mixture of good points and flaws, or maybe it just left me going, "Well, that was okay, I guess."

4 star: Good! An enjoyable or interesting or otherwise generally satisfying read that left me feeling favorably disposed towards it after I turned the final page.

5 star: Holy crap, that was probably one of the best books I've read in my life!

And then the half-star ratings are those same things, but better, so that 2 1/2 stars is more thoroughly mediocre than actively bad, and 4 1/2 stars is "Hey, that was really good!"

But, of course, that all makes it sound so much more logical and organized than it actually is. In practice, half the time I feel which rating I give it depends entirely on what aspects of the book I'm choosing to think about, and the final decision feels almost arbitrary.

As for considering other people's ratings... I always take them with a grain of salt, knowing that what people mean by them varies so much that it's hard to really conclude anything from them. But when a book has lots and lots of ratings, and they show a clear general trend, then I think that might actually tell you something useful, whether it's "lots of people loved this," "lots of people hated it" or "this is one of those love-it-or-hate-it kinds of books."

I rate books with stars, but it's a system meant only for me. I tend to compare categories/genres of books or compare books by one author to each other. For instance, I would rate Austen's Mansfield Park a 4 star but that is in relation to her other books. In truth, I love it as much or more than other author's 5 star reads. If I read a stand out mystery or what I consider to be "pop" fiction, I might rate it 5 stars though that doesn't mean it would actually stand up to a Germinal or Anna Karenina!

Because I know how personal my own star system is, I don't put much stock in anyone else's. I don't really look at star ratings when looking up books on LT, either. I generally scroll through all the reviews and look for reviews by people who's reading I know from their LT thread. After being around here for 6 years, I feel like I "know" a lot of readers.

I use stars to rate books as I read them. I score on a typical bell curve (majority are rated 3), slightly skewed to the right because I rarely finish the books that would be rated 1.

As most of you have said, my ratings are really for me. 3 means I liked it, 4 means I really liked it, and 5 means it was fantastic. I rarely give 1 or 2 stars because my dislike of a book might not be fair. It might just not have been my cup of tea. For those I don't give any stars. I do use 1/2 stars if a book falls somewhere between numbers. I do look at the stars others give more as a guide. There are certain people who seem to have very similar tastes, and usually I can gauge whether I will like something based upon their ratings.

Question 12
I think question 12 about star rating is based on the discussion from my thread so I won't answer it too thoroughly. Only going to mention that I tend to rate as a visual cue in my LT library as it makes it easier to see what I've already read (stars) and what I haven't (no stars). Also, now I find myself rating within genres and within an author's body of work (ie. Nothomb, Hugo) instead of trying to compare across several genres, time periods, etc.

Question 11
This year is the most I've read in a long time. I've already read double (the amount of books, not pages) what I read during all of last year and page-count wise, I'm already ahead. This is due to the fact that I've been working as a substitute teacher so I have a lot of free periods where I have nothing to do but read (since in some of these schools I don't have access to a computer). Once the semester ends in a few weeks and I'm out of work due to summer vacation, I'm guessing I'll be going back to my slower reading pace.

I have no reading goals and this year I'm not even trying to pretend that I'm participating in any group reads. Every once in a while I vote in group reading nominations but I only nominate/vote for books I've already read 'cause I'm just interested in reading the opinions others have of the books I've read. Yes, that's my evil master plan to make others read what I read. :P

In any case, I'm really happy with the reading I've done so far. It follows the general pattern I tend to follow (primarily French and Japanese literature) but with a few random surprises and older books from my TBR pile popping in.

Otherwise, I continue to read as I enjoy without taking into consideration what others might want me to read. Which means that I enjoy reading all those lists of book you should/must read but I never actually follow their suggestions. Just need to look at.

And since I have time to answer Question 10.

I've never had to build my library from scratch so I can't recount any stories based off of that. Instead I can think about what I'd do if my library were destroyed.

In all honesty, I wouldn't really care all that much if I lost all my books in a fire as all my books are replaceable. But I would definitely feel annoyance at replacing the books as I hate buying things twice. I could see myself not replacing the books I've read and only replacing my TBR pile. I would be most frustrated about having to replace my French and Japanese books as those books were all collected from my various trips there. Would hate to think of all that effort that went into that just to lose it all.

But really, eh. Annoyance is only a minor triviality.

Really interesting discussion of ratings (and no, it was someone else's thread, not yours, >40 lilisin:>. I am very ambivalent about ratings. On the one hand, I can't figure out how to compare very different books and I feel average ratings for books are meaningless because everyone uses very different systems. On the other hand, if someone whose review I'm reading gives a book four or five stars, I do take notice. In the end, though, more depends on the review itself, and my knowledge of the person writing the review.

This question is based on ones suggested by avaland (Lois) and fannyprice (Kris).

QUESTION 13.

Do you read more or less now than you did previously, or have you always read consistently at the same level throughout your life. What factors have played a role in any changes in how much you are reading? Has the type of book you read changed over your life? And have you ever felt you've overdosed on reading and have become sick of it?

Do you read more or less now than you did previously, or have you always read consistently at the same level throughout your life.

I really started reading on a regular basis when I started university. Before that I read the occasional book but nothing much. After a few years on LT I started doing the '25 in 20xx Challenge' and I read about 25 books a year now. I try to read more books every year and sort of beat my own reading record but the numbers are always somewhere around 25.

What factors have played a role in any changes in how much you are reading?

I guess the most important factor that made me read more was a professor at university. She was really encouraging students to read more and I signed up for each of her lecture courses because I loved her fascination with literature. She was/is definitely the driving force behind my reading career.

Has the type of book you read changed over your life?

Not really. I always loved a mixture of light reads and pop fiction and Literature (with a captital L).

And have you ever felt you've overdosed on reading and have become sick of it?

Never. I might be fed up with a certain book at times, but never with reading in general. I can't overdose on that.

Interestingly enough, LT really made me realize how little I read. And that's not even comparing myself to other readers on LT; that's just comparing myself to my own expectations of what I thought I read. I'm considered a big reader amongst my friends but when it comes down to total numbers, I've only been reading about 13 books a year. Maybe it seemed like I was a significant reader since I tend to read significant books and then I love talking about them. But I really thought I was clearing more books from my shelves.

This year, as I mentioned in 40, I've been reading more only because I've been working as a substitute teacher and so I have a lot of breaks where I can read (although these past two weeks I've been teaching at a school where I have a friend so I've been using my breaks as social hour with her). Once this job is over though I'm sure I'll go back to my one book per month pace.

In terms of how my reading has changed, it hasn't changed in terms of quality but before I was a lot more well read on a global basis while now I focus primarily on French and Japanese literature and I don't see those things changing anytime soon. However, I do put in a random work from another country every once in a while so as to not burn out.

Sometimes I might feel like I've overdosed but that's because when I find a good reading groove I try to keep it flaming as long as possible (mixed metaphor, I know) to make up for the upcoming long pause I know is coming.

In any case, when I read I enjoy it, when I don't read, I try not to dwell on that and instead I enjoy whatever is the thing that is taking the place of reading for the moment. (Like the tv show Vikings. Such an amazing show!)

I've always been a "reader". My mom says even as a little kid I always had a book with me and would stay up late reading. The only time I didn't avidly read was during college and my masters. I was still reading, but only about 20 books a year.

My reading tastes have been remarkably consistent. I love british and american classics and mysteries for light reading. Since joining LT in 2008, I have broadened my reading horizons with books from more countries and with quality current authors (something I had trouble finding before). I also read a lot more - about 75 books a year.

I may go through the occasional reading slump, but that is very rare these days and can usually be easily remedied with a few light mysteries or a Jane Austen reread.

I've definitely always been a reader, but there have been some fluctuations in how much. My first three years of high school I read a lot less, outside school reading. I think it was largely because I was at boarding school. For the first time in my life there wasn't a set weekly trip to the library, and I also lived with my friends versus mainly just seeing them during the school day. My senior year I got back into always having a non-class book to read.

After I got a chronic illness I briefly read less, as paper books were painful to hold and I was still in college and then still trying to work, so my arms went to that. Once I couldn't work at all my reading picked up a lot, partly through audiobooks and book-holders and finding book-holding tricks of my own.

I did have a year where I felt burnt out on reading, because I was reading too many mediocre-fiction books, things that were fine but not what I loved. I cut back the year after, but then realized that if I just read more non-fiction again I could read way more and not feel burnt out at all. It's funny because when I was a kid I read tons of non-fiction, but then after the reading gap in high school I'd started reading mainly fiction, and working at the bookstore I focused on fiction because that's what most of our customers wanted recommendations for.

It just took a little bit to remember the reading habits I liked best, once I was free to read anything. I wonder if that doesn't happen to a lot of adults, that kind of rut.

Do you read more or less now than you did previously, or have you always read consistently at the same level throughout your life. What factors have played a role in any changes in how much you are reading? Has the type of book you read changed over your life? And have you ever felt you've overdosed on reading and have become sick of it?

I read more now than I used to. I had a few relatively big years about 10 years ago, but besides that and when I was a kid, I probably only read 10-20 books a year at a maximum. And when my kids were babies, I probably read no more than one or two books a year. When I was in high school, I read a lot of genre fiction, mysteries, horror and fantasy. Now I don't really read much of that at all. I don't know that I've overdosed on reading, except in the sense of times when I don't have anything else to do and I'm kind of tired of it after a while.

Do you read more or less now than you did previously, or have you always read consistently at the same level throughout your life. What factors have played a role in any changes in how much you are reading?

Reading and related activities (like Club Read) fill up pretty much all of my time that isn't devoted to necessary activities like eating, sleeping, chores, etc. I read more now than ever simply because I'm retired and no longer have to spend 10 hours a day commuting and working. But there has never been a time in my life since I was a kid that reading wasn't my principal and favorite leisure activity.

Has the type of book you read changed over your life?

Yes, I've gone through several phases. As a teenager I read probably equal proportions of literature, history, science and science fiction. As life got busier it became mostly just science fiction for a while. Then I became really interested in the American Civil War, and read nothing but that for about fifteen years. Finally, around 1999, I got tired of learning more and more about less and less, and literature became my chief interest with some history, philosophy and genre fiction mixed in.

And have you ever felt you've overdosed on reading and have become sick of it?

No, I've never been sick of reading. There are times when I've gone through reading slumps because of distractions that kept me from concentrating, but I've always wanted to read even when I couldn't. Sometimes if I can't focus on what I want to read, I'll just pick up something totally different.

Q13

As a kid, I absolutely loved reading - devoured book after book in quick succession, sometimes more than one a day. That lasted through high school. I still read a lot in university, but it started feeling like work, effort. As a result, I went through a few years after uni where I still read, but significantly less. Then I started teaching, and that rekindled the love. It started with wanting to be a good role model and turned back into a genuine enthusiasm which I tried to bring into the classroom. It also got me reading YA and graphic novels (read to know whether to recommend...), which I've kept doing even though I don't teach anymore. Plus, having summers free (and a spouse who didn't have those long stretches off) meant having chunks of time to devote to reading. I've eased off a bit again from a couple of those summers, but still really enjoy reading. Now I find it goes in waves based on the book-du-jour, mood, time, getting sucked into other activities, etc.

In terms of changing tastes, I genuinely enjoyed most of my school and uni reading - all those classics and essays and such - but I don't think I have as much patience and concentration for that nowadays. I also want to keep enjoying books, and don't want to slog through something just because.... I don't think my tastes have changed much, but I skew much more heavily to sci fi, alternate reality, and modern lit than I probably used to (or at least there's less of a balance than in the past). I don't want to feel overloaded again, so I go for what I think I'll enjoy.

I read as a kid, taking after my mum who always had a book on the go. In my teens apart from the obligatory school literature books I read science fiction and fantasy, before developing a taste for modern literature. I am one of those people who can get heavily involved in a new craze or fad or interest or whatever else you might like to call it and then my reading suffers. Therefore when I became interested in photography and started making my own prints this took up much of my free time, computer games also resulted in less reading.

I have tended to read more when I have been in a settled relationship, but I have never become sick of reading. I still feel a little thrill of anticipation when I think about the next book I shall read. I am not a quick reader and so the act of reading takes up a lot of time. Fortunately I have never had a job that has taken up an inordinate amount of time and now I am retired I have more time than ever for reading.

I read a lot as a child, which tapered off to mostly academic reading at university and then to almost nothing during my twenties, but picked up again in my thirties as the relentless partying tapered off (joke!). When I first moved to France for a year, and later on to Germany, English language books were expensive - roughly twice the cover price - and not widely available. I began choosing books based on size, reading books like Foucault's Pendulum and A Suitable Boy. That changed with amazon.de and then moving back to the US, where there are ways to cheaply acquire books. I may have gone a little nuts with the TBR in those first years back in the US!

LT has exploded my reading choices. Beforehand, I chose my books based on what was available, the NYT Book Review and size, giving me some very bad (and long) books over the years. I still love the big ones, but now appreciate the small gems. I don't know how much my reading has fluctuated over time, number-wise, as I never kept track until LT. In the past six years, it's been fairly steady, with a mix of the frivolous, the mid-list, classics and the many recommendations based on mentions in Club Read. The biggest change may be simply that my reading is more varied. More books by women and writers from countries other than the US and the UK.

I didn't read as a kid, not for leisure and not if I didn't have to. Although I had some quirks. I was told to read The Old Man and the Sea and I did on a long bus ride to summer camp. And I was fascinated with our multi-volume, bookshelf long set of Encyclopedia Britannica. This was pre-internet and there was a lot of information there. Once I picked up volume A and started reading from the first page. As a high school sophomore my English teacher offered us extra credit if we read a thousand pages a quarter from her book shelf. I read my 4000 pages the first quarter and stopped reading again, and that was most of my reading up till then and even two years later.

Once I did start reading, it was first mostly fantasy and later mostly nonfiction. My eventual wife got me reading a little bit of fiction. I started my work life with an unfinished master's thesis and had that hanging over my head on every word I read from late 1998 until I finally finished in late 2004. Then, finally, my reading kicked off and included a variety of things, then I found LT and then I found Club Read, which drove my reading toward "literary fiction" and later, care of Le Salon, into trying to read deeper. Numbers have more or less increased every year since 2004.

I have moods where books are anathema, but don't think I ever felt I have overdosed. I never read enough. I'm still trying to make up for all those adolescent years I didn't read..

Books have been at the center of my life since I first learned how to read. But unfortunately, as an adult I have allowed life to interfere with reading from time to time, so there have been wild gyrations in the amount I have read in a given year. Before retiring, I worked as a technical/business writer and did a lot of research-related reading, which encroached on the time spent reading in leisure time. Last year was a particularly sparse year because of moving house, but that was an aberration. I have always read a lot of nonfiction, and now I am trying consciously to read more fiction, but I am still quite picky about what I read. I can honestly say I have never overdosed. That would be impossible!

I've been an avid reader since I began to read. I probably read less for pleasure when I was in college, though, and I've gone through phases when I've been too busy to read a lot. However, one of the advantages of traveling by subway is that I could always read on my way to and from work. As for types of books, I've gone through a few phases. For example, I read a lot of contemporary and 20th century women writers in my 20s and early 30s, and I read a lot of mysteries in my teens into my 40s (I've recently started up again, although not as obsessively as earlier). I definitely feel that especially since I discovered LT I've been trying to read more broadly and globally than I did before.

This question was suggested by Kris/fannyprice

QUESTION 14.

In addition to LT, what are your sources for finding out about new books? What book blogs, newspapers, newsletters, etc., do you read and recommend?

I'd love to hear everyone's responses to this as I've gotten very lazy about looking for book reviews anywhere but here. I still check in with the Washington Post book review when I remember and I occasionally look at the Guardian's book page. I also like all the "best of" lists that you find around at the end of the year. This year I found out about The Morning News website that does a tournament of books in March during the college basketball tournament. That introduced me to several books I hadn't heard of as well.

All my life I was spoiled when it came to book browsing. My dad was a librarian so I spent hours in his libraries (and my mom took me to the larger library in a nearby city every week, without fail, from 3rd through 8th grade) and then I worked in a bookstore. It was so hard trying to only browse online after I got sick.

I like BookRiot, and it's worth copying all my reading to Goodreads just for their "New Books by Authors You've Read" e-mails. I mainly rely on LibraryThing though.

Given how long my TBR list is with me being totally lazy, I don't want to know what it would be like if I actually paid attention to new releases and followed a lot of book blogs.

I get the London Review of books, but I have 4 years worth still in their plastic covers in my drawer, so I guess I don't read too many reviews outside those posted on the net.

I use the net to research books on certain topics and read the reviews as I come across them

I tend to read mostly older books, so other than reading reviews in Club Read, I haven't made an effort to keep up with new books. I don't follow any blogs, newspapers, or other resources than LibraryThing.

Bibliographies and footnotes in books I am reading are a major source of books for me. And like Barry, I find books in the course of researching on the web. Here on LT I am an avid reader of the Hot Reviews and once in a while I pick up a suggestion there. Of course, I get lots of ideas from you all here in Club Read. And once in a while I read a book recommended by a friend. Amazon also surprises me once in a while with a really good and apt suggestion.

"Bibliographies and footnotes" - yes! But that only works for nonfiction.

Before LT I used The New York Times Sunday Book Review, which always had one major new work listed on the cover and the reviews were generally of more important new works. But I felt that section got much worse several years ago, and what I'm looking for in a review has changed. I would like a replacement.

The Feedly app is nice, though. I think I search simply "literature".

While Im here at work I have taken a fancy to watching Book Tubers videos on youtube, most are reading YA but there are a few that actually have more adult fiction habits and I have to admit I have gotten some might fine suggestions now I just need the time to read.

I used to use The New York Times and The Guardian book reviews, but not with any consistency, and that's fallen off lately. The NPR year-end best-of lists are great for building up the wishlist. LT & Club Read have tipped me to a few books that I might otherwise have gone past. But for all of that, it often comes down to what's available &/or looks interesting at the library or in a bookstore.

My biggest source of ideas has probably become LT, and especially Club Read and Reading Globally. But a close runner up is browsing in the bookstore, especially a couple of my favorites which have displays of new titles. I used to read the New York Times Book Review, but now I barely skim it, and I do find some books of interest in the New York Review of Books when I manage to read it. I've also read articles in The New Yorker that then lead me to buy books by the authors. In a more modern vein, I get e-mail from several publishers like NYRB and Archipelago, and every now and then check some translation web sites too.

This question was spurred by a brief discussion on my thread.

QUESTION 15.

Do you ever reread books? Why or why not? If you do, which books do you reread and why?

Yes at times I do and will re-read some of my all time favorites. I have read Gone With the Wind so many times I cant count because when I was a kid every year when the movie would come on tv I would follow along in the book. I have read Roots several times. And this year I have re-read Sense and Sensibilty and Pride and Prejudice since I have a new understanding of Austen and love them this time around. I now I have several on my shelves that I plan on re-reading at some point. War and Peace, Les Miserables, Hunchback of Notre Dame and a few others.

I re-read Atlas Shrugged until my paperback copy fell apart. I frequently re-read mysteries (Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout).

My book club has just chosen to read Lolita and so that will be an enforced re-read for me.

It is difficult to consider re-reading when there are so many great books out there that I haven't read yet, however whenever I do embark on a re-read I usually really enjoy the experience. There is something about crossing books off that imaginary list in your head of all the books you want to read and re-reads does not do that for you.

My all time favourite author is D H Lawrence and I have read most of his books a number of times and hope to continue to do so. Jane Austen too is another author whom I know I will enjoy re-reading.

In another group we are listing our hundred favourite books and I think it would not be too bad if that was the only books I was allowed to read. Lolita is not on that list, but it may be after a re-read. My excuse is I am still trying to find my hundred favourite books.

I am coming to the conclusion that rereading is important to me. I've always reread favorites (Austen, Middlemarch, Gone with the Wind, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, etc.) but I think I'm going to make an effort each year to reread 4-6 books. Some of these will be favorites that I just want to re-experience and some are books that I didn't quite get the first time (Eco springs to mind here - it took me two tries with Name of the Rose, Baudolino, and Foucault's Pendulum before I could even decipher the plot but I love the challenge!).

One reason that rereading is important to me is that I have a terrible memory! If I read a book once, I generally only remember a major theme or how I felt reading it - impressions only. If I read a book twice I remember the plot and characters, more minutia of themes, setting, etc. It seems to take 3 readings for me to retain a book long term where I could have a meaningful discussion at any point distant from reading the book. There are obviously exceptions - some books make a big impression, but even books I consider favorites need a reread to get locked in my brain.

I often hear the argument that there are too many books to take the time to reread. Part of me agrees with this and I've certainly said it myself. But I'm starting to think that a deeper knowledge of fewer books is more worthy to me personally than a broad but shallow knowledge. People who have the benefit of a better memory than me probably won't agree. Or maybe I just read too fast sometimes and not closely enough?

In the end, rereading 4-6 books out of the 70 or so that I typically read in a year should allow me to meet both goals of reading a wide berth of books and knowing some really well.

I love to reread books and always have. In middle school I checked the same 20 or so books out of the library every month (in addition to new books) to reread for literally three years. I wanted to make those books a permanent part of mind or I wanted to live in their pages again and again. When the library discarded some books I'd been checking out every month for so long I almost cried. I was so upset.

When I go to bed I always have an audiobook playing, something I've read a million times so it doesn't matter when I fall asleep, like the Discworld books or Donald E. Westlake's Dortmunder series. I did that when I was a kid too. After so many nights falling asleep to my dad telling stories, it's very comforting.

I reread as much as I can. Having a higher reading goal this year makes it harder, as I only count books I'm reading for the first time towards my total. I'm considering trying to reach my goal early so I can spent all of December just in rereads. I really want to reread all of Lindsey Davis' books, as well as the Nero Wolfe mysteries and some favorite non-fiction books.

I have a category in my 2014 Category Challenge called "Do it again, Lois", with the intent to re-read 7 favorites. To date, they've all been mysteries, but I also have To Kill A Mockingbird and The Cider House Rules planned.

My answer is about the same as baswood's above. As an adult I did virtually no re-reading until a few years ago when I joined a reading group and re-read a few classics like War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and Lolita so I could read them with the group. More recently I've returned to some of my old favorites from my youth such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth and War of the Worlds.

There are some books that scream to be reread. After finishing Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, I immediately went back to page one and started reading it again. Then there are perennial favorites like Pride and Prejudice and Foucault's Pendulum that are fun to reread.

There are certain circumstances where rereading is actually helpful. For example, I am trying to keep what little I know of French alive and at the same time expand my vocabulary. To that end I am currently reading a simplified version of Maigret et le fantôme. My technique is to start from the beginning and reread everything up to where I left off and continue forward for a few pages. I read it all out loud. It seems that this mimics the way I learned to read English way back in the first grade. Every repeat cements in my mind the vocabulary, the syntax, the pronunciation and the flow of language. It seems to be quite effective, but it does explain why it is taking me so long to finish!

And in recent years I have reread some classics that I first read during childhood. After the passage of many decades, rereading was incredibly rewarding. Tarzan, Ivanhoe and Moby Dick come to mind. Earlier this year I reread The Alexandria Quartet which I had read initially in my twenties. It was like a brand new reading experience. I think I was too young to appreciate it the first time around.

So, in short, rereading definitely has its place. One gets so much more out of a book the second time around.

To date, only very, very rarely.

When I taught English, I reread those books each year; not that it ever takes much arm twisting to get me to read Of Mice and Men, which I've read multiple times each a) as a student, b) just because, and c) for teaching.

I have the best of intentions, but overall figure there are so many other books out there that I want to read that I don't have time to be rereading others. That said, I agree with LoisB - I'd love to reread To Kill a Mockingbird. That, and maybe some Thomas Hardy.

Imagine meeting a wonderful person and only going out with him/her once. That to me is what never rereading a wonderful book would be like. I reread until particular books become old friends, someone you can just relax and curl up with, knowing there will be challenges ahead but anticipating them with delight. Most of the books I reread are classics, but there are others like the above mentioned Gone with the Wind which offer escape when the world intrudes, as do Kidnapped and others of that ilk.

A well written book, classic or otherwise, should never go stale and should always offer something new. Then there are those new books you finish and immediately start again from the beginning. I don't regret time spent rereading, whereas I do sometimes regret reading a new book.

I've reread books over the years for a variety of reasons. With some, like Anna Karenina, which I reread in my late 40s after reading it as a teenager, I had a completely different reaction reading them later in life. (On the other hand, I still didn't like Madame Bovary -- the book or the character.) I've read War and Peace three times: as a teenager, skipping the war parts; in my 40s, as a way of entering a different world when my father had to undergo surgery; and in my 50s when the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation came out. I came to appreciate the war parts more than the peace parts! Another book I reread after 40+ years -- and had a different reaction to -- was To Kill a Mockingbird; I reread it because I read a critical article about it in The New Yorker and thought I owed it to myselef to reread it.

I also reread books as comfort reads, for example, Cold Comfort Farm and The Straight and Narrow Path. I could see reading The Count of Monte Cristo and We Have Always Lived in the Castle again for the same reason.

I am impressed by Sassy Lassy's point in >76 SassyLassy: about books becoming old friends (as well as everybody else's love of rereading), but I am overwhelmed by my TBR and the books I keep finding in bookstores and I tend, probably to my loss, to think "too many books, too little time".

On re-reading (question 15) - I have really enjoyed every book I've re-read, and sometimes much more that the first time I read them. But still, unfortunately, I rarely convince myself re-read. I see it a big time commitment.

>71 mabith: this makes me think about picking audio books that I have read before. Maybe I could start listening to fiction that way...

As for summer reading - I don't get a summer break and I don't look forward to a Houston summers. Summer is more of the same for me.

>79 dchaikin: it's a great way to reread! A good audio reader can also bring out different aspects or strengths of a book. It doesn't even have to take time away from print reading. I always have an audiobook going when I'm doing anything in the kitchen or doing light cleaning, or when I'm doing any crafting.

My summer reading is being curtailed by the World Cup. It will be a little better next week and instead of three games at three different times they'll be showing four games at two different times, but last week was rough. I can't really go out of the house much in the summer. The heat and humidity exacerbate one of my chronic pain conditions, so I should read more but then I'm down about being stuck inside so maybe I read less. Going through my records it looks like I do read more in the summer, especially in the first month that it gets really hot on a regular basis (barring this year obviously).

My plan is to break out the books about polar exploration soon in an attempt to keep cool.

#16

I'll just echo what Dan and Meredith said. The season doesn't influence my reading choices, and between the heat and my health I won't be spending much time out of doors. But the World Cup has certainly and unexpectedly cut back my reading and online time. I've spent more time in front of the television in the last week than in the preceding year.

Do you ever reread books? Why or why not? If you do, which books do you reread and why?

It's not often that I do re-read a book, but it has happened. I read The Book Thief at least 3 times: once to simply get it read for our book club meeting; the second time was to just sit back and enjoy Zusak's unique writing; and the third time, after it had been a while, was to go back and see if it would make a good gift for someone else. Not too long ago, I re-read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom to see how I would feel about the story as a grown up since I had read it as a young teen. Right now, I have a copy of Alice in Wonderland on my "classic shelf" that I want to read soon since the first time I read it I was taking an English Literature Class and had to try to Find The Deeper Meaning so I could write a paper on it. The next time will be for sheer enjoyment.

Today is the first day of summer (at least in the northern hemisphere). Do you read differently over the summer? For example, do you choose lighter books to capture the summer vacation feel? Or do you read longer books because you have more time? Or something else? What are your 2014 summer reading plans?

I tend to read more humorous, light-hearted stuff in the summer, but I don't do it intentionally. It just seems to work out that way. My scientific approach to my reading is is to read whatever I'm in the mood for at that time.

Q 15 - I reread a few books a year but tend not to reread only because I have a massive TBR pile. I learned at university though, when I reread a book, it was very different the second time through. I actually plan on rereading more because it can be such a rich experience.

Q 16 I definitely have summer reading and winter reading. Henry James and Virginia Woolf in summer, Dickens and Brontes in winter.

I live in Florida, so it's "summer" here about 9 months of the year. No, I don't vary my reading by season.

To be honest, I've never felt like I quite understood the whole concept of "summer reading." What, exactly, makes something a "summer read," or why and how one's reading ought to change with the seasons has never been entirely clear to me, although it's something that has always seemed to be so self-evident to everybody else that I've never quite been willing to ask about it. So, no, I don't read differently in the summer. Not in general, anyway. This summer is different, though, since I'm spending a good, long chunk of it sitting at home, taking it easy while recovering from surgery, and reading like crazy. That's definitely affecting my choice of books, which have included several thick, unhurried, careful-attention-requiring books that I'd been putting off for ages.

I also always find it kind of amusing to hear Jun. 21st referred to as "the first day of summer." It may be the summer solstice, but by the time you start getting triple-digit temperatures, as we do here in New Mexico by early June, surely no sane person is going to point to a calendar and insist it's still not summer yet!

I don't think of summer by the temperature or the calendar but by the opportunity I have to do a different kind of reading. That's because during the rest of the year I tend to be really busy and can only read books a little at a time, and I also have to consider most of them "subway reads," which means they have to be easily portable. Over the summer, I am more able to devote chunks of time to reading at home, which means I can read bigger books. Or, as >85 bragan: said "thick, unhurried, careful-attention-requiring books that I'd been putting off for ages".

So, I try to think of a "big book" (either lengthwise or complexity-wise or both) to make my summer reading project. One year I read Citizens by Simon Schama; last year I read Kristin Lavransdatter. So far, I haven't picked my summer reading project for this year, but I hope to do so soon. In anticipation, I spent a little time reorganizing my TBR shelves last weekend, so I now have a better sense of books to choose from . . .

My summer reading tends to be as erratic as my reading at other times of the year, with the exception of reading a small stack of "sure things" which are accumulated through the year for when we travel. A trip involving airports and long flights with a good book (and a backup or three) is enjoyable. Without a diverting book, it's misery. So I bring three. Or three for every four hours of air travel, and an extra just in case.

I guess the thought of summer reading being different from the rest of the year assumes that many people have significant time off in the summer. For me, it's the opposite. Summer is my most stressful and physically exhausting time of the year. I think that the type of book I read generally stays the same, but my pace often slows.

I guess the thought of summer reading being different from the rest of the year assumes that many people have significant time off in the summer

I suppose many think that. What you describe is what I call vacation reading. To me summer reading means that I will read in different places than I do in winter, and will be in a different mood.

I prefer used bookstores, in part because I've not got much money to spare but also I like books having previous lives before I touch them. However, my city hasn't had a decent used bookstore in over a decade, and the ones that open up sporadically aren't run well (they don't seem to know how to create a varied stock and end up being almost entirely mass market romances and thrillers).

I buy used books through Amazon, as that's what's been easiest for me, which supports other people and business as well anyway. For new books I have my local indie store that my sister and I used to manage (though the current manager is not doing a good job at all, sigh).

There are no English book shops anywhere near where I live and so I have to buy on line. I don't avoid amazon, but it is not my first port of call. I usually buy from abe books (yes I know they are in the amazon umbrella), but I like the service they provide, especially as some of the books I want are not the most popular.

I have mentioned on these threads before; the English bookswop that takes place annually in my part of the world and coincidently it took place today. It does not matter how many books you take to swop you can walk away with as many as you can load into your car. This year it was bigger than ever with over 7000 books to choose from. I came away with far too many to list here.

Lately, I buy most of my books at the quarterly library book sales in my town. I've found some really great books there in good quality and they are very inexpensive. I donate lots of books back as well. I also check out books from the library regularly, both regular books and e-books.

I sometimes buy books when traveling if I find an interesting book store. In my immediate area, there aren't any independent bookstores. I buy almost all new books on amazon. I know all the "evil empire" stuff, but the prices are good, shipping is fast, and I have a kindle for e-books. I also buy some books on ebay to add to my collectibles (viragos, Easton press, and Folio Society).

My favorite place to buy books is at the "Friends of the Library" book sales. I am a big fan of supporting the library(ies). All three of the libraries I visit have a designated room where you can buy used books all year round for pennies (50cents for a paperback/$1 for a hard cover usually). It seems, though, that the really good stuff doesn't show up until the big designated "$2 a bag" sales that happen a few times a year.

I certainly miss the Book Warehouse store that was out here; I have quite the collection from that place. I don't avoid buying books from Amazon; some specific titles I wanted could only be found there.

I'd be in trouble if I could actually browse our library book sale, but it's not wheelchair accessible at all. I want to yell at them about it and help them fix that, but fear the number of books I'd bring home if I could actually go.

Before the move to Germany, my books primarily came from book trading sites (BookMooch, PBS) and book sales -- the local Friends of the Library has begun selling books one morning a month, in addition to their twice yearly sales. And there's an enormous yearly book sale in August, etc…So mostly book sales, but also the local B&N. We had an independent book store that closed down. There is one more, but their focus is books I'm not interested in (pleasant women's fiction and cozy mysteries).

Now, in Germany, I have brought my book buying under control. I do wander through the English language section of the local big bookstore (Hugendubel) and pick up a book here and there, and place an occasional order through the Book Depository. It has helped my TBR to be not shopping from amazon!

I do miss the rooting through stacks of old books and finding that one book that I put on my wish list years ago, or the odd book someone reviewed the previous week. I miss the hunt.

Oh, and when I'm anywhere with a good independent, I do buy a few more books that strictly necessary (again, "few" is dependent on one's definition, but general consensus says 8-12, right?). We'll be at the beach in a few weeks and the Edisto Bookshop is a good one - they even have a cat (not for sale).

Most of the books in my collection have come from HalfPriceBooks, a large used book chain which has half a dozen stores within a few miles of my house. For harder-to-find items I have shopped at Amazon, buying used books more often than not. This year, however, I have sharply curtailed my book purchases because of limited space, and those that I have bought have been e-books, all from Amazon.

I definitely prefer looking for books in a bookstore, as there's always the thrill of finding that book you've been looking for forever, or finding something completely new, which would never be found online. Searching for new bookstores and revisiting known bookstores is always a huge part of our travels and routes are planned around these visits. My community does not have a book store, in fact the whole county has only one that I can think of offhand, so out of town destinations are the source of plunder. My favourite stores are in Vermont, which also has great small libraries. Luckily for my wallet, unluckily for me, I only get there once a year or so.

I do buy online, from book depository, abe, chapters-indigo, and even from the dreaded amazon, but try to stay away from it as it is too easy. I don't like buying online, but my rationalization is usually that winter is long and I don't get anywhere for about seven months of the year. In good weather I avoid online buying altogether.

I also get books through a subscription to And Other Stories.

Q 17 -- I'm finding the answers to this question especially interesting. Over the past six or seven years I've amassed a huge pile of books, so I really need to stop buying books (I have a small house that I have to share with other people). This year I've only brought 25 new books in to the house, which is very restrained of me. For now I am only buying books from actual bookstores, and I mostly visit bookstores when I travel. Although the Vancouver area has a population of 2 million people, we have almost no bookstores (except the big boring chain--Chapters). I sometimes buy books at charity shops or Value Village.

In the past I managed to build my large TBR through:

- A massive book sale at my daughter's school. One of the parents is in the book business and would regularly donate 10,000 brand new books. Wide selection, and I could always find some Booker nominees and CanLit. The last few sales I filled up my car for $20.

- I used to order a lot from the Book Depository and Amazon. I LOVE getting books delivered to my door, and sometimes they were the only source for some of the more unusual books on my wishlist. Also, I find it difficult to pay $20 at a bookstore when I know I can buy it online for $14. That said, if I'm on holidays or the store is a quality independent, I will pay the $20. But I usually won't pay it if I'm just at a big box chain store. This year I've managed to stop my online buying though. I miss the giddy joy of books-at-my-door, but I really need to work on the ones I already have.

- generous friends-- many people have passed books on to me. I think I am a book magnet.

My first choice would certainly be to shop in book shops, particularly the kind I used to frequent in San Francisco. There were five that I could drop into on my way home from work — some used, one new and a tremendous store devoted to remainders! But those days are gone, as are some of my favorite shops.

Las Vegas is a different matter. Aside from Barnes & Noble, there isn't much. There was a used book store that I used to frequent, but it went out of business. This is not a bookish town. So most of my buying is on line at Amazon and ABE books.

Ah, remainders, the heroin of the book buyer. "It's new! This great art book! For $5!!"

>101 mabith: Yup!

My favorite source for buying books is anywhere that will sell them to me, because I am a pathetic junkie like that.

I buy my books from the French bookstore, FNAC, when I'm in France, and from the used bookstore, BookOff, when I'm in Japan. Last time I bought books in English was when I had some Japanese books in translation that I wanted to buy so when I was in San Francisco I went to Kinokuniya there to buy the books I wanted.

However, I have so many books on my TBR pile that I want to read that I have just stopped buying books. So far this year I have only acquired one and that was given to me. I've stopped for several reasons:

1) I used to hoard French and Japanese books because I never knew when I'd get to go back. Now I realize that I go back often enough to where I don't have to worry.
2) That, or I know someone going and I just get them to pick up what I want.
3) I realize I read more when I have less options to choose from so it's best that I dwindle the TBR pile so I feel more encouraged to read.

This year, up until May, I was already at 18 books off the TBR pile which both beats my yearly average of read books and means I've taken some serious contenders off the pile. Since May I've been reading lots of Japanese comics and I finally got that TBR pile under 100! Plus I've been much more inspired to keep reading from the books I already have.

So, I ended up answering this question and inadvertently, the question in post 48.

Question 13: Do you read more or less now than you did previously, or have you always read consistently at the same level throughout your life. What factors have played a role in any changes in how much you are reading? Has the type of book you read changed over your life? And have you ever felt you've overdosed on reading and have become sick of it?

A *long* time since this question was asked, but nevertheless: My Club Read stats are the only solid evidence I have to go on, and they tell me that in each year since 2009, I have read one book a week, or just a fraction more - although some months are well under, and some well over, this average.

My recollection, which may be wrong, is that I read a lot more than this during my teens and twenties, when I had fewer responsibilities (and the Internet was little more than a gleam in DARPA's eye).

My reading patterns have certainly changed. My fiction reading used to be about 90% SF, 15% Russian literature (with Russian SF accounting for the overlap). Both those still form part of my reading, but a much smaller part - in fact, I think I'm about due a Russian novel or two.

Question 16: Today is the first day of summer (at least in the northern hemisphere). Do you read differently over the summer? For example, do you choose lighter books to capture the summer vacation feel? Or do you read longer books because you have more time? Or something else? What are your 2014 summer reading plans?

Here in New Zealand, we're in the depths of winter - it's been a mild and relatively dry winter so far, but the forecast for the coming week is set to make House Stark more confident of their house words.

But I am more ambitious in my reading plans when on holiday (summer or otherwise). It doesn't necessarily have any impact on the length of books I read, but is when, having more free attention, I feel prepared to tackle books that require some serious thought and attention - whether that's books about science, or "difficult" poetry or novels. Mind you, I'm always happy to throw in a few thrillers, sport and music bios etc - though having said that, the best book I have read so far this year, just overtopping Cloud Atlas, is a musician's memoir, Viv Albertine's Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

Q17

>103 bragan:: I hear you!

Bookstores new or used, big or small, charity shop or not, and online. That said, I'm on a budget-saving library kick these days. It helps when the TBR pile doesn't inspire (I'm starting to think there's a reason some of those books have been left unread for so long. The mood just may not strike).

Like many, I love to browse in bookstores and am extremely fortunate to live in New York City which still has a number of wonderful independent bookstores. I make a lot of great finds on their display tables. I also have a subscription to Open Letter (and previously had one to Archipelago). I do buy books online too, but I try to resist mindless clicking and look for the books I'm interested in (largely from learning about them here on LT) in bookstores first. I keep a wishlist on Amazon so I can check it when I'm in bookstores, but I do more than occasionally succumb and add books to my cart! I also check prices on Book Depository, especially if the book I'm looking for is British, and I buy used books from ABE Books.

Books That Everybody Has Read So It's As If You Read Them Too

I need to learn to put more books in this category! I read Gone Girl because "everybody" was reading it - didn't like it at all. I started 50 Shades of Gray for the same reason, but abandoned it midway through the first volume!

I have probably bought to many from his books that you can skip category...what a great category.

Lately when I was looking through books stores, I was looking for something new that struck my curiosity. I think we all have our own reasons for buying and reading the books we do, and, of course, we often aren't fully aware of why. It's not always reasoned and what does motivate us isn't always something in, or that can be in, our conscious reasoning. There could, I'm sure, be a field dedicated to the psychology of deciding what to read, and another field dedicated to psychology of book buying. that said, I think Calvino's five categories of books that capture you, are merely five out of a multitude.

Oh, both lists were much longer, Dan, but I couldn't quote them all in my review, and that's what I copied for the question. There were probably at least a dozen categories for both the ones that capture us and the ones we pass up.

I think I've read the whole list in someone's review. It always leaves me feeling I'm just one off from that list...not sure if that says more about me or the nature of the list.

Books that can be skipped include — for me at least — most on the best-seller list. I find that books need to fit into my own range of interests, first and foremost, and then they must age a bit in order to grab my attention.

As for "Books That You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case," that includes most classics. This year I hope to actually tackle some of those that have been lying around here for years!

I just read one of those "Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified," and it was a bit of a loser: The Art of Being Unmistakable. This fits under my own category of "Please don't ask my why I read this." There is no answer.

Most of Calvino's categories resonate, which is why they make me chuckle, but I cannot think just now of what fits exactly where. But it's a great question!

Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Read But Your Days Are Numbered

That's the one for me. I'd love to read all the classics, but I just don't care enough about fiction and it's just too hard to tell if I'll enjoy them ahead of time. Half the time my reading is therapeutic and I need to keep it that way.

I adored that passage of On a Winter's Night a Traveler, and copied it into my reading journal at the time. I'll have to think about all the different categories I have, but there is one category that I actually have conquered: books that I feel I should have read already, but haven't. I never sat down and wrote up such a list, but I had one mentally in my head, and I think I'm done. There are lots of great and important books that I've never read . . . War and Peace, Finnegan's Wake, Swann's Way . . . but I don't care if I ever read them, or maybe I'll read them when I'm retired. Knowing this crowd, I suspect you might be interested in what was on my mental list "Books I Should Have Read"(I've read all of these in the last 10-15 years):

Gulliver's Travels
Tess of the D'urbervilles
The Sun Also Rises
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Pride and Prejudice & Emma
The Handmaid's Tale & The Blind Assassin
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Middlemarch
The Name of the Rose
1984
The Remains of the Day
Portrait of a Lady & Turn of the Screw
The Trial
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Fahrenheit 451
Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist
Generation X
The English Patient
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Anne of Green Gables
Frankenstein
Anna Karenina
Treasure Island
Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde
The Age of Innocence & The House of Mirth
Midnight's Children
Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest & Macbeth
To the Lighthouse

Mostly classics, mostly predictable. But not entirely. And I'm glad I read them all, and most were excellent (although not all!) Making this list I realize I guess there are a few more to add. So I guess I'm not quite done.

It will be good never to be done Joyce

Interesting question (and lists). I actually just finally acquired a copy of If On a Winter's Night a Traveler a few months back, planning to get to it next year!

I doubt I really have many mental lists other than "need to read!" haha, but I suppose I have something along Nickelini's lines, of the classics that I "should have read" (but I enjoy reading them so it's not like it's some kind of chore-list or whatnot, it's just that sometimes I'm not in the right mindset for more thoughtful books and just want something distracting, so then I take longer to get to them! :P). I read a bunch off it every year, or try to, anyway. Trying to read titles off the 1001 list helps in that department, too.

As for books that can be skipped, probably my only list there would be "overhyped pop-lit drivel," lol. That'd include things like Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer and her fanfic follower with those many shades of grey, JK Rowling (yeah I know, she's got lovers on LT, I stand by my opinion! lol), and that ilk. Otherwise, there's very very little that's automatically on any skip lists. If I've read and thoroughly disliked something by an author, they may wind up on a "never again" list, but usually in that case never doesn't really mean never (unless it was due to prevalent racist/misogynist attitudes or just plain terrible writing or such), because I prefer to give a few chances before writing someone off forever. Just because I loathed one story doesn't mean all the rest are necessarily the same.

I like the "Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified" idea, but I'm pretty positive I know where most of my curiosity comes from at any given time, plus I consider it pretty justified by, hey something about this intrigues me so I'm gonna check it out and maybe have discovered something quite nice, or whathaveyou. ;) If anything, I'd probably simply have a "it called to me" list, lol. Auto/bios about people in unique/difficult/unfamiliar/etc situations, old sci-fi, books about "infamous" people in history, favorite actor bios, books that have some connection to WWII (fic or non), books about crime/serial killers... things that appeal, just because of my interests and whatnot. I suppose each of those types of appeal could be a "list," but eh, I don't really look at them separately that way. I suppose in a sense I do the "Books To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves" thing, like, I have a section devoted to the Holocaust/WWII, and the collection of the pretty B&N Leatherbounds series of classics, and the collection of the cheap old Wordsworth Editions of classics, especially the horror genre ones, with the red "blood drip" graphic on the black spines, and so forth, so, they "go with" stuff but, I mean, I get them because I'm interested in whatever they go with in the first place, so it figures I'd get more of them...

I'm quite curious to read the rest of the lists he mentions, now, haha.

When I originally wrote the review of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, I would have loved to quote Calvino's entire list, but it was too lengthy and thus I picked some categories that appealed to me. So I can comment on many of them.

Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Read But Your Days Are Numbered: A lot of books I see in bookstores fall in this category, and a lot of books I read about here on LT do too. That's why I love reading reviews of books in this category -- they then fall into a category of "Books I Don't Have To Read Because I Read a Great Review That Told Me All About It."

Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Should Read First: Technically, my whole TBR is the "others I should read first" but occasionally I do see books that I know that in order to read I should read something else first!

Books That Everybody Has Read So It's As If You Read Them Too: I feel this way about a lot of popular books, although occasionally I'll break down and read one of them myself.

Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case: This is the story of my life!

Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer: I do think about this for long books. The one I've been wanting to read and thought about for this summer is Moscow 1937 (which is definitely a tome), but at this rate I'm not going to get to it.

Books To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves: This is why I have a bunch of unread books on various topics that at one time interested me, such as polar exploration and the Maya and the inca, and books about books. Every now and then, I get to one of them.

Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified: But oh, how delightful! This is how I acquired, among other books, The Forbidden Kingdom, a book I recently read.

Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them: As I noted in my review, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler itself fell into this category, as do many other books, some of which I've actually read this year including In Patagonia, Middle Passage, and Chinua Achebe's African Trilogy.

QUESTION: Is there a book or are there books about which you have said: I wish I had written that!

My best friend asked me some questions by e-mail about reading books in a series, so I'll just pass them along with a couple of additions of my own:

Does it matter to you if you read the installments of a series in their intended order? What about a series of books with independent plots--do you still try to read them in the order they were written?

If the books in a series were written and published in a different order than their internal chronology, which sequence do you prefer to follow?

Does it bother you to leave a series incomplete? Do you try to acquire all the books in a series before you start it?

Do you normally read the installments of a series back-to-back, or do you prefer to take a break for other reading?

If you return to a series after several years do you pick up where you left off or start over?

How long have you been keeping track of what you read and why did you start?

List your top ten favorite books published after 2000.

List your top ten favorite books read since you joined LT.

Might lead to some interesting reading ideas!

Also, do you have a system for how you tag books in your LT catalog?

Or, inspired by Caroline_McElwee's recent post, how about sharing a picture of your favorite bookshelf. It would be interesting to see everyone's systems.

Alright, I'm done - sorry for the multiple posts!!

Do you think in terms of Dewey, Library of Congress or some other cataloging system in organizing your books?

How old is your TBR? That is, what is the greatest number of years a book has been on your TBR? Name the book.

Poached and adapted from the Viragos group where I lurk:

What did you read as a child, once you could read on your own?
Do you still read any of those authors?
Which books you read as a child still stand out?
Have you revisited any of these books and what was the outcome?

>

Still open for questions?

Are there books you wish you'd read at an earlier age, or saved for a later age? What books would you give your child and teenage self to help them through hard times?

I recently received the ER book By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life. This is a compilation of interviews that appeared in the New York Times Book Review section each week. One of the questions posed to the writers that I found fascinating was (and hope this hasn't been posted on an earlier thread): "Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?" You'd be surprised how many chose not to respond to the question, for fear of embarrassing another writer. When answered, however, Joyce's Ulysses was a frequent answer.

Thanks to all for suggesting questions, and please feel free to continue to suggest questions even if I haven't specifically asked for suggestions.

This question comes from mabith/Meredith, with an addition from me.

QUESTION 20.

How long have you been keeping track of what you read and why did you start? Has LT changed how you keep track, and if so in what way?

Toward the end of 2007 I read somewhere that President George W. Bush had read 40 books that year. Having never thought of him as a reader, and having always considered myself well-read (well, until I joined LT!), I wondered how I measured up. So in 2008, at age 29, I kept track of my reading. I just wrote down in a word document the book, author, a brief description, and a rating. I read 43 books that year (just squeaked by him!). Then I joined LT in 2009. I started a thread in February of that year after a friend of mine (jfetting) introduced me to the website. Since then I track my reading on my LT threads and print them out at the end of the year so I can keep a paper record in case, heaven forbid, LT ever goes away. I also keep a spreadsheet with a list of books I've read and a star rating going back to 2008. I love seeing all of the books I've read in the past 7 years and I know I will always keep the spreadsheet now, at a minimum.

I started keeping track in 2006, largely because I was tired of accidentally checking out PG Wodehouse novels I'd already read. My chronic pain had forced me to stop working in fall of 2005, and I was home by myself most of the time, especially since my sister and her husband had moved away. It was such a stressful and difficult period in my life, and focusing on books and the list and keeping count was a good release, plus making me feel like I was being productive.

On LT I keep a thread with my rough reviews/thoughts on each book, rather than just a list (or on Goodreads list and star rating), and I really like having that record. It keeps the books in my head longer, and reading others' threads gives me a much better sense of a book than reading the summary on the cover. I keep my list in a text document as well as on LT and Goodreads, just in case something happens and I lose one version.

Before LT I had tried on a number of occasions to keep track of the books I had read, but it never lasted very long. LT has changed that and once I started writing reviews I found I enjoyed the process and now I can't stop.

I think that I only officially started tracking my books a year and a half ago, when I joined LT. The year prior was my first year of retirement, and I had kept a running list on my iPad that year, but I didn't rate or review anything. I've enjoyed the LT experience, and I realize now how beneficial it will be down the road. There are so many times that I will pick up a book that I'm pretty sure I read 30 years ago, but have no recollection of whether I liked it or even what it was about.

I've kept track off and on -- mostly on -- since high school, at least. Probably earlier than that. But for a very, very long time, it was all on sheets of loose leaf paper or in battered little notebooks, and inevitably those pages would get lost or thrown out. The earliest records I still have are from 1998, when I started keeping track in a little hardbound blank book specifically designed for the purpose.

The main thing that's changed now that I'm using LT, instead of the handwritten list in that book, is that I can sort and search and generally play around with things to my heart's content, and I enjoy this entirely too much. Also, if I'm trying to remember exactly such-and-such an event happened, and I can remember what I was reading at the time, it's very easy now to look up the answer.

I started keeping a log of books read in the early '70s after graduating from college. There was no particular reason other than I'm a compulsive maker and collector of lists. That original log got lost in a move somehow, but I started over in 1978 just keeping a handwritten log of date, title, author, and a rating on a 1-10 scale. I still have that log and have kept it up for 46 years except for a lapse in 1985. I have transcribed it into LT, but I still keep it up to have a hardcopy backup.

I was senior in high school when I somehow suddenly, or maybe finally, became very obsessed with reading. I was a very slow reader, still am, but to me it felt like it was an obsession, and I kept a list from the start, on notebook paper, writing down each book with whatever writing utensil was at hand - pens and markers of different colors. I kept my list up that way for years, with just a small set of mismatched loose leaf notebook paper. I think I still have it packed in a box somewhere. Eventually I typed it up in Word, and then also in Excel so I could play with the numbers a little. And then I started cataloging all my books with Excel. And the first thing I loved about Lt was that it was a better tool than Excel for cataloguing my books.

Anyway, LT has given me a group to talk to, so I now write reviews and get suggestions from readers I know. But, still, I have my lists - in LT, in Goodreads, in the latest version of that Word document, and in Excel. The first book on the list is from December 1990.

Back at #19 : if you found you had a week to live, would you spend any of that time reading? And, if yes, what would you read and why?

QUESTION 20.
How long have you been keeping track of what you read and why did you start? Has LT changed how you keep track, and if so in what way?

I started keeping track of the books I read in 1985 in a little notebook. At the time my 2 children were pre-schoolers, and my reading from those years reflects that--lots of child care, child psychology, books for kids, etc. Generally, I just recorded the title, author, date I finished the book, and maybe a line or two of my reactions. Sometime in the 2000s I tried entering some of this data into Excel, but it got pretty tedious pretty fast.

In 2009 I discovered LT, and over the next few years transcribed the handwritten notebooks into LT, and noted the "trends" in my reading over the years. What I like about recording in LT is the ability to record the dates read, add tags, easily search for books I've read & what I thought about them, and, curiously, add covers. It's amazing how the specific cover brings back the memory of the book and my reading experience.

What LT has given me is a community of readers; before LT, I would have been embarrassed to tell anyone that I actually kept a list of what I read (except maybe my mother!). And I love to read threads, and read what other people are reading that seem to have similar tastes to mine. I've discovered so many new books and writers here, thanks to all of you!

Question 20:

LT. I have a few abortive attempts at lists beforehand, but I never really tried to keep track before I discovered LT and the thrill of cataloging one's books and sorting them in different ways. So, since 2008.

All the comments previously made about having a hard copy in case LT disappears is tremendously upsetting. I wonder if the site owner would be willing to sign a pledge that in the case of zombie apocalypse, he is to leave his spouse and child to fend for themselves so as to give us time to save our lists?

>143 RidgewayGirl: LOL. Well he has said pretty much so long as he's around, he's not letting anything happen to LT, so at least there's that! :P

I've been tracking for 6yrs, because I'd realized that I'd hardly been reading anything that year, or the few yrs previously, what with work and life and all, books were just getting pushed aside. Which, of course, I did not like. So I made a list of what I'd read that year (it was Sept or Oct at this point), in order to say "look, this simply will not do!" So then I found a challenge on GR, 50 books, which I finished before the year time-frame was up, and wound up at 73 by the end of the calendar year. Since then I've been recording & challenging myself each year. I still keep my records where I originally started, because the text list is a lot simpler to search through when I'm not looking for the book details but just dates or whatnot. It also makes for a simple way to copy the list and put it in a text file for more safekeeping.

I first started keeping a list of books read in 1996, when my reading really took off. I have always been a reader, but there were so many other things going on that reading for pleasure took a back seat. But in 1996 I started listening to books on tape while commuting, and I started keeping a list so I would remember which ones I had listened to. I listened to almost everything available by Rex Stout! Since joining LT, reading has taken on an additional life of its own because of keeping a thread, reviewing and discussing books with everyone here. The list continues both on LT and in a word document.

>143 RidgewayGirl: It's probably worth doing a backup once in a while using the export feature, just in case of zombie apocalypse.

I kept lists of (non-school) books I was reading in high school, college, and for a while after college in tiny little notebooks that I used to carry around. Then I stopped. I didn't start again until LT, and even then I didn't really start until I started writing reviews and using the "date finished" field. Then I started grouping books read in a certain year in collections, so I have complete ones from 2008 onwards and incomplete ones, based on what I can remember reading, for 2006 and 2007.

The idea of losing LT struck fear into my heart a while back and I started copying all my reviews into a Word document. Realizing I hadn't done that in many many months I spent time while I was up in the mountains updating that.

I asked this question last fall, and I thought it was interesting enough to ask again.

QUESTION 21. School is starting again, at least in the northern hemisphere. Based on your reading over the past year or so, what "course" would you like to teach and what would you assign on the reading list? (You don't need a long list; one or two books is fine.) Conversely, what "course" would you like to take?

I propose to teach a course entitled: How to Get to the Moon - A course of practical instruction for would-be interplanetary adventurers.

Our course begins with a study of bird-powered spaceflight as pioneered by Francis Godwin using swans and described in his 1638 work The Man in the Moone. We will focus on identification and capture of the proper species of swan, their interlunary migratory patterns, and proper harnessing techniques. We will briefly touch on Captain Samuel Brunt's A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (1727) in which he employs giant sentient roosters to propel his moonship--briefly because Capt. Brunt does not disclose the dwelling place of his giant chicken friends, whereas Rev. Godwin tells us exactly where we can find the proper variety of swan.

 

Turning to the work of Cyrano de Bergerac we will quickly dismiss as pure fiction his claim to have first ascended from the Earth by means of "rockets," and focus instead on his ingenious use of the attractive powers of dew and bone marrow for the 1657 account of his Voyage to the Moon. Students wishing to earn extra credit may do independent research into Cyrano's one unsolved problem: how to slow down when you reach the moon.



We will briefly examine David Russen's untested idea from Iter Lunaire (1703) for leaping to the moon atop a gargantuan metal spring before delving into the rich literature on human-powered flight. Daniel Defoe's The Consolidator introduces the idea, but his paucity of practical detail will lead us soon to The Life and Astonishing Adventures of John Daniel as related by Ralph Morris in 1751. The problems of sustenance and fatigue will receive special attention.



Those who blanch at the idea of flapping mechanical wings for a journey of a quarter million miles will welcome the discovery of anti-gravity material. It comes in many forms and can be found in various places on the Earth. George Tucker relates in his A Voyage to the Moon how he found it in the Burmese Empire. Chrysostom Trueman tells us how he found some in the mountains of Mexico in The History of a Voyage to the Moon (1864). For those who like to cook from scratch, we'll cover H. G. Wells's recipe for Cavorite from The First Men in the Moon. Whichever anti-gravity material you use, a key point of discussion will be how to keep it (and yourself) on the Earth until you are ready to go.

 

Lastly for students who crave excitement (and for whom resources are no obstacle), our course will cover the construction of a lunar cannon as detailed in Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. There will be supplementary reading on the seismic and climate change problems of firing a 900-foot-long cannon, as well as opportunities for students to address that vexing challenge: How to Slow Down and Land.



And don't forget to sign up now for next semester: The Hollow Earth - How to Get There and What You Will Find.

>149 StevenTX: May I sign up, please? Your idea is much more captivating than what I had planned to contribute. Now I have to go sit in a corner and rethink what I was going to say!

Q 20 - I started keeping a reading log in 2000 because I had kept one erratically for parts of my life and when I didn't do it I regretted it. If that makes any sense.

Q 21 - I never did come up with anything coherent for this question last year. I see that Baswood suggested a Classics in Film course, and Rebecca came up with Fictional Voyages in the Medieval Period, and I had to smile because my daughter is starting university just now, and one of her classes is in the Medieval Studies Department and the theme this term is Medieval Legend in Film. Sort of a combo of the two suggestions from last year. I wish I was taking that course.

I'll try to come up with something this time, but it's harder than it first appears.

Maybe a US History Through Children's Lit course? The Loud Silence of Francine Green, Esperanza Rising, Kira-Kira, A Time of Angels, Same Sun Here, The Ballad of Lucy Whipple. Focusing on books that work for older children and young teens.

And maybe a course on children's books that can help older kids keep their vivid imaginations for longer. Heavy on Daniel Pinkwater's books, especially Alan Mendelsohn, The Boys From Mars, but also the Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix, the Oz books, maybe Freddy the Pig as well, and Calvin and Hobbes.

Steven, I'd sign up for that class!

mabith, don't forget The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate!

>153 RidgewayGirl: I haven't read that! On my to-read list it goes!

I think I have already signed up for that course Steven.

>149 StevenTX: - Brilliant! I can't come close to that.

Funnily enough, I hadn't seen this, but vaguely remembered last year's, and was just talking yesterday about a course idea forming (based on a book I'd just finished).

My course would be something along the lines of the post-Soviet Jewish Emigré (to the US) experience in literature.

My current course list suggestions are Gary Shteyngart's The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, and the recently-read book that triggered the idea - Anya Ulinich's Petropolis.

This one's not based on books from this year, so I hope I'm not repeating myself here - but the other I've always wanted, and I'm sure it must exist somewhere, is WWII alternate histories. The reading list would include Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, Len Deighton's SS-GB, Fatherland by Robert Harris, and Farthing by Jo Walton.

My class is "The French Revolution in Fact and Fiction" -- with extensions to the prerevolutionary period.

Readers should start either with Citizens by Simon Schama (fact) or A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (fiction) and then read the other.

Other books include Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three and a look at the affair of the Queen's Necklace: fictionally with The Queen's Necklace by Alexandre Dumas and factually with The Queen's Necklace by Antal Szerb. I preferred the Szerb to the Dumas, so I recommend reading the Dumas first and then finding out what really happened with the Szerb.

And of course, there is also A Tale of Two Cities, although I haven't read this since the 60s.

Other nonfiction books I've read in the past few years which touch on the Revolution are the wonderful The Black Count by Tom Reiss and At Home with the Marquis de Sade by Francine du Plessix Gray.

And I just found a used copy of The Chouans by Honoré de Balzac, which I'll probably read in the next few months.

-------------

I'm signing up for Steven's course, and I'm adding A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman to >156 ljbwell: for the post-Soviet Jewish emigre course.

I did a little library reorganizing today, and that leads to the following question, a variation of one that's been asked before.

QUESTION 22.
Assuming your library has some organization (and feel free to describe what it is, if you're not tired of answering that question), what do you do when you run out of space on a shelf or shelves that are "supposed" to have a certain category of books? Do you double book them? Do you put them (gasp!) somewhere else? How much organizational disorder can you put up with before doing some reorganization? And how drastic might that reorganization be?

Q22: I have two cubbies (I have the stupid IKEA shelving unit that is like a bunch of cubby holes) that are kind of random, though one has been turned into almost all classics/literature, with just a couple odd ducks at the end. When I get new stuff that needs moving into the shelves, it tends to go in those, until I read something from where it belongs and can fit it in the proper place, or, until I've gotten a whole lot of stuff and need to do a bunch of sorting to try and make things fit in appropriate areas.

I'm not entirely sure what "double book" means, but the cubbies are all double or triple rows, and books stacked on top, both on rows behind and the one in front. The things behind are the things I've read, unread stays visible.

As soon as I get paid, I plan on (hopefully) buying some more shelves for books and turning a corner in our living room into a "reading nook." (And then it will really start looking like a library! LOL!) We already have two bookcases in the living room and I had shoved the books in there this way and that in random order. I got tired of looking at it - it looked messy - so one day I organized and categorized everything and gave some books away. I like having categories for books so I can find them easier.

I have books in my room, in the kids room, in the other room and I would love nothing more than to have all the books together in ONE area. But, then, I think we'd need to buy a bigger house!

I have different categories of books in different rooms, and I do like to keep them all together. My usual solution to this problem, when it comes up, is to stuff another bookcase in there somehow, which in the room with the non-fiction has started involving bookcases placed at 90 degrees to a wall, in addition to bookcases lining the walls. A few years ago, I did reach a sort of crisis point and had to reorganize the whole house, adding several more bookcases and shuffling different categories of books around from room to room. It was a pretty big project.

I figure right now, I've got several years worth of shelf space left, except maybe for the TBR books, if I don't get them under control. What I'm going to do when I pass that point, though, I'm not sure. There are still a few corners of the house I can probably stuff more shelves into, but that's probably going to have to involve breaking up a category (my biggest categories are hardback fiction, paperback fiction, and non-fiction) into multiple rooms. But I guess I'll have to. I really can't stand the idea of double-layering books onto the shelves, or stacking them on the floor.

It may happen that one day. in defiance of every principle and tradition of my life, I will actually have to let some books leave my house in order to make room for new ones. But I intend to put that day off for as long as possible.

(By the way, if for some unfathomable reason anyone is curious about the nitty-gritty details of my big book reorganization, I found a blog post in which I mused over my plans for it. But reading that now even makes my eyes glaze over.)

I really can't stand the idea of double-layering books onto the shelves

I don't like it either, not a bit. But sadly it's the only option I have (plus with these stupid shelves, it'd be a huge amount of wasted space if I didn't, urgh). :( Double & triple rows, stacked on top, and just plain in stacks in this shelving unit that was never intended for books (either in its intended purpose or for ours in buying it!), because it was there when we wound up with piles and piles from two different huge events and nowhere for them to go. I hate them being stacked there, but it was a godsend to have the thing and be able to at least not have them stacked on the floor!

At the moment I am having one of my large attics fitted out to make a new room, which will give me four times the amount of space that I currently enjoy. Lynn tells me that I must house all my books, my LP's and my CD's in this new room and so I am busily planning how it can bee fitted out to give me the maximum of shelf space. As my old room is being demolished much of my stuff is in boxes or double shelved or in a state of near chaos, but some time soon in the not too far distant future I should be able to undertake a grand reorganisation. Deep Joy.

Question 22:

My shelves are a work in progress. We moved to a house almost 2 years ago after years of apartment living with limited space. Now, for the first time, I have the space to have multiple bookshelves and a bigger budget to buy books. In the past, I relied mainly on the library for my books. So right now, I don't have a space issue on my shelves. I still have lots of free space plus ways to create more space. For instance, I currently have a whole shelf of photo albums that will most likely be moved to our bedroom once I run out of space in the living room. When I lived in our apartment, I did have to double up rows on the bookshelf and I always hated it, but you do what you have to do!

So far, I love reorganizing the bookshelves. It's not that big of a project, so I have fun rearranging things periodically (every couple months) to see if I like a different system better. However, at the rate I bought books this year (it's those library sales!!!), I don't think things are going to stay manageable for long!

When I run out of space on the poetry shelves, say, I just stop buying poetry books (or, actually, get rid of some gift collections that I only keep around while I have the space). When I get more shelving, and rearrange to allow poetry a third shelf, I can buy more poetry books. When I'm out of town and going to used bookstores (none in my city) I know exactly which genres still have space on the shelves.

I've done a little rearranging to add space, moving the general non-fiction shelves from the skinner bookcase to the wider bookcase to have more room, etc... I have too little money to have a book-buying problem anyway (and I'm too well-trained for the library), which is good since I won't double-stack the shelves, won't mix two genres together on one shelf, and won't let books pile up on the floor.

In my head I also do have this odd "Well, if someone's staying in my apartment then I want to have a lot of titles they'd enjoy so of course I need over 800 books in here." Odd because no one is staying here that long, and while they might admire the books, they rarely decided to sit and read. Maybe someday I'll move and start a Reading Retreat Bed and Breakfast. No internet, turn over smart phones at the door, browse the large library, and read away your weekend.

Q 22

My shelves are organized into four categories by size (oversize, large HB, small HB/trade PB, and mass market PB), and within each category they are strictly alphabetical by author regardless of content. Most shelves are double booked, with the ones I'm most likely to read soonest in the front.

I usually keep an overflow area for new acquisitions, and when it gets full I do either a shuffling or a general reorganization. I sell most of the books I've read when I'm finished with them, so ideally if I read faster than I buy, my shelves will get less crowded over time. I'm buying mostly ebooks now, which helps. My last general reorganization was in April after we had the house painted.

>163 baswood: - Very envious! My wife has the same edict that all my books and media must be in one room, but I've outgrown it.

Question 22.

My shelves do have a system. Divided first by type (fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, comics/GNs, poetry), then by author/size (all books by the same author together, then by height with the tallest book to the far left and descending to the right). If I run out of place on a shelf I simply continue on the next one beneath it (and move the other books one step further. I have enough room on my shelves to do this so it's not a problem. If I was more cramped I'd re-organize and move things around - while still keeping the system - until it worked better. I've recently done this (and purged quite a lot which is why I have room now!) My reorganizations are about as drastic as they get: all books out from the shelves, new order decided, all books back in on their new shelves.
I would never in a million years double book. I'd buy new shelves instead. I'd have no problem with moving them somewhere else. If I had shelves to put them on there I'd put my cookbooks in the kitchen, and I'd like to keep travel books/guides/etc. in the hallway and reference stuff in the office (but I don't have an office so no can do).

Well, when I ran out of space (in this case for my South American novels and French novels), fortunately I still had a top shelf and a bottom shelf that had miscellaneous stuff (not books) stored on them. (I had new shelves built when we renovated our apartment a few years ago and eliminated storage cabinets I had under the old ones). So I was fortunate this time. But in general, for some types of books, I've stacked them (saves space) or double-booked them, because I just didn't have enough room (e.g., old mysteries, 70s and 80s US fiction) to dedicate to them.

I got to the point where I was stacking books outside the books on the shelves and I just reached the breaking point where I HAD to do something! There are other sections of my books that are edging to that point where a reorganization is in the offing . . .

By the way, I separate fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is organized by country (e.g., France, Russia, US, Canada) or region (e.g., Eastern Europe, South America), and within that loosely chronologically. Poetry and plays are separate. Nonfiction is organized by topic (e.g., history (and that further by region), psychology, anthropology). Within the past year, I organized my TBR shelves (only books bought in the past several years) to match this organization.

This question has been floating around on a few threads, and some of you have already answered it, but I thought it would be interesting to ask a broader group of Avid Readers.

QUESTION 23.

List up to 10 books that have stuck with you the longest/had the most impact on you -- not necessarily your favorites, or the best, but the ones that still mean something to you no matter how long it is since you read them.

Q 23 - List up to 10 books that have stuck with you the longest/had the most impact on you -- not necessarily your favorites, or the best, but the ones that still mean something to you no matter how long it is since you read them.

I haven't answered this question anywhere yet, although I've seen it a lot. I find it puzzling. I don't know what it's getting at . . . and I'm puzzled at how few people answer with children's books, because I think the books we read as children often have such a huge impact on us. So putting my confusion aside, this is what I come up with:

1. The Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis
2. The Little White Horse, Elizabeth Goudge
3. The Stand, Stephen King
4. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
5. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
6. A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews
7. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
8. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
9. Kiss of the Fur Queen, Thomson Highway
10. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

1. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
2. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein
3. We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse by James Hillman and Michael Venture
4. Honey and Salt by Carl Sandburg
5. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
6. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
7. The Trolley to Yesterday by John Bellairs
8. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields by David Alan Corbin
9. The Tempest by William Shakespeare
10. Alan Mendelsohn: Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater

Q-23
I found that this list changes every time I think about it, because another book will pop up in my mind. Then I start thinking 'why didn't I think of that one?'

1. The Bobbsey Twins series (started my love of books)
2. Nancy Drew series (started my love of mysteries
3. Little Women
4. Oliver Twist
5. To Kill a Mockingbird or maybe A Time To Kill
6. Killer Angels
7. The Winds of War and War and Remembrance (they have to be read together)
8. At Swim Two Boys
9. Birdsong
10. Bel Canto

Tomorrow, the last three might be different.

I've done this question before on facebook, and at first I was at kind of a loss as to how to interpret it as well. I decided to choose books that influenced or changed my reading in some way. Here's the list with a few explanations.

Emma by Jane Austen (my first Austen book - read senior year of high school - which led to a deep love of all her novels)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (introduced me to excellence in modern female writers, read in college)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (junior year of high school year long project, helped me learn how to analyze a book)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (my first Russian fiction sparked an interest in Russian fiction in general)
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (childhood favorite - the whole series)
John Adams by David McCollough (the first biography that I really enjoyed and led to a lot of other nonfiction reading)
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (another childhood favorite - I think I read it first in 5th grade!)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (I'm embarrassed to admit this is an author I didn't discover until LT but now she's a favorite)
A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (sparked a love of reading nonfiction about women)
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (started my interest in reading Scandinavian fiction; I have Norwegian ancestors)

Here are my ten:

Books that made me a reader
The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series

Books I loved and often re-read
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Books that changed how I look at the world
Self-Reliance and other essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
J.B., a play by Archibald Macleish, based on the Book of Job
Constantine's Sword, James Carroll
Frederick Douglass, William S. McFeely

Some of these will be multiples, which is sort of a cheat, but I think of them together and, apart from the Narnia books, would be hard pressed to recall which episodes happened in which book:

The Pooh books, including the poetry, by A A Milne and the impact of Shepherd's drawings was as strong as Milne's text.

The Alice books by Lewis Carroll

The Narnia books by C S Lewis

the Andrew Lang fairy books (again, a strong impression made by the illustrations)

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury - for a truly pessimistic world view

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

Lord Halifax's Ghost Book - I used to terrify myself and my friends with these classic ghost stories, and they still come to mind in certain situations

I Go Pogo by Walt Kelly

I'm sure the minute I post these an entirely different list will come to mind. In fact I've been surprised from the names from the past that floated up while I've entering this. I feel there should be a Barbara Tuchmann in there and there are a couple of other books snapping round my ankles, but I'll leave it there for now.

>175 Oandthegang: Pogo! Potluck Pogo was the first I read, when I was 10 or 11, and it definitely made a HUGE impression on me.

A lot of these are books that got me started on certain types of literature, and/or that have had some influence on my outlook on things. I'll look back at this list in 5 minutes and see glaring omissions or want to make changes. But for today, for now:

1. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
2. Drummer Hoff by Barbara Emberley
3. Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World by Richard Scarry
4. The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
7. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
8. Candide by Voltaire
9. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
10. Maus by Art Spiegelman

Strong honorable mentions just off the top of my head include: Eloise by Kay Thompson & Hilary Knight; anything Dr Seuss - but if pressed, probably The Sneetches or The Cat in the Hat; Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë; Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier; Le gone du Chaâba by Azouz Begag; The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon; Tandooriälgen by Zac O'Yeah.

Q23

These are books that sparked an interest in a particular subject or period and led to years or decades of further reading:

1. Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein
2. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
3. The King Must Die by Mary Renault
4. Lee's Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman

These are books that express or depict a philosophy or a perspective on life that, while I may not agree with it, continues to influence my thinking on social, political and personal issues:

5. The Social Contract, and On the Origins of Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
6. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
8. Justine, The Philosophy of the Bedroom, and Other Writings by the Marquis de Sade

And these are the greatest of many works I could name that have influenced my thinking about literature and life in general.

9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I originally posted this list in reverse chronological order on Japaul's thread and my own with dates read but without explanation. Here is the list again in the order read and with a few words about why they particularly affected me. Two things they all have in common: the writing itself is extraordinary. I am a sucker for elevated language. Also, each of these books affected my world view in one way or another.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1950s, again in 2012) — the power and beauty of the language in this book was one of the reasons I decided to major in English literature before I even got to high school!
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (1964) — one of the funniest, most engaging and memorable books I ever read.
In Quest of the Perfect Book by Willliam Dana Orcutt (1967) — at the time I was flirting with the world of antiquarian books.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (1970) — helped me understand and make the break from my religious upbringing.
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (1976) — illuminated my African adventure, a life-changing event.
Son of the Morning by Joyce Carol Oates (1978) — an exposé of religious hypocrisy.
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (1995) — rewired my brain with regard to the planets and beyond.
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (2010) — the beauty of this work which nobody reads anymore really got to me.
The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville (2012) — Melville's darkly witty exploration of the many incarnations of the con artist was very enlightening.
Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier (read 2014) — I found compelling the beautifully written story of a man who, through his desire to understand the writings and character of someone who had died decades before, blossomed in middle age.

Like many other people, my list depends on the day. Some of these would always appear, some would wander in and out.All of these have been read at least twice.

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
Ethics and On the Correction of the Understanding by Baruch Spinoza
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Libra by Don Delillo
Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald
The Railway Man by Eric Lomax
The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter

Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series is one that could be substituted in depending on the day.

Sassy - I saw what you did there. Sneaking in an 11th book.

I've been giving this a lot of thought, and here's what I came up with today (as with everyone, could change tomorrow).

Books That Influenced Me As A Child
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White -- one of the first books I remember reading, and I can still visualize those illustrations (and I still have my childhood copy)
The "color" fairy tale books, like The Blue Fairy Book -- I devoured these; I guess I liked happy endings then!
Alice in Wonderland -- very happy memories of my father reading this to us; again I can visualize the illustrations. "By my ears and whiskers, it's getting late!" Alas, when I cleaned out my parent's apartment, I couldn't find this book, although I searched high and low.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes and a set of works by Edgar Allen Poe -- These were the first "grown-up" books I read, and both were editions that had belonged to my grandparents. I still have the SH and it has my grandfather's signature in it.
A New Yorker Book of Cartoons that included 50s and early 60s cartoons -- my sister and I loved this book and still quote cartoons to each other to make points.

Books That Influenced My Later Reading -- an abbreviated selection that focuses more on the recent past
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy -- on my second reading, got me interested in reading Russian and Eastern European novels
Germinal by Emile Zola -- got me interested in reading Zola and by extension other French 19th century writing
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o -- got me interested in African writing
The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis -- awoke my interest not only in cave painting but also in our earliest ancestors
The Coldest March by Susan Solomon -- awoke my interest in polar exploration

ETA I know I "cheated" by including more than one book in several categories!

ETA 2 And I am cheating even more by adding two books -- Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victory Serge and My Century by Aleksander Wat for their demonstrations of moral courage in the face of unspeakable horrors.

This question is based on a discovery by Suzanne/Poquette, described on her thread at #166. The subject is the Legacy Libraries feature of LT, which can be accessed by going your Home page or Profile page, clicking on Stats/Memes up on the second tool bar, and then in the far left column you'll see Compare and under that "Legacy Libraries."

QUESTION 24.

Which of the Legacy Library authors share the most books with you? List 5-10 names and the number of books they share. By clicking on Advanced Options, and then Books, you can see which books you share with the most Legacy Libraries. List 5-10 of these. Do you find anything surprising about either of these lists?

Where exactly is this Advanced Options link to be found?

After you get to the main legacy libraries page with the list of authors per the instructions before the question, it's under the options at the top. On phone now so can't be more precise than that. Sorry. Will check again tomorrow.

Ah, I was going to the main start page (http://www.librarything.com/legacylibraries) and from there you actually have to click the "your own" link at the end of a block of text. Then you get to the page with the options. My brain is dead today, so I just looked at the bolded text.

My first is Carl Sandburg with 116 (probably my favorite all-around writer ever), then Ralph Ellison, Ernest Hemingway, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and Robert Graves. Makes me happy that Sandburg is top of my list and that we share a bunch of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout!

Technically my first is Astrid Lindgren, but only because it lists the various different language versions of books I've read and counts all of them, so there are at least 8 of Pippi Longstocking. I find it amusing the Lindgren had a Damon Runyon in her library.

Since I seem to be responsible for this question, let me say that my first reaction was to feel so smug that I had the good taste to share so many books with so many famous people! haha! But then I snuck a peek at the comparisons with some other LT members (who shall remain nameless) and found that I wasn't so cool after all. Funny enough, it was in the process of searching for a list of books contained in Thomas Jefferson's library that I stumbled upon LibraryThing in the first place. I joined immediately!

Leonard and Virginia Woolf — 120 books shared!
Hemingway — 115
Carl Sandberg — 110
Isak Dinesen — 99
CS Lewis — 76
James Boswell — 70
Thomas Mann — 67
William Butler Yeats — 52
James Joyce — 49
Thomas Jefferson — 47

As mabith pointed out, there are lots of duplicates and the shared books are not too surprising if you happen to own a good selection of the literary canon. But these are all writers I admire to one degree or another.

This wasn't part of the question, but I was surprised that of the ten books I listed in question #23 above (>169 rebeccanyc:, >179 Poquette:), five were represented in Legacy Libraries:

Moby-Dick - 18th on the list of books shared by 26 libraries
The Consolation of Philosophy - 57th - 12 libraries
Out of Africa - 122nd - 6 libraries
The Hero with a Thousand Faces - 146th - 4 libraries
The Confidence-Man - 167th - 4 libraries

Seriously, the thought that people across the centuries are still communicating through their books — the ones they have written and the ones they owned — always impresses me.

I was certainly surprised by nos. 3 and 4 below, but these are mostly different books, not duplicate copies as is the case with no. 1.

1. Donald and Mary Hyde - 370 (They were book collectors. This represents dozens of copies each of a fairly small number of books.)

2. Ernest Hemingway - 353

3. Eeva-Liisa Manner - 304 (A Finnish author I've never heard of)

4. Newton 'Bud' Flounders - 298 (A collector of gay fiction)

5. Carl Sandburg - 295

6. Walker Percy - 233

7. Leonard and Virginia Woolf - 226

8. Graham Greene - 211

9. Hannah Arendt - 202

10. Ralph Ellison - 185

Mine are as follows, including the mysterious Finnish author as my number 1!

1. Eeva-Liisa Manner 149
2. Ernest Hemingway 142
3. Ralph Ellison 133
4. Thomas Mann 131
5. Walker Percy 117
6. Graham Greene 115
7. Carl Sandburg 112
8. e.e. cummings 110
9. Leonard and Virginia Woolf 90
10. Hannah Arendt 90

I find it interesting that these are almost the same ones as Steven's and somewhat the same ones as Suzanne's, albeit in different orders. There must be something about the books that early to mid-20th century authors had that we also share.

The top books Legacy Libraries share with me are unsurprising.

1. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
2. Gargantua and Pantagruel
3. The Decameron
4. Moby Dick
5. The Anatomy of Melancholy
6. War and Peace
7. Ulysses
8. Crime and Punishment
9. The Scarlet Letter
10. The Brother Karamazov

This was fun, Suzanne!

I think mine might be a bit different if I put in everything I've read prior to 2012. That's where I started with entries to my LT library.

1. Ernest Hemingway 71
2. Carl Sandburg 64
3. Leonard and Virginia Woolf 48
4. Sylvia Plath 40
5. Newton "Bud" Flounders 39
6. Barbara Pym 38
7. Evelyn Waugh 37
8. Graham Greene 36
9. Robert Ranke Graves 34
10. C. S. Lewis 34

The top 10 books are:
1 Don Quixote
2 The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
3 Tom Jones
4 Moby Dick
5 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
6 Treasure Island
7 Jane Eyre
8 The Brothers Karamazov
9 Pride and Prejudice
10 Anna Karenina

ETA: I had no idea who Newton Flounders was. I just looked him up, and he was known as the leading American collector of gay novels. I think that might be due to several duplicates of the Mary Renault novels, but found it interesting just the same.

My top 5:

People:

1. Ralph Ellison, 95
2. Donald and Mary Hyde, 87 (and thanks to Steven TX for explaining who they were!)
3. Carl Sandburg, 72
4. Ernest Hemingway, 68
5. Walker Percy, 66

I have no idea what that list might mean, other than that both these people and I have a lot of books. And maybe not even that; as others have pointed out, there are lots of duplicate copies of some things.

Books:

1. Don Quixote
2. The Odyssey
3. The Iliad
4. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
5. Gulliver's Travels

The only one I find mildly surprising there is Robinson Crusoe, and that may just be because I never liked that book and am thus always bemused by its popularity.

My top 5

People:
1. Donald and Mary Hyde (63)
2. Carl Sandburg (42)
3. Carson McCullers (33)
4. Anthony Burgess (33)
5. Eeva-Liisa Manner (31)

Books
1. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
4. Ulysses by James Joyce
5. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I imagine both would be different if I were better about including books I read when I was younger.

Also, looking at the Donald and Mary Hyde books, for example, the commonality was based on their having multiple copies The Picture of Dorian Gray and Hamlet; otherwise, there wouldn't have been much. The Carl Sandburg similarities are a nice mix.

I love questions like this!

My top ten authors were:
Ernest Hemingway 139
Carl Sandburg 129
Eeva-Liisa Manner 125 (I'm yet another person who had never heard of her. I will now try to find something by her)
Walker Percy 116
Graham Greene 106
The Woolfs 95 (lots of Victorians there)
Hannah Arendt 92
Evelyn Waugh (more Victorians)
Sylvia Plath 75 (this was a surprise)
Ralph Ellison 73

Norman Mailer whom I don't see on other lists, actually came in at 2, but since there were 10 copies of Armies of the Night and more than 20 of The Naked and the Dead, I decided it wasn't a real comparator, although it is an interesting library.

I think the person I was most pleased to see, although fairly low down at 27 books, was Arthur Ransome, probably based on a shared love of adventure.

Top five books were:
Don Quixote
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe >191 bragan: I reread this about five years ago in the "real" version and was really surprised by how it differs from the usual ideas of it
The Pilgrim's Progress
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Tom Jones

Carl Sandburg appears on everybody's list

My top ten are

1) Ralph Ellison - 105 (but seems like a lot of Invisible Man copies in different languages!)
2) Ernest Hemingway - 80
3) Carl Sandburg - 77 (he has 10554 books in his library - hence he's on everyone's list!)
4) Leonard and Virginia Woolf - 62
5) Sylvia Plath - 61

Looking down my list the one I find most interesting is that I share 45/633 books with Barbara Pym which is probably my highest weighted similar library. Syliva Plath probably had the list that had the most books that I love in it.

My top books list doesn't seem very pertinent because I have lots of TBR books in my catalog.
1) Don Quixote
2) Pilgrim's Progress (TBR)
3) The Decameron (TBR)
4) Faust (TBR)
5) Moby Dick
6) War and Peace
7) Jane Eyre
8) Crime and Punishment
9) The Scarlet Letter
10) David Copperfield

The lesson from this is that Carl Sandburg is the best. Everyone go read his poetry volume, Honey and Salt, as soon as possible.

1. Astrid Lindgren - share 95
2. Carl Sandburg - 62
3. Ernest Hemingway - 46
4. Lewis Carroll - 36
5. Sylvia Plath - 34

Most shared titles
1. Odyssey
2. Complete Works of William Shakespeare
3. Divine Comedy
4. Robinson Crusoe
5. Bible
6. Treasure Island
7. Jane Eyre
8. Pride and Prejudice
9. Wuthering Heights
10. Poetics (Aristoteles)

Some of these classics show up because I have some very old, rare books handed down in the family.

Some of the Legacy Libraries had multiple editions, so I've listed the official number of shared books but then shown the number of duplicates I've found in that library's listing.

Ernest Hemingway 62 (5)

C S Lewis 51 (17 - rather a lot of copies of his own books)

Carl Sandburg 42 (1)

Evelyn Waugh 42 (3)

Leonard & Virginia Woolf 42 (7)

Lewis Carroll 36 (18)

E E Cummings 35 (6)

Eeva Llisa Manner 31 (1)

Astrid Lindren 28 (2)

Books:

Pilgrim's Progress 36

War & Peace 24

Pickwick Papers 23

Treasure Island 23

Hudibras 22

Jane Eyre 22

Crime And Punishment (oh no!!!) 21

Aesop's Fables 20

Meditations (Marcus Aureius) 20

Anna Karenina 19

This was a really odd result on both sorts. I was somewhat surprised by the libraries, but then amused by the books we shared (quite a lot of Margery Allingham in there, and Hemingway had Sam Slick), but the shared books was really embarrassing because Jane Eyre is the only book that I really know. The others are either books I read as a child and should probably get round to rereading (Pilgrim's Progress, Treasure Island), or books which I have yet to read (Anna Karenina, War and Peace), one that I've just got the Penguin Great Ideas version of (Meditations), one that I hated (Crime and Punishment) and one that is an old book which was passed on to me incomplete and I'm unlikely to ever read (Hudibras). So quite a lot of comfortable reading in the library comparison, but a complete impostor on the popular ownership front.

What is it with Carl Sandburg?? And time for a club read of Finnish authors?

Authors:

1. C.S. Lewis
2. Carl Sandburg (there he is!)
3. Ernest Hemingway
4. Sylvia Plath
5. Astrid Lindgren

I've never read any Sandburg or Lindgren, so maybe I'll pick up a few of their works the next time I go to the library.

Books:

1. The Iliad
2. Treasure Island
3. Jane Eyre
4. The Scarlet Letter
5. Pride & Prejudice

Not terribly surprising.

This was fun :)