QUESTIONS for the AVID READER Part II

Image is a 1988 book cover of a history of reference materials which delves into how the need to store information outside our brains arose, and what that did to how we look at it. (all according to blurb)

QUESTION 7

Reference materials are great sources of information, but they are also wonderful ways to pass time.

What role do reference works play in your life? What are your favourite sources?

If you were to create a reference work, what would it be?

I could go down this rabbit hole for days . . .

I confess I tend to use Wikipedia since it's so easy. I hate the fact that my library no longer has hard copies of or a subscription to Encyclopedia Britainnica. (britannica.com is helpful.) World Book is all we have. Online all we have is the New Georgia Encyclopedia (a good reference, but not the only one anybody needs.)

Loving the ability to access many newspapers online. Magazine access I find more sporadic, because library subscription packages keep changing.

My reference needs are pretty general - history, culture, news. Medical, health, exercise info. And I don't want to write/create a resource, I just want them handy when I need them.

This question reminded me that the reference and user services association (RUSA) of the ala periodically publishes a list of free reference databases. Here is the most recent so you can fall into the rabbit hole with me into wonderland.

I find old, large dictionaries fascinating. Old encyclopedias, too, because they provide a look into the world/time they're describing, as well as the attitudes and presumptions of the historians writing the entries.

I had a set of those annoying parents who say “look it up!” in response to the most innocent of questions. So I’ve long had a familiar, trusting relationship with the OED, the Oxford dictionary of quotations, Fowler’s Modern English usage, and a succession of encyclopaedias and atlases.

One of my prized possessions when I was a child (I still have it) was the Children’s Everything Within (“A complete library of knowledge and good reading for boys and girls”) published sometime in the thirties, and another was a proper grown-up reference book, the 1913 edition of Pears’ shilling cyclopædia. Complete with a lot of soap adverts, a colour picture of George V and a perpetual calendar for the years 1913-1928 with a cardboard disc you could rotate to discover the days of the week and the eclipses you had missed. I don’t think either of those books contained any actual useful information, but they were both endlessly fascinating. And they did tell you how to address a letter to an archbishop, the rules of Eton fives, how autogiros work, and how to cure deficiencies in your complexion.

More useful (but still way out of date by the time I got it) was The schoolboys’ pocket book from the early fifties, with tables of world capitals, semaphore and morse code, international code flags for ships, and so on.

One I actually used quite heavily for many years was the little Science data book edited by R M Tennent for Open University students. Everything you really need from the CRC Handbook of chemistry and physics in a package of about 1/42 the weight. (*)

On a different tack, one type of reference book that always gave me a lot of pleasure was the railway timetable. For a modest sum of money you could get a book the size of a small telephone directory that would allow you to spend many happy hours planning all sorts of exciting journeys you were never going to make — but of course it was way too heavy to take with you on the train. The real miracle was the Thomas Cook Continental Timetable, edited by the wonderful J H Price, who somehow managed to condense everything you really needed to know about European rail services into one small, portable book, and keep it more up to date than many of the official timetables. But the most beautiful of all was the Swiss Offizielles Kursbuch, a bewilderingly precise, complex and joyful transport extravaganza in three volumes. Checking train times on your smartphone is much more useful and convenient, but we’ve lost something in the process!

(I could write the same paragraph about maps and atlases, but you know how it goes by now.)

What I use now? Well, I have to admit that paper reference books have mostly been superseded by the internet. For simple word definitions I use my Shorter OED on paper still, and a couple of foreign language dictionaries, because they are quick and noise-free, but for anything more complicated I use the usual databases and search engines we all know. Wikipedia — despite its many weaknesses — is probably as near as we’re ever going to get to the reference work I always dreamed of. When I need to, I use proper academic search tools, but that’s not very often these days. Often I can find out most of what I need to know from archive.org, Google Books, newspaper archives and a few historic map sites.

——
(*) Wikipedia gives the weight of a sample paper edition of the CRC data book as 3.8kg. According to my kitchen scales, Tennent weighs 90g.

>2 markon: This question reminded me that the reference and user services association (RUSA) of the ala periodically publishes a list of free reference databases.

wow havent' thought of that in years! Used it for my masters work, all of it in print of course at the time yep it was a rabbit hole then, suspect there are a more than a few additional tunnels added over the years.

There was another set we used, huge green bound books that held every article printed, another reabbit hole!

Most of our books at home were library but we had reference galore. We did have the Golden Book Encyclopedia set that I must have gone through a hundred times. I still have my set of 16, and look at the articles know and am amazed by how much was covered, included mythology, history, technology, science, cultures (tho that area is a bit problematic now) I esp remember the mythology because of the excellent illustrantions for each story (I esp remember the one with Damecleas with a sword hanging over his head!)

Also had a large Natl Geographic atlas,along with globe, the Natl Geo magazines and the hundreds of editions of Life and Looik magazines.

Oh and the dictionary, used for many scrabble games, and theasus, for learning or and just browsing....

Learned to do research on the Encyc Brittania at school, and with the periodical section of my library. I enjoyed the work of looking for information on something of interest (and yes sveral rabbit holes later...), it was never a chore for me like it was some of my peers.

Now well I am addicted to Google certainly, subscribe to several newspapers and magazines online, listen to podcasts, keep up with blogs. During my reading as a child I learned about primary and secondary resources, and how to judge whether a source was reliable or not. TProbably the best class I ever took was Symantics and Logic AP english class using the book Language in thought and Action which was so amazing, a class that should be required reading for anyone wanting information on anything. Its so sad that so many don't have the simple tools in their head to separate facts from fiction to downright lies, proproganda.....The net certainly opened up the world to us, unfortunately its easy enough to take advantage of what people don't know And yet to be fair, it was always thus....

I have 2 music related sites that I really like. Both depend on contributor/members for data.

https://secondhandsongs.com/ - Second Hand Songs lists all the songs by an artist as well as the covers of songs by other artists. I first used it when I wanted to find all the covers of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat."

https://www.tunefind.com/ - Tunefind helps you find music from your favorite TV shows and Movies. I haven't really watched tv for the last year but this is great if you hear a song in a tv show and want to know what it is. I started using this when I was watching 12 Monkeys, the tv show. They had some great songs on there and I could count on this site to eventually name them all.

Many years ago I wanted to create a reference work to books featuring female sleuths. I was going to call it "She Sleuths to Conquer."

I grew up with the Compact OED. When I moved out, it was a serious lack - so I found one of my own (nice door-stop of a two-volume book. My parents' copy still has the magnifying glass, mine (bought secondhand, of course) doesn't). But what I actually use these days is the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, in an app on my phone. It doesn't have as many words as the Compact, and sometimes the missing words are...weird (it has European, but not Europe - I wanted a reminder of the myth, had to look elsewhere). But it is an etymological dictionary, unlike the rest of the OEDs that are/were available as apps - Concise, for instance, has more words, but they're only defined, not sourced.

Various encyclopedias, kid's reference books...lots of atlases and globes, growing up. Nowadays...Wikipedia, and if I'm really interested the sources at the bottom of the Wikipedia page. TVTropes - now there's a rabbit hole! IMDB for "that movie/show about...". LT for "that book about..." if I can't remember it myself - though sometimes I have to Google it, if what I or whoever I'm looking for it for can remember is not things that would be in the title or other places LT can search. Amazon, for number of pages! And sometimes publication date, for recent stuff - older stuff that's been reprinted I have to look elsewhere (Abebooks is one source, sometimes).

I've made various references for myself, usually of stuff that wouldn't much interest other people. I've also helped with a some crowd-sourced stuff (filk music, for one). That's about as far as I've gone thinking about making a reference (book or equivalent).

Oh, I use Wiki, even tho I know the problems with it. Its rare I find anything glaringly wrong, but still I often check with other sources if not sure. Lately Ive been using a lot of history sites related to founding fathers and mothers, esp re my fix on Hamilton and his story. Love the Smithsonian site and some of the History Channel.

I love dictionaries, atlases, grammar books (even on languages I do not plan to ever learn) and all kinds of documents collections and calendars of papers.

Thankfully we live in an age where as long as something was ever published, it has a big chance of being reprinted OR scanned and made available. And some time in the mid 19th century a lot of the papers and calendars of the Tudor era were published :)

For most other topics, I am much more likely to look online - Wiki or specialized sites. It is just more convenient...

As for creating reference materials... I am part of a few crowd-sourced sites around speculative fiction -- while I used to have index cards based references for specific topics, they were really for my own amusement more than anything...

Well lots of rabbit holes in these responses. My rabbit holes are lined in paper, not virtual. Somehow they seem more enticing that way. Like >8 cindydavid4: though, I can be tempted by museum websites.

>4 thorold: I had the same parents! I'm not sure they ever considered the unintended consequence of children ceasing to ask questions so they wouldn't have to "look it up". It didn't happen in my case, but certainly did in others.

Our house had the complete OED, atlases, Fowler, Bulfinch, and many reference materials for children but for some reason, my father would not allow encyclopedias. Old railway timetables were there too. Then there were lots of books shelved away that made no sense to me no matter how hard I pored over them, but I later realized they were present and future value tables, log tables and other such arcane books from my father and grandfather's student days.

Combining railway tables and atlases was a fun pursuit, especially if you could find the odd foreign language dictionary. (As well as a lack of encyclopedias, we also lacked television.)

In my own world, two of my favourite reference books are sort of a pair: The Dictionary of Imaginary Places and The Dictionary of Imaginary Beings. I also love reference books that contain old images, be it plants, monsters, ships, costumes and so on. In this context, Doré is sort of a reference, as are 19th century editions of The Illustrated London News

>6 dianeham: Love She Sleuths to Conquer

>9 AnnieMod: Index Cards: oh the possibilities!

>10 SassyLassy: Right? I had since migrated a lot of what used to be on index cards into Google Sheets... so there is that...

Oh, my... I think we had about two-three dozen encyclopedias alone; other reference works--dictionaries, technical catalogues, atlases, textbooks must have run into high hundreds; possibly thousands. Not counting the journals and magazines at all--just as one example, my dad had a Natl. Geo. sub from the mid-sixties until he died, and at least a dozen other to various archaeological journals.

I got my first independent subscriptions when I was fourteen, to a variety of astronomical (published by observatories) and science journals.

Reference works were and are ubiquitous in my life, although I have long stopped acquiring them at the rate my parents did. And a few years back I got rid of my 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, the most dramatic step I've taken in reducing my library so far.

I'm not qualified to create a reference of any sort, but I do have in mind a model for one that I wish existed: a multi-dimensional network of networks of all knowledge. A sentient library. Something like that may be emerging on the net but haphazardly, with only piecemeal intelligent guidance.

>10 SassyLassy: "I had the same parents! I'm not sure they ever considered the unintended consequence of children ceasing to ask questions so they wouldn't have to "look it up". It didn't happen in my case, but certainly did in others."

My mom was wise in this regard. Instead of "Look it up!" she'd say, "Let's look it up," and then we'd sit down with the dictionary together. My dad was a little less proactive in that way, but he modeled the behavior well by reading quite a lot.

I had a sixth grade teacher who told ius f we had to look up one word, we could look up five on that page. Not sure how many took her up on that, but I did it well into college

Another type of reference has beem a godsend to me the last several years: - fact checking. The first one I encountered was Snopes and what I think is funny is that both sides of the issue have problems with it. Its ratkins make sense to me but I will at times look it up elsewhere. Ill use factcheck.com and WP fact checker, but I am more than willing to check out of my bubble if nec

Oh one more reference that is a god send. Are you tired of making calls answered by robots that put you on hold indifinitly? I go to gethuman.com. They have most of the pajor places people call and some minor ones with not only which phone number you should use but how you should follow the promps. Kept my blood pressure down considerally let me tell you!

>14 cindydavid4: Ooooh, that gethuman website looks like gold! I'm going to be checking that one out! Thanks. (Said the guy who was on hold with the IRS for about 3 hours all told today. :( )

Travelers out there - what were your go to guide books? For many years I was a fan of Lets Go, but after I got passed the hostel stage moved on to Fodors, or Lonely Planet depending on what I needed. When I get some where I start looking for a local guide book. Tho thinking about it - I cant imagine using a book now a days, and can think of many times in a bit of trouble following them. I do love Trip Advisor but again go local once Im set someplace

>16 cindydavid4:
Lonely Planet is definitely a go-to, although I supplement with other sources

For Europe (travel for North Americans), Rick Steves is the best. He hits maybe the top 100 highlights in any place, so if you want to go deeper you need to dig. But if it's your first visit to any European country, he's the go-to source if you want something resembling an authentic experience. And after seven trips to Europe, he's never steered me wrong. His only fail for me was that his 2017 book for Switzerland was pretty useless because our focus was in 1. winter (I was trying to figure out where to ski, and he didn't help one little bit), and 2. we were centered at my daughter's uni in St Gallen, which is in a non-touristy area of Switzerland. Lonely Planet was more helpful on this vacation. I've noticed this with the less-touristy areas of Europe for his books.

Overall, I love reference books and always have. My mom bought a set of The World Book Encyclopedias the summer I was in grade 3 and I devoured them. Now looking back, they were shamelessly US-centric, but I'm one of the only Canadians I know who can ID every US state on a map

>16 cindydavid4: You got me wondering with that question. It occurred to me that when I travel, I am mostly going by train or bus, then walking once I get to my destination. This lets me find things on my own, sort of more by serendipity than plan. One source I do love though is hiking books, which often tell you of places you would never find otherwise. Along this line I also love detailed maps, be they of wilds (OS maps) or inner city warrens. I also like to stay in places where I can do my own cooking, which allows me to explore local markets and grocery stores, which can really give a taste of local conditions.

>17 Nickelini: I'm one of the only Canadians I know who can ID every US state on a map

I always get confused in the US middle, west of the Ohio. In school I could never get the order of the prairie provinces straight. It was only when I lived in Winnipeg for a couple of years that I got that down. For that matter, many Canadians west of Rivière du Loup can't tell you the distinction between Maritime and Atlantic Provinces, Saint John and St. John's and so on. I had a horrifying experience this week when I wanted to send a parcel to Ottawa. The person at the counter told me her menu only gave her Alberta, British Columbia... and no Ottawa. At that stage I suggested she try Ontario and then she would be sure to find Ottawa in the next field on her screen.

Don't get me going on US-centric - 'America' is not the United States. On the plus side it is probably what keeps us all 'bilingual' with measurements and weights.

I agree about hiking guides, some of my favorite were from our local REI, don't remember the name but used it several times while backpacking and discovering

Oh I so miss train travel; We were in heaven in Britain and Europe, riding from place to place, stopping when we wanted. Not sure what happened to Amtrak. There are parts of the country where it is well served, but here, if I wanted to take a train from phx to la, I'd have to drive up (or bus) to Flagstaff to take me there. Just crazy.

image from NBC news

These books seem racist and they simply won't do.
Would you want 'em to exist if they were hurtful to you?

-Josh K Elliott Global News

QUESTION 8

Yesterday, Theodore Geisel's birthday, citing racist imagery Dr Seuss Enterprises announced that these six books would no longer be published, saying "Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr Seuss Enterprises' catalog represents and supports all communities and families."

Was this a good idea? Were there other solutions such as redoing the illustrations? What if they were available in an audio only version?

Well I gotta say I was shocked. I read his biography, know the cartoons he drew in WWII served as proproganda, and no, there were not at all appropriate. Are those looked at differently from the ones in the books?

This does set a uncomfortable precedent; so are all illustrators and authors from other times whose art included things that make us cringe now going to be banned? If so, there will be lots of books removed from shelves.

I also don't know if removing these will improve the lives for people of color. And I guess maybe I am not the one who should be making that decision. The idea of finding other books to replace them is fine; but they aren't seuss. The books they removed are not among the ones I use with my students so it doesn't affect me. I would like to hear from people of color on this subject, do they think it will help or are there larger issues to work on?

I haven't read the books myself. But if you're trying to teach inclusivity to children then I can understand why a decision like that was made. These aren't exactly Dr. Seuss's biggest hits and doesn't tarnish his legacy any more than is WWII illustrations or minstrel play does.

I personally think that removing them to shelves is perfectly fine. I don't think it's a good idea to be 'othering' people of different cultures that young. Society does a fine enough job of that. Changing the illustrates would be a half measure at best. It would be tacitly acknowledging the wrong but just paper over the thing that makes us feel uncomfortable, so we can all move along nothing happened. Parent's who buy these books might be unaware of the content, so removing them from shelves seems like a prudent choice.

It's all bad choices in these kinds of situations. Everything is just bad, removing them feels too close to censorship, changing them is a half measure, and keeping the status quo just doesn't work anymore. Talking about books from ugly periods of our past is always difficult, especially children's books. Adult's are perfectly capable of critical thinking; removing the context and meaning from the racism of the time period. I'm not so sure children even with paternal guidance will always view the story in the same context.

No wrongs are righted with this for sure, but maybe it can help prevent some future ones.

Yep, like >22 stretch: I think it's an important consideration that Geisel's WWII propaganda was made to be consumed by adults, whereas the racism in the books in question is leveled at kids who might much more easily internalize those attitudes. Just because he wrote some wonderful children's books doesn't make him a sacred cow, and I don't really have a problem with removing some of that second-tier Dr. Seuss material from production. We don't miss those Little Black Sambo books, either.

I had been thinking about that in the last couple of hours.

Not creating new editions will not remove the editions already on the market and turning them into forbidden and sought after books is going to achieve the opposite of what the goal is... It is not 1950 anymore - there are millions of those already printed, there are (legal or not) electronic versions so pulling them out of print is... symbolic more than anything.

Should very young kids be exposed to that? Well... unless someone believes that Dr Zeuss creates racists somehow, I am not entirely sure kids even understand what is going on in those stories or that there is some problems in the illustrations. Which is the point to this whole thing but still... are we going to airbrush everything so that kids do not see anything bad until they are what? 5? 10? 18?

But kids do not pick books that early. Parents and teachers do. And even when kids pick up books, they don't go to LT to see what people recommend. They chose from whatever is in front of them. Booksellers make the decision by choosing what to put in places kids can get their hands on. Librarians make the decisions.

So I really do not like the idea - while it seems like these books should not be given to kids, I am not sure this is the way. And it is a very slippery slope. Mark them for a little older children, allow the parents to address the issue as opposed to just sweeping it under the carpet...

>22 stretch:, >23 lisapeet:

Agreed.

>24 AnnieMod:

It's not sweeping them under the carpet, it's relegating them to a now-appropriate domain, which is that of historic children's literature.

I see it as technically similar to retiring obsolete alphabet and grammar books. They retain a historical interest and certainly should be preserved, but you wouldn't use them in current instruction. And if kids learning obsolete scripts or grammar rules bothers us, how much more ought we to be bothered by normalising discrimination to them.

***

General note: it's uncomfortable to see topics like these (and they have recurred) addressed again and again by mostly white people as if we were the arbiters of how much racism one ought to tolerate where etc.

I used Dr. Seuss books with both of my young kids when they were learning to read (they are 11 and 8 now, so this was fairly recent), so I was really disturbed by the thought that I might have been reading them racist propaganda and somehow had missed it! But, these books are completely unfamiliar to me. I did a little reading on it and I think that beyond just the illustrations being an issue, there is also the use of the n-word in at least one of them.

So, for me, it's a no brainer to stop publishing these most-racist books. I don't think they will be missed and I don't think anyone much was reading them anyway.

I do wonder if there are undercurrents that I missed in his more popular works? I must have read The Cat in the Hat, One Fish, Two Fish, The Foot Book, and Hop on Pop a million times and never noticed anything.

I will say that not everything needs to be censored or unpublished that presents an attitude that we no longer want to sanction. An example is that I read the Little House on the Prairie series to both of my elementary aged kids. They love the stories about life in the wilderness and the early days of our western settlement. But there are also troubling and definitely racist attitudes presented about the American Indians. Because they are studying different Native American tribes in school, we were able to talk about how "Indians" are portrayed in the books and whether it was the same way we would view the situation now. It's really great to have these real conversations with young kids and we had some very mature talks.

>22 stretch: These aren't exactly Dr. Seuss's biggest hits

perhaps not now, but when they were written and for most of the printing were very popular. And Mulberry street was one of my fav books as a kid, and one I regularly read to my students. The illustrations were wrong but like I said before, if you are going to remove every book written by someone writing within their time period that we do not accept, no matter how noble, you will not have many books on the shelves

>25 LolaWalser: General note: it's uncomfortable to see topics like these (and they have recurred) addressed again and again by mostly white people as if we were the arbiters of how much racism one ought to tolerate where etc.

I think its imporant to have these conversations but agree with you I am uncomfortable doing for that very reason. Howver. the conversation is more than racism, I think - its the idea of banning books that troubles me the most. These weren't banned per se, but now less people will read them or be encouraged too, and not realize what is out there to explore. I dunno its a slippery slope . Question that I do not have an answer for: What is it that causes racism? Is it seeing illustrations or other art that is demeaning? Is it watching tv and films with characters showing less than favorable traits? Is it by watching police beat them up, but not the white protestors? Or is it being around adults who model racism, sometimes in ways they don't realize Don' know, but Im just sayin

Remembering.... I am a white woman of parents who regularly used yiddish despaaging words to describe people of color (and shocked when I used it to describe one of deli staff, and remember the slap and the march of shame to ask for his forgiveness. ) I could very well have followed in their footsteps but think the mores of the day, the changes that were starting to be more mainstream in the 60s making more of an impact on me.

>21 cindydavid4: I was also shocked, although I was not familiar with the books that were removed. I don't have them in my collection of Dr. Seuss books either. There are a lot of other Seuss books to read that are in print. (Just on a whim, I checked out the prices on these removed Seuss books, and they have skyrocketed to outrageous prices!) The idea of censorship and removing stuff that disturbs us also rears its ugly head, and that is what bothers me most.

The whole debate got me to thinking though about films and books like Fahrenheit 451 and wondering if this is the direction we are heading? And I am thinking of Banned Books Week too, and the books that have been banned in the past.

I don't like the idea of removing parts or just re-doing the books with the offensive content either. (Anyone recall the teachers and librarians who drew clothing on the naked little boy in In the Night Kitchen?)

On the other hand, considering these Seuss books as "historical" literature along with outdated grammar and alphabet books is also a reasonable thought. One opinion piece I read suggested removing the copyright and making the removed Seuss books part of the public domain, so people could read or download them if they want to.

Conclusion: I don't think there is a good answer to this situation, as in >22 stretch:. And it does seem like a slippery slope to me >24 AnnieMod:.

BTW another troublesome book was The 5 Chinese Brothers. As I child I again read it as people using their smarts, untill it was broght up in my kiddie lit class in college and one of the students from China expressed her horror and the pain she felt growing up partly because of that book. Or my mixed feelings reading Dickens Oliver as a child

Also, I did read that the decision to stop publishing those six Dr. Seuss books was made by "Dr. Seuss Enterprises", the company that holds the rights to the books. It wasn't a publisher decision or a decision by schools, libraries, etc. to ban them. This was a decision that these 6 books didn't reflect the messaging the company wants to portray.

That feels different to me than censorship or refusal to publish or being banned.

We have If I Ran the Zoo in an anthology of Dr Seuss. My 21 yr old daughter looked it up yesterday. The offensive picture is of Fu Man Chu style Chinese characters. I remember the picture from 15 years ago when we read the book together and I thought "whoa, that wouldn't get a pass now," and my daughter says she remembers seeing that picture and being puzzled and thinking it was "weird".

from todays new york times

The racist imagery deserves a look and discussion, certainly.

But I am old, retired, and my kid is grown, so I don't think it matters what I think (though I would be happy to rant about age-ist messaging and imagery in children's books ...) .

I do hope that the discussion in academic circles will be balanced with the fact that many of Dr. Seuss's other books had anti-fascist and pro-tolerance messages. That was certainly my takeaway from the books I read as a kid in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Authors who have taken on social injustice in the past (I include Mark Twain) often get smacked around and booted off reading lists for not getting it right by current standards. That may not be a bad thing.

But, ironically, other authors, whose descriptions or images might be just as ethnically pernicious (the Dr. Doolittle books, or The Jungle Book, for ex) sometimes fly under the radar because they don't deal with social issues per se, and so attention isn't as intense on what they're about.

>30 japaul22: you make a good point

>33 nohrt4me2: About the ageism imagery: yep, I thought of that too, since I am a retiree as well. Think of how senior citizens are portrayed in the media, books, etc.

>29 cindydavid4: Also consider these books are a product of the time in which they were written. Dickens wrote his books to bring up social issues of the time. I think historical context is important when considering these issues.

I am sympathetic to their actions. It was the right thing to do.

It's a darn shame it is necessary, but of course "shame" is the very least we can say (to put it mildly) about racism in any and all forms.

On Beyond Zebra was one of the most influential books of all in my young life. It's one of the least known Dr. Seuss books, now, but it's about one child showing another that there are many letters beyond Z. "I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends, but my alphabet starts where your alphabet ends." And, "When you stop at the Z, you're stuck in a rut, but on beyond Zebra, you're anything but." All about thinking outside the box and not settling for the dominant paradigm. So, a great message (I don't think my parents realized how subversive it was), and it's sad that that book will no longer be available.

However, my bottom line:

" . . . Would you want 'em to exist if they were hurtful to you?"

I could not--would not want to--look a neighbor in the eye and say, "I know these images are hurtful and damaging, and will send bad messages to your kids and mine, too, but I'm against taking them off of bookshop shelves because . . ." or “. . . but more important than that is . . . .”

More important than that is what?

I saw one African American scholar being interviewed on TV (sorry, his name escapes me) about this and, to paraphrase his point, we've reached a point in our (American) society where we are trying in ways large and small to make some redress for the past as we work to make the present and the future better. This is part of that process.

>30 japaul22: Agreed.

>33 nohrt4me2: I do hope that the discussion in academic circles will be balanced with the fact that many of Dr. Seuss's other books had anti-fascist and pro-tolerance messages. That was certainly my takeaway from the books I read as a kid in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

yes, people like to think everything is black and white (sorry) when so much should be viewed in shades of grey. The media doesn't help, taking the extreme views in every position as the only two choices out there. I can love Woody Allens Love and Death, and be horrified about the accusations about him,. I can love Green Eggs and Ham and be very uncomfortable about illustrations in these books.

>33 nohrt4me2: But, ironically, other authors, whose descriptions or images might be just as ethnically pernicious (the Dr. Doolittle books, or The Jungle Book, for ex) sometimes fly under the radar because they don't deal with social issues per se, and so attention isn't as intense on what they're about.

don't know if its about social justice books, but yeah, funny how that works (oh, and add Willy Wonka as well)

>37 rocketjk: " . . . Would you want 'em to exist if they were hurtful to you?"

I could not--would not want to--look a neighbor in the eye and say, "I know these images are hurtful and damaging, and will send bad messages to your kids and mine, too, but I'm against taking them off of bookshop shelves because . . ." or “. . . but more important than that is . . . .”

Love the green eggs reference, and agree totally with this

Green Eggs and Ham isn't one of the books being discontinued, though.

Publishers always trim their backlist, I don't see this as being any different. Those books probably aren't great sellers, and will be less so after all this. The books aren't being banned, just out of print, and I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of copies still floating around.

The problem with removing older material because its content doesn’t align with contemporary standards is that the standards will change. Something that’s considered innocuous today will be offensive sometime in in the future. I don’t what it will be or when it will happen, but something like: “In 2060: the beloved works of ABC are being removed because the portrayal of XYZ is an unfair representation to 123.”

Is there a better way to deal with offense material from the past?

A case in point would be H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Horror at Red Hook” and Victor LaValle’s novella The Ballad of Black Tom. For those who don’t know, H.P. Lovecraft was horror writer in the 20s and 30s; he was racist and xenophobic and Horror at Red Hook is a good example of his unchecked biases. Victor LaValle is a contemporary black horror writer in New York City from the neighborhoods Lovecraft denigrated in his story. LaValle was conflicted by his enjoyment (in general) of Lovecraft’s fiction and his feeling that he needs to object to the man. So LaValle wrote a parallel story to Lovecraft’s story: a secret story behind the story. The original is unchanged, but there is now a second view. It’s a way to interact with the biases of the past instead of sweeping them away.

>40 lisapeet: Green Eggs and Ham isn't one of the books being discontinued, though.

hee I know, just giggling over the reference used in the post. Carry on

>40 lisapeet: Those books probably aren't great sellers, and will be less so after all this. The books aren't being banned, just out of print, and I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of copies still floating around.

Mulberry street and If I ran the zoo still definitely is, and the prices for these books are now skyrocketing on ebay etc.

FYI top ten of his books rated highest sales before this:

https://www.amreading.com/2016/07/02/top-10-highest-selling-dr-seuss-books/

would like to find a current list of all his books by sales 2020. Cant locate it, is anyone able to (this is just for my own curioustiy,not to prove any point)

>39 cindydavid4: To be clear, I was quoting that reference from the original post on this topic. I never was much of a Green Eggs and Ham kid. Horton Hatches the Egg, which when I was around six I could recite in full by heart, was more my speed.

>41 gsm235:

The problem with removing older material because its content doesn’t align with contemporary standards is that the standards will change

Um, let's hope the standards won't ever change back to where it's normal to have racist entertainment/instruction.

As I understand it, this is meant to remove these books as something to sell to children. And while going out of print may mean that they will become more scarce for everyone, I don't think it's possible to "remove" them completely, in the age of uploading and POD.

A case in point would be H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Horror at Red Hook” and Victor LaValle’s novella The Ballad of Black Tom.

Sorry, that doesn't make sense. Lovecraft isn't consumed by six-year-olds (nor is anyone proposing to stop printing his works--in fact, even the Library of America includes him). LaValle's ability to confront Lovecraft's racism and respond to it creatively comes from LaValle's competence as an adult.

There is no shortage of racist material for people to confront in this way. But that has got nothing to do with the question of should it still be sold to kids as legitimate kiddie entertainment.

>25 LolaWalser: General note: it's uncomfortable to see topics like these (and they have recurred) addressed again and again by mostly white people as if we were the arbiters of how much racism one ought to tolerate where etc.

I wonder what would be removed looked at from a different point of view.

This image from Hannah Ormston seems particularly fitting at this time of year. I like the boots with the bright laces, as they add hope and joy to the message of dogged determination. 'Persevere' is the motto of Leith.

QUESTION 9
There are many who follow the Pearl rule, otherwise known as the rule of 50. We've discussed this before, but there are other times when you just want or need to keep on going. So, when you hit a tough spot in your reading, either in a particular book or in general, how do you make yourself keep going, or convince yourself that it must be done?

Is there a danger of so called 'summit fever' in this perseverance?

I don't follow the Pearl Rule as such - no strict limit on pages. But if I'm seriously slogging in a book, or if I put it down and don't want to pick it up again, I will often go read the last few pages. Sometimes it ends well and then I want to know how they got there so I go back to where I'd gotten to and read the whole thing. Sometimes it ends...not well, but interestingly; then I'll start where I left off and skim forward so I get at least a notion of what went on. And all too often, it ends just as badly as it is where I'm reading, and then I know I don't need to read any more. All done. It saves me a lot of time.

I'm not easily spoiled - well, sometimes (I'd be reluctant to do this with a mystery, unless I'm pretty certain that I won't want to read any more). But most times, even if I know exactly what happened, it doesn't change my interest in knowing _how_ it happened.

And I'm very good at putting a book down and just never picking it up again - which is much worse than reading the end and declaring it done. That way the book just hangs there, never finished so I can never get rid of it...I'm trying very hard to do the reading of the end rather than put it down and assure myself I'll pick it up again later.

I don't know what you mean by "summit fever" - a desire to finish the book despite all pain involved? If so, my end-reading is designed to short-cut that.

Sometimes I'll pick up a dozen books and put them all down again after a short period reading - that's a book slump to me. My cure for that is usually to go (re)read a book I _know_ I love, one I can get lost in - that's usually enough to jump-start my reading again.

>48 jjmcgaffey: I don't follow the Pearl Rule as such - no strict limit on pages. But if I'm seriously slogging in a book, or if I put it down and don't want to pick it up again, I will often go read the last few pages. Sometimes it ends well and then I want to know how they got there so I go back to where I'd gotten to and read the whole thing. Sometimes it ends...not well, but interestingly; then I'll start where I left off and skim forward so I get at least a notion of what went on. And all too often, it ends just as badly as it is where I'm reading, and then I know I don't need to read any more. All done. It saves me a lot of time.

Oh this is me to a tee! Along with putting books down and then never finishing them. If that happens they are liable to be tossed in the trade pile and taken to my fav indie, without a second thought; rarely do I regret not finishing these. Glad Im not the only one checking out the last few pages. Loved the scene in Harry met Sally, when Billy Crystal does the same thing, and says to her 'oh Im just finishing a book' Oh yes. And like you I am not bothered by spoilers; its not what happened, its how it happened, which is why I love psychological thrillers over mysteries!

I give a 300-350 paged book 3 chapters to convince me. If not, then I ditch it.

I don’t follow any rule on pages. If a book isn’t working for me, I set it aside. There are more possible books to read than I could ever finish in a lifetime, so I shouldn’t be too worried over those I don’t finish.

>47 SassyLassy:

I tend to finish books I start - although I do not push it. If a book does not work at that moment, I will put it on the side to wait for me to get in the mood for it. It may take months or years sometimes but I rarely abandon a book forever. Well, there may be a book or three that I started a decade ago and are still waiting to be finished (nothing longer than that because I moved a decade ago, minus my old books...) :)

How much time/how many pages I give it depends. Sometimes it is a single chapter or less than 10 pages. Sometimes I will give it a 100. Depends on the book and my mood. And I occasionally chose my next book by a process of reading a page to see what will grab my attention - went through 4 last night before I settled.

Although as I am getting older, that "let's see if this works" section gets shorter and shorter. :) Not sure where it will lead but these days I am a lot less prone to pushing through if something does not work and a lot more likely to leave a bookmark in it and leave it on the side. Or just return it to the shelf. :)

If I am reading a particular book for a book group, I can usually convince myself to keep going, even if I find myself not as engaged as I would like. Sometimes that involves the scandalous practice of reading the end of the book first (I think I horrified some members of my book group when I admitted to doing this with The Nightingale and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, but it let me actually enjoy the books more) or otherwise "spoiling" myself in some way. Other times it involves bribing myself with a different book that I want to read. Read some of the book I "have" to read, then I can read the other one. (NB: this strategy is only effective if you read multiple books at a time).

I've been reading for long enough that I can usually identify when a book that isn't really working for me isn't working because it is just not to my taste (and won't be) versus when a book isn't working because I'm not in the right place to enjoy it at the time. In both cases I will set the book aside, but titles in the former category almost never get picked up again, while I will circle back to those in the latter category. I don't have a set number of pages or chapters that I give a book before making such decisions, because every book is different.

And if I hit a rough spot in my reading life in general, sometimes the best thing to do is just give myself permission to take a break for a day or two.

>48 jjmcgaffey: Summit fever in this article here https://myedinburghpress.com/2018/04/26/persevere/
is blindly and bullishly battering towards the end point regardless of the cost

>48 jjmcgaffey: >54 shadrach_anki: Interesting idea about reading the end to encourage reading the rest. I just came back from my book club where the topic was Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, and someone said she had done just that, like >49 cindydavid4:. She found the end to be such a surprise, she went back chapter by chapter to see how the author got there. She said it turned a book she almost gave up on into a delight.

>52 gsm235: Just wondering though, how you would convince yourself to finish a book that you had to read for some reason: work, exam, review etc.

>53 AnnieMod: That response brings me to something I wonder about in my own house. Where do you put those books waiting to be finished, but not being read currently: a special shelf or pile, maybe somewhere out of sight where they won't reproach you, or do they build up in a pile by the chair?

>55 SassyLassy: If I cannot see them, I forget about them; if they are too visible, I feel guilty. :)

I used to shelf them back where they belonged with a bookmark sticking on top of them so I can visibly see it. That worked somewhat when I had just 6 bookcases in one room... not as much now :) Plus I have a lot of slipcases editions and ones with a built-in ribbon and for these having a bookmark is not doable...

So these days they are in a few piles/places - my nightstand, a shelf in a bookcase in my library that is next to my reading chair (and which is basically unreachable unless you are sitting in the chair or move it) and a coffee table in the corner of my living room next to the sofa. Not that I have that many books started but these piles also contain the books and magazines I plan to get to soon(ish) - usually books that just made it here and had not been shelved properly (because I plan to read them ASAP) or older ones I really mean to read now... When something does not move from the pile(s) in 6-10-12 months (well... when I remember anyway - or more likely when the piles get too high or the shelf has no space left), it gets shelved back, usually without a bookmark (I will start over anyway) unless it is a collection/anthology/omnibus of some type.

>55 SassyLassy: Its taken me years of weeding, and trading in books, and organizing my shelves that I think I finally have a good system. Used to have a TBR shelf/shelves in our office and bedroom where we keep most of our books, but I'd forget about them. We needed room for somebodies collection.....So I put shelving in my Ariz room *which is where I hibernate, and there put books that I plan on reading eventually I see them frequently and if they have been there awhile I either read it or give up and toss a few unread into the trade pile they've been there a while.. The books I plan to read for a book group, or ones I am currently reading are on a table next to my reading chair, and at times stacked in such a way that I worry about a stray cat knocking them all down. Anyway that seems to work for me. I also have covered bookshelves in our hallway where I keep and display my collectibles

* also called breakfast room, its my 'man cave' with books, comfy chairs, lots of plants and tchatchka that make me smile, and my lap top. Quite comfy and cozy and relaxing

I'm drowning in books TBR, that is all, they are all over the place and (I'm pretty sure) multiplying through some unholy means.

On reading, I have no qualms about ditching whatever I feel like ditching whenever, no special number of pages. However, I rarely pick up books I can't finish.

Q 9

I do Pearl-rule sometimes. I'm over 50 years old, so I don't have to read all 50 pages to follow the rule. Other times I bail earlier --sometimes it's to put the book aside and try later, sometimes it's to get the book out of my house as soon as possible. Occasionally I will quit 100s of pages in when I'm really wanting to like a book, or I think it's important or something, but I just can't stand it a page longer. Books that fall into this last category include Cry Beloved Country, All the Light We Cannot See and Grapes of Wrath

It is very rare for me not to finish a book I have started. If I am not enjoying a book then there is always the hope that I will get into it further along. I am a curious person and always want to see what is round the corner. The fact that there is usually nothing very much different does not stop me wanting to look.

I would never dream at stopping at a page number; say page 50 - what if page 51 revealed the secret of the universe? or the equivalent.

I suppose the easiest books to put down are short stories, because in many collections they seem to deteriorate the more you read, but you never know - that killer short story could be the last one in the book.

It is also perhaps with me; a sense of failure if I do not finish a book I have started. Perhaps I am thinking I am not going to let some scribbler somewhere get the better of me. I don't think I am Obsessive- Compulsive. Can you be Obsessive about one activity?

>55 SassyLassy: I very much doubt I’d ever be in a situation when there was a reason I needed to finish a book. I do remember being in a book club years ago and not finishing a title. No big deal.

I'm a compulsive finisher, so if a book turns into a slog I just... keep slogging. Hey, sometimes they get better and it pays off!

QUESTION 10

Since we can't physically browse our LT bookshelves, we use tags to set up our virtual display. On LT, there are 171, 718, 574 different tags as of today. Some books have truly complex tags, some have none at all.

The top five are fiction, to-read (that says something), non-fiction, fantasy and history.

How do you tag to help you find your books on LT: subject matter, dewey decimal, LC number, location (upstairs hall landing), or some other way altogether?

N/A coz i don't keep a list of books here. tho they would make some cool bookmarks!

I’m kind of fussy with tags and have a general order to use them.

format: print, digital, audio —required
secondary format: Audible, Kindle, cassette —conditional
category: fiction, non-fiction, poetry —required
subject: novel, short stories, essays —required
genre: mystery, historical fiction, science fiction —conditional
descriptive: translation, {place name}, {review location}, {anything else} —conditional

Examples:

The Sound and the Fury: print, fiction, novel, Mississippi
Deep River: audio, Audible, fiction, novel, historical fiction, Pacific Northwest
Tender Is the Flesh: digital, kindle, fiction, novel, horror, translation, Washington Post Book Review
Europe Against the Jews: digital, kindle, non-fiction, history, Holocaust

I use collections to shelve books I read in a year or my to read list.

Subject matter for me. Some of my tag names and, especially, my criteria for which books get which tags (and how many) have drifted over my years here. I keep trying to talk myself into a project where I go through my whole LT library and make sure my tags are consistent, but I'm guessing that's one project that will remain unstarted!

One question I ask myself is how many related tags does a book need? Does a book with an "autobiography" tag also need a "biography" tag? Does a book with an "african american history" tag also need an "american history" tag and a "history" tag?

Life is full of complex philosophical questions, n'est pas?

When historians and biographers go through my LT library, what will be most helpful to their research? :)

I have five broad categories of tags that I use. By far the most numerous are subject/genre tags, and I can be somewhat...whimsical when it comes to how many I will put on any given book. General rule of thumb is "enough to be useful" which is going to vary across my library.

The next largest category is the tags that relate to reading status (current reading, unread, TBR, TRR, TBF, read: {date}, abandoned: {date}, book group: {name}, buddy read). In theory, every book in my library should have at least one of these tags.

The final three categories are format (ebook, audiobook, omnibus, etc), location (mostly for books I have in boxes, or for noting where I can obtain a particular book), and "project" tags. All the project tags I use I start with an underscore, so they sort to the top of the list.

There are a handful of other tags I use that don't fit neatly into the aforementioned categories, and also tags that I used at one point, but no longer actively apply to my books. At some point I would like to go through and standardize things, but the size of that particular project is...rather daunting, so I keep putting it off.

Oops, never answered QUESTION 9: I don't have a formula for putting a book aside—if it's not working for me I'll know when that is. But that rarely happens because, like >60 baswood:, I'm curious, and hate the idea that there might be some redeeming value five pages after I've given up. I actually don't often give up on a book, and most of my unfinished books tend to be because I picked something else up and forgot about them, rather than dislike.

QUESTION 10: I tag based on how I think I'll want to search my books down the line. So: fiction/nonfiction, format (short stories, graphic novel or nonfiction, poetry, biography, illustrated, correspondence, etc.), and then rough subject matter or theme, which often includes location by country or region. I'll also note whether I read it for an LJ (or other) review or for Bloom. But it's not super organized or consistent—I'd be a lousy cataloger—so much as trying to anticipate my own needs when I'm searching my collection for something. Life is short and I am scattered.

I have periodic outbreaks of tag-cleaning, but it’s still something of a random mess in my library. I just noticed that I had some books tagged “Mishima” and some tagged “Yukio Mishima”, for instance. Easy to correct when you spot it, but hard to spot. And that sort of thing can make you miss a search result.(*)

The theory is that the first tag I attach to something identifies the broad subject area where I’d be likely to find it on my shelves (“fiction”, “history”, “law”, etc.), and then subsequent ones identify more specific things about it, either important subjects it covers (times, places, people, etc.) or more obscure things that could be useful in a future search by me or someone else. “Where was that book that talked about hippopotami in Colombia, again?”

I’m conscious that tagging on LT is a collective activity, so I try to stick to generally useful and intelligible tags, and try not to put specific information about my copy of the book in the tag field (there’s no point in adding to the general noise with “unread” or “audiobook”, or the meaningless “non-fiction”). I use tagmash a lot, so I know all about how useful that extra little bit of information can be. And how misleading...

My most-used tag is inevitably “fiction” (2282), followed a long way behind by “poetry” (357), “crime” (330), “LGBT” (282), and “19th century” (250). Hmmm. Probably not unrepresentative. Still, as long as there is more poetry in the world than crime, it can’t be all bad!

I average 3.61 tags per book, according to the stats page, and I use about 2500 different tags over 4400 books. The 81 untagged books all seem to be on the TBR or the wish list: I gave everything else at least one tag when I originally added it to LT and/or when I last read it.

I have been known to give silly tags when a book exasperates me. One book is tagged “unwisely self-published”, and there is another tagged “straight white men”, for instance, but I have a feeling that if I had been more thorough and consistent there would be a lot more in both categories...

Looking at my tag list there are quite a few words and names that now mean nothing to me without clicking on the books concerned, so it’s obviously worth having the tags. One real puzzle was “hermeanderen” — I was convinced that it must have been a typo, spaces or commas going missing, but realised when I followed it back that it was a Dutch book that was talking about the process of deliberately “re-meandering” rivers in landscape conservation projects. Probably not a search-term I or anyone else would ever use, that one.

—
(*) Autocorrect helpfully turned “Yukio” into “Yukon” for me when I first posted this, which is illustrative of another of the fun hazards of tagging!

I tag for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or humor. Mass market paperbacks get a "paperback" tag. Non-fiction gets some slightly idiosyncratic but mostly pretty broad tags for subject matter. (I don't tag fiction by genre, though. The boundaries are way too fuzzy, and ultimately I don't actually care very much.) Essay collections, anthologies, and single-author story collections get tagged for that. Being the giant fangirl I am, I have a large-ish collection of Star Trek and Doctor Who books, which get relevant tags. Unread books get an "unread" tag, and wishlist books a "wishlist" tag, as well as getting put in the appropriate collections. Also, when I read a book, I tag it with the year I read it. (I have that tagged going back to 1997, which is when I properly started keeping track.)

It's funny. I would have said my tagging system was pretty simple and unfancy, but it sounds more complicated when I lay it out like that. Still not nearly as complicated as some people's systems, though!

>63 SassyLassy:
I have different types of tags
The "I do not own these now" group: library, ill, lib:Name_of_Library and ill:Name_of_Library, KindleU, prime, to_library and donated

The read status one: read, read in YYYY, abandoned, abandoned in YYYY, to read, to read:kindle, to read:print, audio:listened, audio:YYYY, plays:read in YYYY

The series set: series:continue, series:in progress, series:last, series:part, series:start, series:stop, series:waiting

The contents ones: collection:Name , anthology:Name, omnibus:Name, magazine:Name and magazine:Name:Issue (these need converting from an older format) - so I can pull the contents of a book on a single page (when I catalog separately).

The type ones: type:anthology, type:collection and so on

The genre ones: genre:biography, genre:fantasy and so on

The publisher ones: publisher:Name

I am adding new groups now and again - I am contemplating adding play:length ones to be able to separate full plays from the 10 minutes ones easily just now. I have a dcu:line and mcu:line sets for my comics and GNs (And these need a lot more added). I have a few history ones that I need to rework when I add more of my books...

And if you look at my current tags, there are a few that do not fit anywhere - they were from previous systems that had not been cleaned completely. I used to have original:Language and language:Language but these are kinda superseded by fixing the actual fields in the records - not sure if I am going to keep them.

I tend to also have tags matching collections on purpose - I have Read collection and read tag so I can look for combinations easily - novels I had read for example.

Q 10 - Tags

My tags mostly work for me just fine, but if I look closely they're a mess. Straightening them out would take way too much work, so there they sit. No one cares about them except me.

For some reason I use "non-fiction" but not "fiction". This made sense when I started tagging in 2008, but all these years later is pretty much meaningless.

I keep all my many unread books in my To Read Collection, so I never use the "to read" tag. Books in that collection don't necessarily have tags, but if they do, it's so I can find something in a category I specifically want to read. In the past I used a lot of "1001" and "Booker Prize," the last few years I focus more on the nationality of the author or if the book has a strong sense of place, in which case I might add "Italy" or whatever. The other tags I use for my TBR pile are if the book is a special edition, or from a favourite publisher, such as "Europa Editions."

The real tagging happens when I've finished the book and move it into the Your Library Collection. Apparently I have 9,551 tags on 2,556 books, which is an average of 3,74 tags per book. These can be anything that I find pertinent to me about the book. I have some pretty obscure tags that mean nothing to anyone else, and sometimes with location I get very specific. For example, "Fabrizio," which is my husband's name. I use it whenever I come across a character with that name (and now I note that some of my Fabrizio books aren't in my LT books).

Tags are fun and I like playing with them.

reading the above comments make me realize I have no idea what a tag is or what it is for; is it a digital way of sorting books. I somehow don't see a need for it in my home library - I know where everything is, and generally books in each section is alphabetical. The exception to this is for my special book collection where I have an index card for each book, title, author , Illustrator, copyright year and publisher, how much I paid for it. That keeps me from buying things I already have which ive done a few times...

>73 cindydavid4: Tags are basically for people who want to keep track of their books on here and label them by type (i.e., tag). You can make up your own tag names, which is kind of fun. I don't catalogue here anymore because it's time-consuming and duplicates the tagging I already do on my Kindle with the "collections" function. Most importantly I just don't find record keeping fun so I don't do it.

>73 cindydavid4: Yes, the tags and tagging referenced here are all digital in nature. They provide one way to browse one's cataloged collection here on LT, and as you can see from everyone's responses so far, how and why each user chooses to tag things is going to be specific to them.

I currently have 3,636 books catalogued on LT, but I lack the shelf space to actually organize those books using any method other than Tetris (and boxes), which isn't exactly conducive to easy and comfortable browsing. For browsing purposes, it's far easier to go through my catalog and follow the tags I've set up. So I (or really, anybody who wants to look at my catalog; it isn't private) can go into my tags and look to see all the books I've tagged, say, fairytale retelling, or read: 2020. Neither of those categories is likely to be grouped together on a shelf, even if I did have the shelf space.

>74 nohrt4me2: Most importantly I just don't find record keeping fun so I don't do it.

I get that. You're normal.

I'm okay with not being anywhere normal when it comes to this But I LOVE record keeping my books, and find it so gratifying, and relaxing, and fun. This year, my physical book journal (sort of morphed into a book bullet journal) is the one I go to first.

One of the things I love about LT is that we all use it the way that works for us. And we are all individuals. I love the flexibility of LT for that reason. In 2009 I met up with a LTer on my vacation to England (I live in Canada), and she logged on to LT on her laptop during our day together and I didn't even recognize what she was doing. She navigated the site in a entirely different order than I do. I generally assume everyone uses LT like I do, but every now and then I'm jarred out by other LTer's comments and realize, NO, that's not true, but more importantly, we all communicate with each other and share our love of books, however we do it.

>73 cindydavid4: As others have mentioned tags are a way to label books with characteristics that you may want to search by. For example, if you've labeled your books with setting-type tags, you can easily look at all your books tagged "Japan" and sort by your rating if someone asks for a recommendation. Or you can use tags to easily find the intersection of your "To Read" collection and "Japan" if you have a hankering to read a book set there.

I love reading challenges and prompts as a way to help me choose what books to read next. Tags help me find books to fill particular prompts. My favorite part of LT, and I have no idea where it is on the site and so have it bookmarked, is Tagmash.

For example, one prompt for the Reading Women challenge is read a Memoir by an Indigenous, First Nations, Native, or Aboriginal Woman. So I can use tag mash to find all of the books on LT that members have tagged "Native American" and "Memoir":
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Native+American,+memoir

Or "First-Nations" and "Memoir":
http://www.librarything.com/tag/First+Nations,+memoir

Or Balkans, WWII, fiction:
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Balkans,+WWII,+fiction

>76 Nickelini: "You're normal."

Well, that's a relief.

thanks all for your responses!! Sounds like it all works for you in whatever way you use it, and if I don't thats fine too. (and yeah >79 nohrt4me2: we are all normal!)

Sorry, late to the party....

Question 9 My first thought was 'what the ... is the Pearl rule?' Had to Google it. The wonders of the internet that we now need gurus and rules regarding our reading.

I have NO rules. And am of an age where I am acutely aware that life is short and there are more books out there than I can read in whatever my lifetime is. I used to finish nearly all books I started, but no more. The last book I dumped was after 80 pages. Some are dumped after two chapters.

---------

Question 10. Short answer: Mostly I tag by kind of book and subject matter to various degrees of specificity.

Although...I used to be a much more prolific tagger. When I was first on LT in 2006 and putting my books in, I tagged fiction for country set in and the authors for country of origin. I also tagged for so many other things that meant something to me at the time. These days. I tag for:

fiction/nonfiction/poetry and sub-categories like novella, short stories; history, women's studies, psychology, or poetry anthology/poetry collection. And further sub-categories i.e. literary tags like "satire" or "coming-of-age."

Then there can be further breakdown as nonfiction-->history--> breaks down into tags like American Revolution, New England, Industrial Revolution.

I have tags for three authors names: Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates and Boris Pasternak. These reflect collections of the authors' work and books related to them (biography, memoir, literary criticism).

My most original tag is one called "clever stuff" which is a catchall tag I use for weird, uncanny and other hard-to-neatly classify clever stuff : It houses works by everyone from Lydia Millet, China Mieville, Angela Carter, Nicholson Baker, James Morrow, Jonathan Lethem, Margo Lanagan, Ray Bradbury, Viktor Pelevin. David Herter, Jeffrey Ford...etc

Every now and again, I spend an hour or so cleaning up or eliminating tags.

I have a collection on my Kindle that has expanded from "dystopian" to "dystopian and speculative fx" to "dystopian, spec fx, weird sh*t."

Stuff that doesn't go in the "vampire" or "sci fi" dumps or that seems to be a bit stranger than plain old "recent fiction" goes into the "dystopian, spec fx, weird sh*t" collection.

It's grown quite a lot since the pandemic started ...

Once a librarian, always a librarian. Very fond of Dewey so I tag by general subject and sometimes format, like baby board books or easy readers. I try not to have too many tags. I combine similar topics like biography/memoir
folklore/fairy tales
Sci fi/fantasy

I like knowing I have 107 cookbooks, for instance, or 275 picture books.

Re: Reference books.
My favorite is my new Rand McNally 2021 Road Atlas & National Park Guide. I'm always planning road trips and looking up interesting places!

I tag fic, genre, I don't own this book or !where I got this book (I know, From Where, but the tag works better for me), sometimes ~where I heard about this book. For non-fiction I have a complex semi-hierarchical subject setup - Science.Biology.Evolution for my Stephen Gould books, for instance. (I used to use colons in between, but calibre developed hierarchical tagging with periods...and then I discovered that the colons confuse LT search, too, so I'm working on switching them). And then there's a bunch of books tagged things like Essay (and where I got it), meaning "I think this isn't fiction but I haven't read it and I'm not quite sure what it's about".

The character marks make the same kind of tag sort together on the tag page. @, !, ~, _ is something about the book (as opposed to its contents) (_hardback, _imported(date)), __ (two underscores) is something I need to do to the book record (__fix_pub, __scan_cover...).

I go to the tag page every now and then and scan through looking for tags that ought to be the same one - capitalization differences and the like. Or sometimes the autofill shows me that kind of error. I don't spend a lot of time on fixing them, though - I probably should, but I don't.

My inner nerd has smiled and sometimes let out the odd "Yikes" at these responses to tagging. Like our libraries, the methods cover just about everything. >76 Nickelini: said it really well: One of the things I love about LT is that we all use it the way that works for us.
My own questions that follow are out of sheer curiosity.

>65 gsm235: What makes the format the most relevant identifier for you? It puts me in mind of kingdoms in biology.

>69 thorold: I have the perfect book for “hermeanderen”. Naturally I can't find it right now, and it doesn't seem to be added to my LT world as yet, but the title is something along the lines of "A Language of Landscape". Who knows, maybe “hermeanderen” is there.

>83 nrmay: Completely off the subject of tagging: I love sitting around planning road trips. Do you keep your old road atlases?

>84 jjmcgaffey: Do you use the "From where" when entering a book in your catalogue?

>81 avaland: Clever stuff is fun.

________

A sort of follow up question:

One of the things I wonder about is when a category becomes large enough, or is of great enough interest to the LT member, that a separate collection is warranted. This can save all kinds of scrolling through looking for a particular book.

Does anyone use tag mirror? It is a great way to see how others think of a particular book in your library, and shows just how many ways there are at looking at just one book.

Question 10

My own tagging is somewhat obsessive, and can be contradictory. For instance, although I use the tags Fiction Canada, Fiction France, Fiction Scotland, etc, I use the tags Scotland History, France History, Canada History etc. I'm not sure how that came about, but I suspect it is because the country is the most germane when it comes to history and perhaps fiction is the most germane when it comes to well, fiction. I decided from the start not to have fiction as one category as it would be far too broad for me.

Fiction from parts of the world outside my usual reading patterns is again inconsistent, as I have Fiction South America, (35 books) with each book further tagged into country, Fiction South America, Argentina, but then Fiction Iceland, with only 6 books, gets its own category.

I try to keep tags relatively self explanatory so that others looking for the odd book of fiction from say, Romania, could find it easily if they searched LT by topic. There are some odd tags though like "Half the Sky" which is fairly self explanatory to me, but might not be to some others. Others were just fun: Ahoy, which should probably become its own collection, Footnotes and Families, and Rogues and Rascals which is not to be confused with Sleuths and Spies.

Despite trying to keep things simple, I must confess that I sometimes have to resort to looking at my tag list to find a particular way of tagging something new.

Although I love the sound of tagging books by "Upstairs Hall Landing" or some such thing, it sounds very romantic, my books move around too much to use location.

I don't tag on LT. I have avoided it because I am the sort of person who would get so wrapt up in it that I am sure it would be overcomplicated. I just don't dare to get started.

>85 SassyLassy: When From Where was added, I did it for a bunch of books - but partly because I was looking in horror at the literally thousands of books I already had, most tagged with a ! (though !dunno is a frequent tag) and partly because I find adding another tag much simpler than going to a separate field (especially since I can tag from the Add Books page or in Import, but From Where would have to be a separate step), I quit pretty soon and haven't bothered.

I have a lot of collections, too, but most of those are about the books or my relationship to the books. I have Discard (it's still in my house, but not for long) and Discarded (all gone); Read, Read This Year, Read but Unowned; Working On, Cover Done, and Cover Maybe Done - my current project is getting decent covers on all my books. Current for the last couple years at least. Borrowed, Lent, Boxed (then tags indicate exactly _which_ box it's in).

Tags are more about contents (or actions - things I need to do). I tend to think of collections as separate folders (a book should not be in Working On and Cover Done, for instance. Or Your Library and Discarded). Tags - a book can belong to several genres at once, and that feels more taggish to me. The more I think about it the less sense it makes - but my setup works for me.

I had more collections when they were new, and I started running into problems and seeing bug reports from people who had more collections than I did. So I cut them down and put more info into tags.

>85 SassyLassy:
I only keep the old atlases till I get the new edition.
I have a city street atlas
2 state atlases - one road map, one topographic.
the new Rand McNally for US, Canada.
a couple world atlases.

some catch up.

Q7 - reference - I think my LT library is a kind of reference work that I've created, if just for myself.

Q8 - Dr. Sues - enjoyed the conversation, but nothing to add

Q9 - reading perseverance - This question has me thinking about my reading. I'm willing to push through a book I'm not enjoying if I think it's worth it. So, maybe the question I should address is what does "worth" mean in this context, or... maybe not, since I don't really think that way consciously. I have happily given up on books, and usually because I didn't think they were worth my time. It's very nice feeling to be free of a bad book. But I've also paused on books for years, unwilling to abandon them as I would like to finish, but unwilling to pick them up either...so far. But lately everything is planned and so somewhere in my head I've created a value about finishing each book. There is a purpose to get to the end, even if it's a constructed and so a kind of play-purpose as I'm reading for enjoyment. But it means that there is a kind of imagined personal reward for finishing the book. So lately I work towards that, and then try to figure out how to enjoy my way there. It means I'm willing to push through a lot, and very hesitant to give up on these books. And it also means that when I'm not enjoying the book, I tend to blame myself and try to adjust how I read it. (except for Booker longlist books - there I'm ruthlessly critical.)

Q10 - I have an elaborate and vague tag system, the combination generating an somewhat incoherent mess. It works this way... since you asked... : ) :

1. original publication date as a 4-digit number (with negatives for bce). This lets me sort all my books on this date whenever I sort by tags. (nonsense note: when the same author publishes two books in the same year, my second tag is "a", or "b", to force the sorting)

2. some variation of main classification - fiction, history, poetry, whatever. I don't use "non-fiction". I don't have a reason

3. other subject stuff of interest to me, including locations

4. my themes. These are currently my most interesting tags to me. homeric theme (link ) goes from Homer through Virgil, Dante, Petrarch and will continue as I move up through time. I also have Bible, Booker, Cather and Shakespeare theme, etc.

5. the author's birth or main living locations. Sometimes I include the cities. And, for American authors, I always include the states. Like Texas Author

6. sometimes physical aspects of the book - ebook, audiobook

7. a tag on the state of my cover image for this book

8. a "from" tag, which dates from before we could add the bookstore we bought the book. I do use that, but keep this tag too)

9. a tag on sort of ownership. Because I have kids books and my spouse's books (although they are not kept up to date). So, for "my" books, I put my initials, DHC

10. I recently added an acquired tag for the year acquired

11. If I've read the book I add a "Read" tag (predates collections) and I add another tag with the year, like read_2021. If I'm reading the book, I tag it "Reading"

I do not recommend this system to anyone.

My books are tagged in the following way:
Country, language, unread, inTokyo, location, readxxxx

Country - country the author is from (I typically read authors who write about their own country)
language - language the book is in
unread, inTokyo - unread is an unread book in general; inTokyo are the unread books I own here in Tokyo
readxxxx - year I read the book

Then I add the tag nonfiction if it is a nonfiction.

These tags are incredibly helpful when I want to find a book, or need help selecting my next read.
Sometimes I think I'd like to add more tags like "dystopian", etc. but I don't read enough books to justify so much categorization. Plus, while I understand the need, I hate when people put tags like "rape" as these can act as a spoiler for certain books. And let's not get into the tags such as "maincharacterdies".

Some incredibly organized people here. One last question on libraries while we're on the topic:



QUESTION 11

Duplicates are inevitable in a book lover's life. Someone you care about gives you a book you already have; you buy a book you forgot you already own; the book is on your TBR and when you see a different cover you forget it's waiting for you at home; the latest edition is beautifully illustrated and or annotated, so you buy it.

How do you handle duplicates in your world?

I think we covered this a while back?

A lot depends on why the book is duplicated. For example, I might get an audio book of a print book or a digital copy. I’m pretty good at knowing what I have so very rarely buy duplicates

When I have a duplicate copy, I’ll usually take the print copy to a used book store, but not always. Sometimes there are interesting differences between editions: for example, The Magus by John Fowles can have significant stylistic differences depending on the edition.

I have a few favorite books of which I might have both a paperback and a hard cover (Catch 22 comes to mind). Or where the second copy is a fun pulp fiction version with an amusingly lurid or interestingly artistic front cover. Otherwise, if I mistakenly bring home a book that I already own, one copy of the other will either be passed on to a friend or donated to Goodwill or our local friends of the library.

The only author I purposefully buy duplicates of is Joseph Conrad. I have a whole Conrad bookcase, although it's a small one and mostly full by now, so I don't aggressively seek out interesting or old copies of Conrad novels in the same way I used to.

When I first got together with my wife about 18 years ago and we started traveling together, I began a tradition of buying a Conrad novel in the language of the country we were visiting. So I have at least one Conrad translation in Spanish, Czech, Finnish, French, Italian, Croatian and Hebrew. Also, speaking of Catch 22, I have a third copy of that novel, a hardcover in Czech.

QUESTION 11: DUPLICATES
I don't end up with dupes from buying so much as I do from a) gifts and b) picking up or saying yes to a publisher's offer of a print galley even though I have an e-galley. If someone gives me a book that I already have I generally keep the gift—always if it's inscribed, but even when it's not, out of sentimentality that the giver's hands touched this particular copy—and I'll give away the second copy, since I have lots of friends I trade books with. When I have duplicate galleys I'll usually keep the print version around to read, since it's easier to take notes/sticky up, and then once I've read it I'll give that away too. Sometimes I'll pass along a print version even before reading, especially if I don't intend to review it, though I'll usually check the e-galley and make sure it's formatted half decently. Some of them are just impossible to read easily.

I have a few books I deliberately have multiple copies of, for the purpose of lending them to others (so I don't care if I get it back - I can freely hook a new person for that author/book!). I think I have one book that I have both a plain and a (gorgeously) illustrated hardback - a Robin Hood, though I forget which one. Probably Pyle, he's the one most people know (aside from Disney). Other than that, if I end up with two copies of a book I generally put the spare (the new one, unless the old one is in bad shape) into the discard pile - library, book sale, thrift shop, wherever I'm getting rid of books this time.

Oh, I have quite a few books that I have both a physical and an e-version; in some cases that's temporary and I'll get rid of the physical version, in others (my favorites) I keep both. Though I'm reading the paper books less and less (I can tell, when the dust is visible on the top edge...); someday I may get rid of all the paper books. Though then it's harder to lend. Ah well.

I donate duplicates.

>93 cindydavid4: Yes, I'm getting — very fitting — feelings of déjà-vu on this one as well :-)

I tend to give away duplicates if there's no obvious good reason to keep both copies. In a few cases I've hung on to two copies, e.g. because one is in the original language and the other is a translation but has more useful notes and introduction. Pressure on shelf-space is increasing, and duplicates are the most obvious things to clear out first, so most of them have gone already.

Duplicates....

I have multiple versions of the books I love - if I know I will read the thing more than once, I may as well have more than one copy. Most of these are genre novels.

And then there is Shakespeare... I have 6 versions of some plays - I get them for the different critical material usually and some for the pure beauty of the book or illustrations. But I have the habit of reading random scenes at random times so...

Occasionally I will have a duplicate of a book because I have one from a sequence in a different format (which I want to keep for some reason) and do not want an incomplete sequence. Although I am growing out of this these days - I just keep the copy I like and ignore series uniformity. And there are the cases where I will keep an individual novel even if now I have an omnibus - simply because I really like the edition. I probably have a handful of these (LOA editions can be annoying that way)

Anything else that ends up a duplicate gets donated to the library (or to a friend if someone asks for them).

E-book/Audio/paper duplicates do not count as they serve different functions. And they do not take space so I can just ignore them. :)

>93 cindydavid4: >99 thorold: fitting indeed - it's good to see people pay attention

This question seemed somewhat familiar, but I thought it was some time ago, and maybe in another thread. Currently, it followed from the discussion of libraries and tagging.

Meantime, there are new CR people, and for those of us around for awhile, circumstances change and what we did once upon a time, may not be what we would do now.

New question on Tuesday (or sooner)

>101 SassyLassy: glad someone else noticed; but all is well no worries, carry on...will wait for Tues :)

Q 11 Duplicates

I know my shelves, so I don't end up with unintentional duplicates. No one is brave enough to buy me a book because they know I own so many. I do own duplicates of books I love and when I find an attractive edition. You can't have too many copies of Pride & Prejudice if they are gorgeous.

I rarely end up with duplicates, but if I do happen to get some I'm happy to spread the love and pass the extra copies on to someone else. Even if I really love a book, I don't feel a need to own multiple editions of it.

Question 11 Duplicates.

I have some duplicates, mostly other editions or translations...for example, two translations of Doctor Zhivago. I did have hardcover and paperback of a Gwyneth Jones novel; it was a thick book and the paperback was easier to handle.

Otherwise, I try to avoid duplicates.

>101 SassyLassy: This question seemed somewhat familiar, but I thought it was some time ago, and maybe in another thread. Currently, it followed from the discussion of libraries and tagging.
So... it's a meta question about duplicates, right? Very clever of you!

>106 lisapeet: appreciating this. : )

>106 lisapeet: That's my favourite idea about it. Thanks!

____________
Just for fun

In Canada, many things are duplicates, doubles, and pairs. There are two official languages, resulting from the royal commission known as the B&B commission, which did not study bed and breakfasts, but rather bilingualism and biculturalism - now expanded to multiculturalism.

It was a Canadian who wrote and sang Both Sides Now.

Then there's Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (filmed twice), along with the all the other Jacob Two-Two books. In case you don't know Jacob, he says everything twice, just to be heard in his large family.

Then from The Canadian Oxford Dictionary there's double double.

Duplicates are a fact of life in my book world.

My grandfather turned a room with a beautiful view into library stacks to accommodate his multiple copies. One edition might have had lovely illustrations, another might have been annotated, others might have been in different languages or different translations. Then there were first editions he couldn't resist.

I'm nowhere near that extreme, but for sentimental reasons I do keep duplicate books given to me. If a book is on the TBR pile, I have occasionally bought another copy unwittingly. If I've read it in paperback, really liked it, and find an illustrated hardcover edition, I will succumb.

On the flip side, lately I have developed the bad habit of giving the same person the same book several times. After all, if it was an inspired idea once, it surely is again! I'll have to go back to keeping journals of my gifts.

Putting an end to this though, I do like this reasoning:



Image from Someecards

QUESTION 12

You may have lived in the same area all your life, or you may have moved around the world. Probably there is somewhere that is "home".

How important is where you live now to your reading? Do you read local authors? Going back in time, do you read about the history, natural history, and culture of where you live now? Does poetry from your region resonate?

If there a place where you came from that means more to you, that you read about instead?

I lived in Michigan's U.P. I enjoy reading about cold places and the way a harsh climate around large bodies of water that freeze up pretty bad shapes human behavior. I get it. Right now reading Robert F. Scott's diary of his last Antarctic expedition. I'm "home," even though I know they're all gonna die, and their dogs and ponies, too. I read several books about the Donner party and Into Thin Air. Jack London's To Build a Fire. That one about the soccer team that crashes in the Andes. TC Boyle's Drop City. There was a great sci fi I read in 6th grade about a future ice age. That type of thing always resonates.

Q12 I'm the opposite, actually. I tend to gravitate towards reading books that are set in places that are unfamiliar to me. I'm so familiar with Northern Ireland that it doesn't feel like an interesting place setting for me. Grass is always greener syndrome? Mind you, I lived in England for 13 years and I enjoy reading books set there (although not necessarily in the places where I lived).

I've said on several threads before over the years that after living through The Troubles period it's the last thing I want to read about so that's been one reason I've tended to avoid NI writers as well, although it's great to see new writers coming through whose writing is not Troubles focused. I do read about Irish history, but it's been a while - I'm due a refresh.

Heaney's poetry is obviously a major NI writing draw and I enjoy it from a general appreciation perspective, but I wouldn't say his work resonates with me in terms of my homeland. A point of interest on that - Heaney considered himself to be Irish, not British, despite being born in NI (he was a Nationalist). Apparently he wasn't happy with being included in an anthology of British poetry back in the 80s for that very reason. As a Nationalist he wouldn't have recognised that he was from Northern Ireland. Nationalists from Northern Ireland will not use the term 'Northern Ireland' to describe the country, and will instead call it 'the North'. You can have either an Irish or British passport (or both), so depending on your political leanings people tend to gravitate towards one or the other (well until British passports started getting expensive, and then even die-hard Unionists decided they could cope with being Green as well if only for their 2 week summer holiday).

On 3rd May it's the 100th anniversary of the creation of N. Ireland, which is proving interesting given the ongoing political split. Suffice to say a significant section of the community will not be celebrating. There has already been some dispute about Heaney being used as a poster boy for the centenary celebrations given his political persuasion.

question 11 >109 SassyLassy: I do have duplicates of some books in my collection, but usually its because there is a difference in the edition, often something querky that catches my eye, or a better copy of one I have but dont want part with the original for whatever reason. For example I have two copies of Dicken's children illustrated by Jesse Wilcox Smith, Both are first edition, but one cost less
because of an inscription written on the fly leaf "Sam to Leila Christmas 1928" underneath "Leila and Bina to Amanda Chanukah 1994"made me smile and glad I kept it!

There is also a sentimental reason - have a copy of Aesops fables ilus by Arthur Racham, first edition, signed. I also have a copy that I stole from my sister's shelves. Practically read it till it disintergrated, but still have it, complete with doggie bit marks on the upper right corner. Thats not going anywhere!

Ok now returning you to our current question, all ready in progress

>112 AlisonY: Lived most my life in Phx and while I appreciate the beauty of the desert, it gets old after awhile. The cities here tend to tear cown buildings 50 years old so there isn't much of the interesting original buildings (with exceptions) When I first went overseas, I was astounded by the age of everything, realizing I needed to find out how much came before me. Don't really care for books about the southwest (esp pioneer books but there are exceptions) Much rather read books from countries Ive visited (Israel, Wales) or ones I'd give my eye teeth to visit (Turkey, Iraq, Spain, India) These countries are so ancient and filled with history. I visit vicariously through those books.

Whats funny is that while I wasn't interested in my own country's history, but that changed a few years back when I first saw Hamilton on stage. It had me going back to other books about the time period and the founding fathers and mothers, all that I somehow missed learning about in school. Fun reading!

>112 AlisonY: My mother's people were Protestant nationalists from the north of Ireland who left in the 1860s (after the famine, I think). They were quarantined in Montreal and got to Michigan from there. Illegals, as far as I can determine. Lots of Irish people in northern Michigan, so easy to blend in.

I was happy to see that Say Nothing touched on the fact that, historically, Irish nationalism was not purely a sectarian conflict, though by the 1970s, it had turned into a Catholic civil rights movement.

About once in a decade I will be drawn to reading something about Ireland, though I am always fearful it will turn out to be something dreary and twee like those awful books by the McCourt brothers.

Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy and Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You helped me better appreciate the connection my mother's people felt for Ireland, though I don't feel pulled to there as they did, not even after so turned Catholic by marrying one. I never sensed from the Irish I met when I visited the UK that they wanted any of us back. :-)

Q12 — Yes, I think "place" is quite an important element in my reading. I'm conscious that I didn't grow up where I live now, and that there are still, after 33 years, a lot of things I don't know about the Netherlands, and it always gives me a pleasant feeling to dig down a little bit and read something about Dutch history or culture that I didn't know before. I don't particularly search out things that are really local to the city where I live, although of course I did read Eline Vere, the classic novel most strongly associated with The Hague. (And I have read something about the battle that took place in May 1940 on what has since become my doorstep, and a few other very local things...)

But I'm also interested by all sorts of other places. Whether or not I've lived there. I can even get hooked on reading about particular places I've never visited, like South Africa, or East Germany (which I never visited when it was East Germany).

>115 nohrt4me2: I never sensed from the Irish I met when I visited the UK that they wanted any of us back.

Ha! I think most countries feel like that about adding to their numbers. I strongly suspect that most of the UK would be quite happy to hand N. Ireland back to Ireland if they could - we've been nothing but a pain in the ass throughout history.

>112 AlisonY: this is a terrific answer. Thanks for sharing.

Q12

I have located myself through books. I was in Lawrence, Kansas as a grad student straight from New Orleans and felt very out of place. Reading a history of the town helped me settle. (Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, an Informal History by David Dary) Less extreme when I came to Houston, but reading a history of the city (Houston : a History by David G. McComb) and later of the oil industry (The Prize by Daniel Yergin) both helped me feel more at home.

But once I settle, my interest is this there but generally just not intense enough. I grew up in Florida and occasionally read a book about it. And I’ve read a few on Texas. But my big history of Texas tome hasn’t been touched (Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans by T. R. Fehrenbach). My beautiful geology of Florida book got forgotten half read (Geologic History of Florida : Major Events That Formed the Sunshine State by Albert C. Hine). My Florida and Houston readers (? local literary anthologies?) have gotten lost in the stacks. (The Florida Reader: Visions of Paradise from 1530 to the Present by Maurice J O'Sullivan and Jack C. Lane and Literary Houston by David Theis). But, of course, i was interested enough to buy them.

QUESTION 12

Great question! I lived as a boy in the Weequahic section of Newark, NJ, until I was eleven, at which point we moved to the suburbs. I grew up spending a lot of time in New York City and remain very comfortable there, though I'm in California now.The other places I've lived at length have been Boston (college), New Orleans, San Francisco, and now Mendocino County, CA, very much a rural area.

I've been drawn to Philip Roth's novel in part because of the strong sense of place he provides for that Weequahic neighborhood. Lots of boyhood memories are evoked for me by some of those novels.

I can't say that I particularly search out books from any of the spots I've lived before. I have been gradually reading through histories of Anderson Valley, the section of Mendocino County where I now live. My wife and I moved here from San Francisco in 2008. It's a very particular place. A gaping hole that exists in most of those histories (largely but not exclusively written as memoirs by locals) is information about the white actions toward the Native American population. There were some very bad events, including massacres, that are mostly missing from those histories.*

Otherwise, though, I find that I'm more particularly interested in reading fiction and history about places I've visited than places I've lived. A short visit to a country or region gives me just a taste of the place and often leaves me wanting to learn more, or at least to revisiting the place through reading.

* Coming back to add that this seems to be my general pattern, in retrospect. I've always liked to read up on the history of wherever I'm living at the time.

>117 AlisonY: The English obsession with dominating Ireland never made much sense to me, either. Of course, the Vikings worked Ireland over pretty good at one time, and a friend in Iceland was stunned to discover that most Icelanders are more Irish than Norwegian. Theory is that genes from the Irish haplogroup provided more natural immunity during the various plagues, so descendants of the Irish predominate. I suspect Irish culture also influenced Icelandic fairy tales. They sure sound similarly scary.

>110 SassyLassy: Question 12: It's complicated...

I used to read about placed I did not know - on purpose. Growing up in the 80s and 90s in Eastern Europe meant that you did not have a lot of opportunities to see places -- mainly because of the collapse of the economy when I was old enough to be able to see and remember things. So books were my way to see places I did not expect to ever see.

I never planned to emigrate. While everyone was filing for the Green Card lottery, I never even tried for it. I hoped to be able to see some of the world but... it was one of those dreams that I never expected to happen. Then work happened - and before long I had seen San Francisco (with a local guy showing me the sights), Paris, London, Hong Kong, Honolulu and Kuala Lumpur - all of them for work (and Egypt - not for work this time - I took Mom there for her 50th). So here I was, reading about places I had been in and... it was different. I love novels set in Bulgaria - the places I know and the places I could go exploring. Once I started traveling, it felt as if I can go anywhere.

So I started looking for less well-known locales - small towns, small countries, places where I did not expect to ever go.

And then I moved. Prague that was a quick flight away now became halfway across the world; next door Greece now requires a much longer flight. So I kinda excluded my immediate neighborhoods (both past and present) from my reading - not really intentionally but I was not seeking them. Until some time last year when I realized two things at the same time:
- I am probably here to stay so I think it is time to learn more about the place I call home - and maybe check more of the local authors.
- I miss the Eastern and Central European authors who are rarely translated into English but whom I was used to reading back home.

It's not as if I had not been trying to read globally through the years technically speaking but...

>120 nohrt4me2: I never knew that (about Iceland having more Irish genes than anything). Now when you mention it the Icelandic obsession with fairies, etc. makes more sense.

>122 AlisonY: I think visitors to Iceland might be more obsessed with fairies than the Icelanders themselves, but that might be true of Ireland, eh?

The Icelanders have some terrifying Christmas stories about the Yule Cat and the Yule Lads who come around and steal stuff or kill people.

My husband is German, and I knitted a tiny non-scary Krampus for our Christmas tree. Find Krampus, hang him on the tree, and open his bag of candy was a game we played with our son. I put the kibosh on some of the more, um, traditional Krampus things that scare the sh*t out of the kids. Like that the bag is actually full of bad children Krampus beats with his sticks.

God.

>121 AnnieMod: love novels set in Bulgaria - the places I know and the places I could go exploring.

It wasn't until I started being involed in a internationl folk dance group in college that I really even considered going to that part of the world. Some of the folks when on a folk dance tour through the area and I was so heartsick I couldn't go. So fine I went reading books instead that either by people who had visited or history. oon when I am in a mood. And still have some buddies who play Guida on thier posts. Would love to read love stories set in Bulgaria, any suggestions?

>124 cindydavid4: "I love novels set in Bulgaria" is what I said above I am afraid :( Nothing (modern) translated comes to mind - I do not read too many romance novels and I keep track of what gets translated even less:( I will ask though - some of my friends do read romance novels. :)

Bulgarian folklore dancing and singing is one of the fairly limited number of things that did not get destroyed either under the communist regime or during the couple of decades after that - although a lot of the schools that were producing the professional dancers did get closed... I am sorry you could not go :(

Q 12 Reading by Location

Choosing a book because of location is important for me. I've always been a geography geek. Mostly I've lived in Vancouver, with temporary periods living elsewhere. I do like to read fiction set here, although if the writer isn't from here it's never done well. Not so big on reading non-fiction, unless it's something useful to do with outdoor activities or local travel.

I also love to read fiction and non-fiction on places I've travelled to or am planning to travel to (current favourites are Switzerland and Italy). And lastly, I have a handful of places that I haven't been to yet but maybe will one day. I also have place that I'm not particularly interested in reading about.

I'm a Foreign Service brat - the longest I lived anywhere until I was in high school was 3 years. Some of the places I lived have made a strong impression on my reading likes (I love stories set in Afghanistan and similar locations), some haven't (I don't read much about the Philippines - admittedly I was two when we left!) I like reading about places I have a connection to, but it can be "I have family that live(d) there" just as much as living there myself, or visiting. I really enjoy reading a book set in a place while I traveled through it - Dick Francis' To the Hilt while on a driving tour over the Downs, for instance. If I'm reading a book about a place - its history or geography (or geology, for that matter), I generally prefer to read it first and then go there, so I know what I want to see. Sometimes it actually works that way.

The other thing is books about more general subjects that happen to cross paths with me - Two Years Before the Mast was a great book, and I particularly enjoyed the bits set on San Francisco Bay, where I'm living now. Cool extra, not a reason to read the book.

Question 11:

I'm not someone who deliberately buys duplicates of books because I like the different covers or whatever, but they certainly do accidentally happen. Less so these days, when I can consult my LT catalog on my phone in the bookstore to check if I'm buying a duplicate, but it does still happen. In those cases, like a lot of other people here, I will donate the duplicate to my local library for their book sale, or give it away if I know someone who seems interested.

I think the only exception is that sometimes I've acquired omnibus volumes that include novels I already owned separately, and haven't bothered weeding out the duplicated works.

Oh, and I suppose I may very occasionally buy or keep two editions of a work if they're substantially different. Although the only example of that I can think of off the top of my head, amusingly, is The Star Trek Compendium. My young Trekkie self was very adamant about needing both editions of that.

Question 12:

I don't know that reading books about or set in my local region is something I think about a lot or deliberately seek out very often, but when I encounter one, my ears do sort of perk up. And all the more so if it involves not just my state, but my particular small-towns-in-the-desert area. It's always a weird thrill to see my own town mentioned somewhere, even in passing, just because it happens so rarely.

Mind you, New Mexico in general is a pretty interesting place to read about, anyway.

Just wondering:

QUESTION 11 Duplicates, deliberate or otherwise

What are people who normally donate their duplicates doing with them now that so many of the places they would normally use are closed?

QUESTION 12 Location

Do we lose something by not knowing about where we came from and where we live now? If you aren't one of those who reads locally, at least in part, is there a sort of overfamiliarity or indifference? Is there a sense that there is always time, when it comes to current location, sort of like living in a noted city, but never having time to see what makes it so?

>129 SassyLassy: donations in the times of COVID - I am putting them in boxes until I can donate them again :) My library had reopened for small donations in the last few months (via the drive thru returns) so they already got a batch. :)

>129 SassyLassy: Check out your state's/country's policy on donating books to prisons. In the U.S., prisons are ALWAYS short on books. Often they will take only paperbacks, and sometimes you have to donate through a designated intermediary. They can be sent via media mail in the States.

Those interested specifically in donating to women's prisons can go here: https://wpbp.org/donate_books/

I also donate to women and childrens shelters, and if I can't trade them in for credit at my used bookstore (which is open) I drop them off at Goodwill

>129 SassyLassy: Do we lose something by not knowing about where we came from and where we live now? If you aren't one of those who reads locally, at least in part, is there a sort of overfamiliarity or indifference?

For me, probably overfamiliarity, or boredom. Ive lived here for 60 years. I am very much aware where I came from (Boston) and live locally. I've read lots about Boston and surroundings, but I think Ive read what I desire about Phoenix the place and history, and tbh Im not that big on novels about the SW, Part of that I think comes from knowing too much, as well ascuriousity about everywhere else that gets me reading of other places,

that being said, one of the best books I read recently about my city is called Tempe Beach Park about the history of this little known place from the 30s - to early 60s. Of course cant find the title, but very interesting esp for locals. Here is a link to the history. Bonus points for finiding the title and author :)

https://saltriverstories.org/items/show/222

>129 SassyLassy:

QUESTION 12 Location

Do we lose something by not knowing about where we came from and where we live now? If you aren't one of those who reads locally, at least in part, is there a sort of overfamiliarity or indifference? Is there a sense that there is always time, when it comes to current location, sort of like living in a noted city, but never having time to see what makes it so?

I grew up in, and live now in places that don't value their history. It's torn up without a thought, and repaved and forgotten. What was weird, reading a history of Houston, is that no one knows this stuff. It's all lost on the regional "literacy".

I wonder if the question is better stated as, "how much do we lose not knowing..." At least that's what I'm thinking about when I answer. Does orange American, for example, evolve out of a lack of historical linkage. When there is no history, are personal foundations lost, and do the conspiracy or freaky religious movements fill the empty space. Does the empty space leave things meaningless, and leave people with the anxiety of lacking meaning, and needing to find it?

This lack of history is very much a suburban thing in American southern and western cities. It makes me think of how Hilary Mantel explores suburbia and the darkness of no foundations in England in Beyond Black. It's a deeply disturbing book. Her main character is a woman who can actually speak to the dead - she's not a fraud, but the real thing. And her audience is full of empty people, with no history, needing something meaningful without realizing it, and open to anything. Some can't name their grandparents.

Anyway, it's funny that when I answered the question the first time, it was with guilt on how little I've read about what I call home. And this question just made a shower of sparks from that same guilt. No history of where you are? - the horror! : )

yeah my place is the same way. Knock everything down 50 years old and start all over (well it is called Phoenix so maybe that was the idea) its a city looking for a center surrounded by suburbs and you are right

""how much do we lose not knowing..."

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. and a coda, those who remember history are condemned to live through it. (cant remember who said it but I thought it apt)

"When there is no history, are personal foundations lost, and do the conspiracy or freaky religious movements fill the empty space. Does the empty space leave things meaningless, and leave people with the anxiety of lacking meaning, and needing to find it?"

yes.

I was 17 when I went with a group teens from my synagogue to Israel. I remember the shock at the age. Seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls, standing in front of the wailing wall realizing how ancient it was. Even the Hohokam ruins in my city that are considered so old are not as old) Opened my eye to what I had missed, what we were missing. something I could connect to. Took to traveling and reading and discovered everything I could, and will continue to do so till I can't anymore

image from Hereford Cathedral Chained Library

QUESTION 13 Book Chain Puzzle

This is a twist on the avaland's puzzle from last year, which looked for a list of books that were connected or looped into a chain.

This time, the challenge is to come up with a complete sentence using 5 book titles in your LT library. You may need connectors such verbs, prepositions and conjunctions, but try to use as few as possible. Extra points for more than 5 titles, and for doing this without connectors.

Here is an example I posted last year:

The Last Perfect Revolutionary was Slouching towards Bethlehem in August 1914 when Something Happened: an Explosion in a Cathedral.

'Go Wild' I was Educating Rita (My sister, the serial killer) 'forget the pedagogy of the oppressed, Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe 1870-1956 and Tragedy the Greeks and us use Writing as a way of healing embrace the three marriages and Long Life.'

or was i talking to myself.

could we do a short story this way?

Robinson's Confabulations a call for the dead about Van Gogh's Ear meant all cornwall thunders at my door and dr zhivago not a portable paradise nagging my sparrow tree 'no one is too small to make a difference, you must change your life'

what if we could express the thread recent readings sow, maybe i just heard an echo.

Russian thinkers
Trawl
The green road,
Street of thieves:
Thus was Adonis murdered

A severed head
Who watcheth
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Going home
In honour bound —
This is going to hurt

Those two turned out more like unmetrical haiku than prose sentences, I’ll keep trying...

>138 tonikat: Could we do a short story this way? -- Absolutely!

>139 thorold: >140 thorold: Very clever formatting.

The man in the red hat
Bobbin’ up
Just above my head,
Between the woods and the water,
Steaming East
On the evening road

...titles that start with verbs or prepositions are gold-dust for this game!

Oh, I can totally make a short story! And without having to insert any connecting words at all:

In the Dark, Humans Run. The Walking Dead On the Move! No Time to Spare! No One is Coming to Save Us!

Plum Lucky, The Twelve Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library. Normal People Beat the Reaper! "We Are Still Here! Alice Isn't Dead!" Final Girls Exit West, Dancing in the Streets.

I could probably do that all day, if I didn't have to go back to work. :)

My efforts:

The Gathering
Under the Greenwood Tree,
How Late It Was, How Late.
Beyond Black -
I'm Not Scared.

Untouchable, The hot girls of Weimar Berlin trip trap our inner conflicts. The mystery of the mind!

(Separate titles individually underlined. All this from a single stack to my right, so...)

>144 AlisonY: I really like that one. These are fun!

you're all making me look bad not using any additional words at all. i did only use the books listed on my home. but really i'm just envious - the haiku style structure works too. Maybe not a short story for me, but flash fiction for sure.

Not what was asked for, but these conjunctions popped up while I was searching my catalogue:

Q: Who was that man?
A: The sailor who fell from grace with the sea

Q: Who was Oswald Fish?
A: The boy who followed Ripley

Q: Who goes there?
A: Those who walk away

Q: Who was changed and who was dead?
A: The girl who trod on a loaf

Q: Who’s who in Wodehouse?
A: Edison, the man who made the future

Q: Who calls the tune?
A: The people who knock on the door

...odd how so many “who” titles are from Patricia Highsmith!

We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea
Under the Black Flag,
We, the Drowned
Making Waves
Into the Blue*

___________________

I see this has two titles, but mine is definitely Into the Blue, the other being Blue Latitudes

>148 thorold: Fun, and who can resist a challenge?
Highsmith had a questioning mind.

I'll do one of these shortly, but first! because I'm always late answering the questions:


QUESTION Q12
I didn't grow up in New York, but I've lived here all of my adult life and I love reading New York histories and novels/nonfiction set in New York (besides, no one wants to read about WASPy suburban New Jersey). I've got a good collection, with a bit of a skew toward old New York, but I love odds and ends. Above is a photo of my NYC odd shelf, though I have more scattered around, including a few nice fat coffee table sized books. Lots of these bought on the street or at library sales—one of my favorites is A Natural History of New York City, which is about NYC flora and fauna, with lovely line drawings, and much of it set in the unassuming neighborhood where I live, since he grew up just a few blocks away. Also Keys to the City: Tales of a New York City Locksmith (the first guy I dated when I moved here was the locksmith who put the gates on my new apartment windows), The Falconer of Central Park, Chronicles of the Hudson: Three centuries of travelers' accounts, The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York (an amazing collection of NYC images from the 1600s to the late 1960s), and I will always, always love dipping back into Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel from time to time. But I love 'em all.

>151 lisapeet: I'm always late with these things too, so glad you chimed in.

A great collection indeed. I love these kind of arrangements, driven by topic and quirky.

A Natural History of New York City interests me. If I ever get to NYC again, my first stops will be the Highline and the two botanical gardens.

I'm finding Q13 slightly addictive, well okay, more than that.

In no way meant to be haiku, but it reads more easily in list form:

In a Time of Torment
Twenty Years After
Three Nights in Havana,
Another Day of Life
Minding the Garden

Q13 - Fun! I decided to just go to my profile page and work from whatever came up on Random Books from Your Library. Didn't get much in the way of verbs, though!

Gibson's Guide to Birdwatching and Conservation: The Private Life of Helen of Troy
The Voyage Home
Without Falling . . .

I Write as I Please.

“Post, Captain?”
“The coming of bill” :-(
“... The shipping news?”
“Justine!”
“The enigma of arrival!”

>154 rocketjk: Well that is a challenge!

Verbs are difficult to find. I had expected to see I Capture the Castle from someone. I found a great one in my LT library Making a Living in the Middle Ages.

image from Studio International

QUESTION 14 Visual Books

Reading is all very well, but sometimes we just need visual stimulation. Do you feel the need for books on art, architecture, photographs, film, gardens or any other creative enterprise?

Have they become a separate collection - an obsession?

Tell us some of your favourites and how you came by them.

YES

I love crave and need what I call "picture books for adults" and actually those are the books that most often break the bank (as they tend to be expensive when new and exorbitant when they go OOP). In the past year in particular, as my concentration was shot AND the confinement was upon us, I spent a lot of time poring over art books. Fortunately the library has a good supply too, which saves me money at least in the short run...

Too many favourites to choose, really, but at random, from where I'm sitting the most striking spine in my eye line is Tibor, about the wonderful graphic designer Tibor Kalman (husband of Maira Kalman). Not just a huge talent and influence in his field but also a deeply socially conscious person. Died far too early (cancer).

I finally found a not-insanely priced second hand copy locally, in a now defunct bookshop.

Q14:
Very timely: I came home this afternoon to find a parcel containing this one waiting for me.



150 jaar Nederlandse Spoorwegaffiches — "150 years of Dutch railway posters". It just came out a few weeks ago, looks absolutely stunning. 300 large format pages, all in colour. I think I'm going to enjoy flicking through it on the sofa whenever I have clean hands and a few idle moments over the coming weeks, but it's far too heavy actually to read it through.

q14

Interesting, I used to feel I needed/wanted visual art books and I collected lots. But I never read them. And when I tried, i never got into them. In a kind of hindsight I think just failed to get the same immersion and backhanded escape a text without visual distractions give me. (I suspect I struggle along the same lines with poetry. Not visual, but struggling to get my reading experience...but I do read some poetry.)

i have some Dover illustrated editions I collected in my 20s. I love maps and have a few.

As a kid, our town had a nice library with big art books. When things got weird at home, my therapy was dragging some Salvador Dali or Van Gogh books to the big quiet room and getting lost in them.

I once got to see some Van Gogh pictures up close in London. Giant sunflowers so bright they hurt your eyes and the impasto like sculpture, shiny like it was stlll wet.

The museum guard, a guy from the Carib, saw me leaning in and gawping. "You want to touch it, don't you? He's talking to you." I think of that memory on bad days and it makes me happy--Vincent pulling us together for a chat.

When we were in Europe, I discovered Tashcen. Bought several of their architecture books and still use them as a good reference when reading. I also have lots of museum collections: Smithsonian, Library of Congress MET, Louve etc Jewish Museums of the World Also acquired many Newsweek museum books - from national gallery, louve, etc.

>161 nohrt4me2: I once got to see some Van Gogh pictures up close in London. Giant sunflowers so bright they hurt your eyes and the impasto like sculpture, shiny like it was stlll wet.

Oh my yes, esp his sunflowers.. Had that poster up in my dorm room for years; seeing it in real life was astonding; you see each brush stroke...

Similar experience right now, reading a book on the Bayeux Tapestry; disappointed with the plates so discovered you can look at them on line, and zoom close up - looking at the stitches sown a thouseand years ago feels something short of miraculous.

>162 cindydavid4: it is thought that some of the marginalia on the tapestry were sewn by child apprentices. pretty amazing thing, even if William the Bastard won ...

I don't know; I enjoyed reading about how history was depicted, but didn't get much in the way of how it was sewn. Its amazing to me how long it has lasted; Odo, brother of William had Bayeux Cathedral built and hung the tapestry there. It was taken out once a year to be displayed Thought to be lost it was discovered by scholars at the catherdral in 1729. Considering how many such things are 'restored' horribly, this is still in remarkable shaoe. Someday I want to go see it.

>164 cindydavid4: I hope you get to see it someday! I remember seeing the Beowulf manuscript in the British Museum. We read and had to do our own translations of it in grad school, but something about seeing the actual thing (which is small, fire-damaged, and completely unspectacular) gives you a whole imaginary back story about the people who made it.

I'm a sucker for great visual interiors and gardening books, but it's not just about the photos - I want useful accompanying content too.

We also seem to have acquired a lot of glossy travel and history books in the house over the years. I'd love to say we've read them from front to back, but most have been flicked through at best.

I love Black and White photography and still get a kick from perusing the books in my collection. I probably spend more time looking at black and white photos than fine art books.

>158 LolaWalser: One of the images I was contemplating for the question had a Tibor in it.
Oh dear - I haven't been to TO lately (wonder why!). Which of the independents is now defunct? I've lived through the demise of Pages, This Ain't the Rosedale Library, and the move of The Monkey's Paw.

>159 thorold: That was a great image. I love railway posters. Maybe a collection with >161 nohrt4me2:'s maps?

On the Bayeux Tapestry, there is some information on the makers in Threads of Life: A History of the World through the Eye of a Needle.

>167 baswood: B&W can keep you going for ages.

>166 AlisonY: I share the visual interiors and garden books need. I like my travel books to be from another time.

Dan in >160 dchaikin: made me wonder if visual books are meant to be experienced in the same way as more text centred works.

Do you read them at the same pace, or do you take your time; perhaps look at a few pages at a time, and go back again and again?

Are special skills needed to decode the information in the visual, or can we just interpret them in our own ways?

>168 SassyLassy: Yes, railways and maps go together well: one great example is Jowett's Railway Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland, a fabulously detailed set of historical maps of the railway system up to the 1980s, the whole thing drawn — and lettered! — in ink by hand. Rather like Wainwright, but in colour, and for railways instead of mountains. Clearly the obsessive personal project of someone just slightly mad enough to carry it through to completion.

Also on my shelf of oversized rail-related picture books (because who doesn't have a shelf for those?) is Emett's gloriously mad collection of cartoons, The forgotten tramcar.

 

Q 14 - Visual Books

Yes! Of course. I'm as much into aesthetics as I'm into words, so I own many visual books, not limited to these general categories:

- Art
- Design (interior, architecture, lifestyle, graphic, book)
- Travel
- Gardening
- History
- Cookbooks and food - please note The Gallery of Regrettable Food, which is not a cookbook but is hours of fun
- Illustrated books & novels - favourite was Hippolyte's Island by Barbara Hodgson, but Nick Bantock is one of the masters
- Edward Goery -- Gashlycrumb Tinies is probably my most loved
- Nature
- People ( I have several coffee table books on Audrey Hepburn)
- Fairy Tales -- both books made for children and those for adults, and everyone in-between

So many times I read a book that demands pictures (most recently, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino)

>169 SassyLassy: hmm. I like visual art, enjoy it at museums, galleries, shows, etc. I adore some of my art books for the images. So I don’t really known why I haven’t had much success reading them. Message >160 dchaikin: was just me waving my hands at an explanation. Maybe they intimidate me, or maybe I feel uncomfortable without enough words telling me what to think or maybe what they say and what i see clash and I have trouble adjusting. Maybe the physical books are just too big and bulky. ?? Unfortunately I can’t tell you how I read them because I haven’t been reading them. So I don’t know. Maybe I just need to give it another try.

>169 SassyLassy: Usually my visual books are photographs. The only text I need is the title of each, the artist and the year. Anything else I read if Im interested, or check google for more info.

Oh I am very put off by any book that should have a map, does not include one. Granted I can always keep google near by so I can pull it up but I shouldn't need to. Should be right there!

>168 SassyLassy:

It was Eliot's on Yonge, Sassy. The building sold several years ago and the owner had multiple sales on remaining stock.

I'm afraid there are going to be a few more gone after the pandemic dust settles.

QUESTION 14 Visual Books

I'm a visual artist, and I get a huge amount of nourishment and pleasure from looking at art, graphics, comics—anything that feeds the eye feeds my head. I've always collected books with visual elements, and I'm enormously fortunate that through my job at LJ I often get to pick gorgeous coffee-table-style books from the giveaway shelves, which are mostly duplicates of books sent to reviewers or books LJ doesn't choose to review for whatever reason. I've been able to pick up many many volumes that I couldn't afford otherwise, or wouldn't spring for—not in the past 13 months, of course, since I haven't been in the office (and I miss my shelves of books that live there!), but I'm hoping to get in there some weekend soon and see what's about.

Favorites: Books on art, art genres and styles, and individual artists, illustrated books and graphic novels/nonfiction, books about maps and cartography, books on typography and graphic design, books about color/color theory, photography, books on animals and horticulture and New York, cookbooks, sketchbook reproductions, manuscript reproductions, illustrated kids' books if they're good (though I'm not a kidlit person as a rule).

I look at a lot of art online too, especially during the pandemic when I haven't been able to go to galleries and museums, which I did a fair amount of before and really really really hope to do again soon.

>175 lisapeet: Oliver Jeffer's kids' books are just wonderful in terms of the illustrations (and also the quirky stories that don't talk down to kids). I miss not reading them now my kids are way past that stage - they had such heart.

In case anyone's not read them here are some examples:







The last one's from a book called The Heart and the Bottle, which is such a clever children's book about a child's grief when her granddad dies and how she puts her heart in a bottle for a while because it hurts too much.

Just a wonderful author and illustrator - very clever (and I'm not biased just because he's from NI!).

>176 AlisonY: I do miss that kind of picture book.

>176 AlisonY: thanks for that, I hadn't heard of that one. Like you I appreciate good illustration, and story

>176 AlisonY: Ohhh those are beautiful. I love that color. And he has sketchbooks on his website! There's nothing I love more than looking at other artists' sketchbooks and doodles. Thanks for the reference!

Oh he illustrated the day the crayons quit read that to my preschool class and it ended up being their fav book. And looking at the other covers Ive seen some of them and yes they are lovely. Dang all of my neices and nephews and friends kids are all too old .....

>177 dchaikin: I miss them too, Dan - there was something magical about that stage of reading picture books with your kids.

>179 lisapeet: Those sketch books are fun to look at, aren't they? When you flick through them you see the wonderful craziness of his creativity.

>180 cindydavid4: The Day the Crayons Quit was a great book too. Of Jeffers' own books, our favourites used to be The Incredible Book Eating Boy who ate lots of books to get really clever until it became a problem (and then he moved on to broccoli instead), and Stuck, which was my personal favourite - a boy gets his kite stuck up a tree and so he sets about getting it down by throwing lots of other objects into the tree to knock it free, which got evermore preposterous (fire engine and crew, a house, a whale, etc.)

>176 AlisonY: Lovely images.

>180 cindydavid4: Dang all of my neices and nephews and friends kids are all too old .....
But you're not too old. Get them for yourself!

I bought the most beautiful picture books when my girls were young. Now that they are in their 20s, I buy them for me if I love the art or if it’s a topic I follow

>182 SassyLassy: them meaning kids, or kids' books? :)

>184 cindydavid4: Well I would go for the books myself, but you could try either or both options!

This comes from a comment by LolaWalser on another thread.



one of my all time favourite bookstores - image from TimeOut

QUESTION 15 Previously owned books (not calling them second hand as often they have passed through multiple hands)

While buying books in current publication is relatively straightforward, buying books that have passed through other homes, that may not be readily available, is often fraught with difficulty.

Where do you find your previously owned books? Do you love the search? What are your favourite bookstores for supplying you with these treasures?

Stories and images welcome.

Previously owned books:

I love used books for all sorts of reasons. I love the many-layered stories they represent. There is, of course, the story told by the author within the pages of the book. There's the story of how and when you bought the book (which of course can also apply to books bought new), and then there's the story of who owned the book before you, sometimes a knowable story, to a great or lessor extent, via inscriptions and even through items found in the pages, and sometimes an entirely unknowable tale. Just because you can't know a story doesn't mean it's not there.

Of course, my favorite bookstore is the one I owned for almost 8 years, Village Books in Ukiah, CA, which is the county seat of Mendocino County. Goodness, I worked hard but had fun every day running that store. I'm happy to report that it's still up and running, as it was bought when I decided to retire by a very fine fellow who has continued the store's tradition. I was at least the third owner of that store, so Jay is the fourth. Here are a couple of photos, both featuring me with our much beloved and sorely missed lab, Yossarian the Bookstore Dog, who died a year and a half ago.

>187 rocketjk:

Ahhh! That's lovely. I can't come anywhere near a good a comment as that.

I probably visted your store on my way to Mendicino for their Balkan Folk Dance festivals!

Since childhood most of my books came from used bookstores in down town Phx, or or library book sales, or at the annual VNS sale at the fair grounds. So as I got older Id always make it a point to visit local used stories wherever I traveled. Usually walked away with a few books that I still have.

Despite the ease of finding used/rare boks on the internet, I still browse bookstores as well as thrift stores that often carry books. Never know what I might find!

>187 rocketjk: great post and pictures Jerry.

Used books - I've been sulking as all the local Half-Price books stores have gotten worse and worse consistently over the years. There are two other used bookstores in my general vicinity, but I don't go to either. I've visited, they don't have much to offer, unless I want a specific book and they have it. (note, I try not to buy new books at used book stores...because I want to support the author.) But these stores are only mildly interesting to browse. Somehow it seems most used books stores have low quality, easy to find elsewhere, books. They somehow aren't...literary.

I haven't been to Ukiah, CA, but I have stumbled across some nice used book stores. Two standout, although I've only been to each once. One was a tiny store in Doylestown, PA, north of Philadelphia, called Bucks County Bookshop where I stumbled across some terrific obscure stuff. (I picked up The Mutabilitie Cantos by Edmund Spenser, edited by Sheldon P. Zitner, (7 copies on LT) and In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. I didn't pick up Nicholas Shakespeare's biography of Chatwin, and regretted it so much, that I bought the next copy I found). The other was in Asheville, NC, home of the semi-famous and terrific Malaprop's Bookstore (a place to detour to.) But Malaprops is only new books. The used books store I adored has the uninspiring name of Downtown Books & News. It's a terrific little shop. (I picked up four books there, Beyond the Pyrenees by Marcel Aurousseau (3 copies on LT), The Liar's Club by Mary Karr, Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road by Anthony Weller (34 copies on LT), and About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory by Barry Lopez)

>189 cindydavid4: "Despite the ease of finding used/rare books on the internet, I still browse bookstores as well as thrift stores that often carry books. Never know what I might find!"

Amen! It's the search and the occasional delightful surprise that make it so much fun.

I love used books for the same reasons as Jerry >187 rocketjk:. When I lived in Derbyshire in England there were a handful of reasonably local bookshops that specialised in used books. My favourite was Scarthin books in Cromford: Corridors so narrow and stuffed with books that once you were in them you were trapped because there was no room to squeeze by anybody else.


When I moved to France I stopped going to bookshops because I could not read the books - it was so frustrating and so I just had to learn to read french. I am delighted to say that a new book shop opened last year in my local town Marciac (1,500 inhabitants) and we do all we can can to support it (that is by buying loads of books) They have a second hand section as well:

On the internet I use Abe books where most of my second hands book come from.

>187 rocketjk: Thanks so much for sharing the pics, Jerry. It's always so lovely to put a face to the name for other CRers, and when there's a lovely bookshop in the background that's extra bonus points.

I love used book stores. In a regular book shop I'm drawn to what's new and shiny in terms of releases, but I much prefer the joy of randomness from a used book shop visit, not knowing what they're going to have and coming away with a bunch of books that I never knew I needed until I went in there.

Pre-COVID, I visited the charity bookshop below for most of my purchases (it's not the prettiest street in the world - I wish I could share a picture perfect store front). It was a nice win-win of keeping my books fed whilst doing my bit every few weeks for charity. They always keep a good mix of books, and I don't think I've ever come out empty handed. As our office has not been open since last March I've not been into Belfast city centre, save for one visit to clear out our office, so I'm really missing visiting this shop. It's a cramped shop, so I don't think I'll feel comfortable with going there again for some time, which is a shame.

In the interim, I've still been mostly keeping to used books, and buying them through Amazon's used sellers or directly from the likes of World Books. Oxfam do have an online store for their books, but they don't grade the covers and I know from experience with the shop that some aren't in that clean condition, so unfortunately they're not getting my business at the moment.

My favorite bookstore in NYC is actually a charity shop bookstore. Housing Works provides housing and medical services to people with living with HIV/AIDS and since 1990 have opened dozens of regular charity shops around the city. Housing Works Bookstore Cafe & Bar opened in 1994 and is almost entirely run by volunteers and sells only used, donated books.

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I love it. It is a beautiful space (frequently booked for weddings) and in the before times hosted a fair number of storytelling events, book groups, and the occasional concert. The first weekend of every month was 30% off (the already half off prices) of everything in the store. And in June they hold a huge street fair selling thousands of books for a few dollars apiece.

I love the treasure hunt aspect, spending an hour looking at the display tables, the "new arrivals" carts and the shelves for books on the 1001-Book list and nyrb books. I probably purchased 150 of my 170 nyrb books there, as well as half the rest of my book collection. On one memorable trip I found a copy of Lonesome Dove (which had been on the to-buy list for years), Against the Day and Infinite Jest. The cashier laughed at my humongous purchases and tried to convince me to also buy Mason and Dixon because it was another 1000+ page book on the shelves.

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Given that it is volunteer run and supporting a vulnerable population, it was closed for over a year during the pandemic, even well after all other businesses were open with "limited capacity". But I just discovered it is open for socially distanced browsing and will go there today! since I have to be in Manhattan for a an appointment.

Pictures from what may have been my last visit splurge:
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>194 ELiz_M: some day... And funny and Mason & Dixon.

I love used bookstores! There were many years when I was just too painfully broke to buy what I wanted, so I transferred that energy to the thrill of the hunt. I had a huge mental wish list, and I LOVED that feeling of finding one—such a victory! Plus there were many serendipitous finds, things I never knew I wanted until I laid eyes on them. There were many great used bookstores in NYC's heyday, far fewer now.

Favorites that have lasted are the Strand and, since I am lazy, I'm going to just echo everything >194 ELiz_M: said about Housing Works. I used to work around the corner and spent many a too-long lunch hour just browsing, and I have a ton of great finds from there. I'll also add: snacks! A great little café in the back with little tables to eat and read

Plus for many years street booksellers set up tables dependably on certain blocks, and they always had great finds, including recent sellers that NYers tossed or gave them. Many were in kind of rough shape (the books, although some of the sellers too), so there was always that decision: is this book too dirty/waterlogged/moldy to take home, weighed against how much I wanted it? But most were in OK shape.

And, of course, library book sales. There are a few ongoing ones or dedicated Friends of the Library shops I would try and stop at when I passed by, and a couple of annual or biannual ones that I would make time for, notably the Katonah Library's giant sale in the fall and, religiously for many years, the Friends of the Warner Library sale in Tarrytown, where my mom used to live, in April and October. I found amazing gems there—Westchester folks love their libraries and donate some wonderful things. The requisite John Cheever collections and Best Short Stories of 1972, but also some marvelous obscure finds for a couple of bucks.

All of this past tense because I haven't been in a bookstore in more than a year, I don't think libraries are holding sales again yet, and since NYC was doing its best to push the street sellers out of business well before the pandemic, I'm sure it finished the job. I'm hoping the libraries have got a great backlog from people who got big Marie Kondo hairs during lockdown, though... maybe the Friends of the Warner Library sale will be back up and running by this fall. I get a lot of books by other channels these days, but I still miss the fun of pawing through those boxes under the big white tents.

>194 ELiz_M: Jealous.... :)

>192 baswood: If they don't have it on Abe, I don't need it. I recently bought a used book there, a copy of one my mother had as a child that had become hopelessly damaged. It was just under $200, the most I ever paid for a book, and I don't expect to ever buy another expensive one.

I can't go into bookstores anymore. I used to get overstimulated and often confused about how the books are arranged. Since the pandemic, I have developed some type of mild agoraphobia. I have reached max immunity from the two Moderna shots, but the pleasure of human company has paled quite a bit. I am trying to re-socialize by doing "live" grocery shopping, instead of just picking up the order, and meeting friends for coffee in the park for an hour or so at a time.

I always figured I would be a good hermit or anchoress I was right.

>194 ELiz_M: Goodness, that place looks like heaven. Can't wait until my wife and I can visit NYC again. My wife and I are both from NJ originally. She still has family in NYC and Westchester, plus various cousins spread around New York and New Jersey. My family's long gone from the area, but I'm still in touch with old friends. I'm very much looking forward to going to that store. I'm also a huge fan of Strand and also Westsider Books.

>186 SassyLassy:

Dad! Gramps! (well they could be...)

>194 ELiz_M:

I covet that Patrick Hamilton very much. Didn't know the NYRBC did it. Must get it.

This question, though... The only proper answer would be bio-length, "My Life in Bookshops" or something. Subtitle: cca 1984-2020? I started spending my allowance in bookshops in my first year of high school so of course used books played a large part from the start.

The upheavals of the past year make thinking about the topic sad--who knows how many of the remaining shops will survive... I've already seen my bookshopping routines steadily diminish over the past fifteen years. I do buy online but it used to be a much smaller part of my search, since browsing is so much more interesting and fruitful in person. This year showed online can't replace in-store shopping for me.

>199 rocketjk: Ohhh, Westsider Books! I did a quick check, heart in mouth, but it's still going. Talk about the thrill of the hunt.

Meant to say also, Jerry, I love the bookstore pics. What a sweet dog, and my condolences on his loss.

>201 lisapeet: Thanks. I still miss that dog every day. We adopted a sweet German shepherd last year, so we once again have happy canine energy in the house.

>197 AlisonY: Don't be. The dream turned into a bit of a nightmare:
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>203 ELiz_M: Is that overstock from one of Housing Works' other thrift shops? Will it go back (please please)?

I love used bookstores and library or other used book sales. I have not been to any of these in more than a year. My fave sale is sponsored by the Hoosier Hills Food Bank and is held at the local county fairgrounds each October, for one week. The proceeds are all for charities. Many of my books have gone to this sale, and many of my books have come from this sale! It was cancelled last year, but hope it returns this year.

Since I am weeding my collection in preparation for moving, I have to refrain from acquiring any more books right now. It is difficult, but I have been stoic about it all.

>203 ELiz_M: : (

I always check out books at thrift shops, yard sales, and rummage sales (I'll go anyway, but if they've got a good selection of books it's a special thrill). I've found some gems in the oddest places.

My biggest supply of books, for years, has been my local library's twice-a-year book sales. I volunteer to help set up and take down, and go at least once during the sale - usually on Sunday when it's bag/box day. Buy a box for $5 and fill it up with whatever looks interesting. Which is (part - a major part - of) why I have thousands of unread books in my house - there's this distinction, which gets lost in the thrill of the hunt every time, between "looks interesting" and "looks like it would be worth the time to read". Sigh.

Of course no sales this past year - possibly the October sale will happen (May won't). They went online, but of course they left off all the odd stuff and only put up what they think will sell well (which is the answer to >190 dchaikin: too - not the weird and quirky books, just the best-sellers). I _have_ all the best-sellers that interest me, those are easy to find.

>204 lisapeet: Sort of -- it's a bridal/bridesmaid gown sale scheduled through mid-May. Unfortunately, since the store isn't accepting book donations right now, the current stock is slim pickings that will only dwindle more. :(

>207 jjmcgaffey: exactly. But that’s what sells, bestsellers, I guess. What’s lost, besides the finds, is the atmosphere of being surrounded by a unique and mysterious collection of books.

Another place where I find used : myl local indie bookstore Changing Hands which has a very good collection of used books. They had a sale today, plus my teacher discount and came away with three books, two of them already reduced.

Great looking at all the pictures and thinking of travels "someday". The post at >187 rocketjk: made me think of something I had been going to ask and didn't - Why do so many indy and second hand book stores have a cat or two? Why are they not provided with facilities (the cats that is)? Yossarian looks as if he would always be well behaved.

>194 ELiz_M: A wedding in a bookstore sounds like a true meeting of minds.

>200 LolaWalser: Well the place is called Voltaire and Rousseau, so maybe these two are their hard bitten incarnations? Actually, there are indeed helpful.

>210 cindydavid4: Changing Hands - great name. I notice in my travels that many of these stores have creative names.

Before travelling, I always check out local organizations promoting independents and used books stores, and have found many middle of nowhere places I would never have known of otherwise. One in West Fairlee, Vermont, now out of the book business and selling 'giftware', had an amazing collection of books on the PRC. Collections like this tell you a lot about who lived in the community and give it a whole new light, but then so does the idea that giftware is more profitable.

One thing I do have to do though, is get out of the habit of starting to look at fiction from A-Z, a habit which hardly ever gets me past authors whose family names began with B. Now I start randomly and have a much better distribution of authors!

>211 SassyLassy: have found many middle of nowhere places I would never have known of otherwise.

There is or was a great used/rare bookstore in Arkdale Wisconsin, that started out as a slurry and transformed into a three level bookstore carrying a very large selection. Found me a number of rare books as well as a few interesting used. Not sure if its still running, this article was from 2013 and the owners were up in years.

http://www.thecabincountess.com/2013/01/castle-arkdale.html

ETA oh shoot, website says permanently closed.

I’m having a hard time with this one, because there are so many places where I’ve enjoyed buying old books, a lot of which are sadly no longer there, or so changed that they aren’t interesting any more. Perhaps the best bookshop is the one you have only just spotted and haven’t had time to explore yet.

Here in the Netherlands, for a long time it wasn’t a question of having favourites, because De Slegte had a near monopoly of the general secondhand trade, so you bought books in their shops whether you liked them or not (some of the branches were pleasant to browse in, others weren’t...). They went out of business a few years ago, although a few branches survived under the same name or others after various mergers and buy-outs. None I’ve visited since seems to have much good stock, apart from the Leiden shop. I think that was one of the last bookshops I visited pre-lockdown. Leiden is altogether a good place for bookshops, like most university towns: I seem to discover a new one every time I go there.

In the UK, most small country towns still seem to have one or two interesting bookshops, although there is a bit of an unfortunate trend towards Instagram-worthy places in old stations or churches that are really highly-profitable tea shops doing a bit of book selling on the side, and rarely have much interesting stock on view, for all their claims to have hundreds of thousands of books. I was disappointed with Alnwick Station a couple of years ago: great café, nice model railway...

A random few British ones I remember: the big one in the centre of Carlisle (“Bookcase”); Minster Gate Bookshop in York; Peter’s Bookshop in Sheringham (the last two both classic cases of books distorting architectural space so that they are far bigger inside than they could possibly be outside); Frontline Books in Manchester (long gone, but an excitingly subversive place when I was a student); Gibb’s Bookshop, also in Manchester (a favourite place to buy used classical LPs and music books when I was younger — I’m surprised to see that it survived until quite recently, although it seems to have been internet-only for a long time). And many more.

During lockdown I’ve been trying to support small bookshops by choosing them in preference to the big warehouse places on ABEBooks, where possible. I usually do “browse this seller’s books” after finding something I’m looking for, to keep up the random element and make shipping charges a bit more reasonable. Most of the books I buy that way come from Germany or France. Since the beginning of 2021 I haven’t risked the complications of ordering anything from the country formerly known as the UK; my English-language books tend to come from Ireland now.

>211 SassyLassy:"Why do so many indy and second hand book stores have a cat or two? Why are they not provided with facilities (the cats that is)? Yossarian looks as if he would always be well behaved."

My conjecture, in answer to the first part of your question, is that bookstores often have a cat or two because cats are generally self-sufficient for the most part and more or less unobtrusive. There are some people who don't like cats, but very few people who are afraid of them. Most people, in fact, do like them, so they add atmosphere and a bit of charm. Also, some bookstores need mouse hunters! Dogs, unless they are very old and/or very small and docile, need to be tended. Yossarian was a delight. He simply loved people, children included. Two or three little kids could spend time playing with him and there was never a fear that anything unfortunate would happen. He wouldn't snap at them no matter how roughly they might handle him. But, still, he had to be kept on a leash, because

a) not everybody is comfortable around big dogs. He normally hung out, leashed, by the front counter, just to the side of where customers would stand to check out, and in full view of the front door. If someone came in who showed a fear of him, I would not say, "Oh, don't worry. He's friendly." I would say, "Oh, don't worry, he's on a leash." When they came to pay for their books, I could bring him behind the counter. And

b) I had to ensure he didn't slip out the door and head off down the street. This sort of thing depends on the individual dog and/or the breed, but in Yossarian's case, it was a concern. That boy liked to ramble! Only once, when I was opening the store, did he get out and away. I was pushing my dollar rack out to the sidewalk looked down, and there he was standing there, off his leash. I guess I hadn't secured him properly. He looked up at me, and just as I made a grab for his collar, he was off, down the street, across a couple of intersections with me in pursuit. For some reason he took a right turn and went another couple of blocks. Finally, he came up to a random woman pedestrian and stopped by her. My guess is that he thought she was my wife. She was looking for his name tag as I came running up, yelling to her, "He won't hurt you. Please grab his collar!" She laughed and did so, and I was able to escort him back to the store. He was always a jokester; I'm sure he thought it was a jolly trick.

Anyway, our current dog, Rosie, a German shepherd, would have been wholly inappropriate for the store. She would never have run off, but she is much more territorial. Once she had determined that the store was her territory, it would have taken her a long time to learn not to growl at customers. Not the best qualification for a bookstore dog! Sorry, that's much too long an answer to your question, but I did love my bookstore time and have trouble resisting any opportunity to reminisce.

>213 thorold: ...the country formerly known as the UK; That made my day. Thanks!

>186 SassyLassy: Buying used books....
I have very fond memories of being in graduate school at the University of Iowa, and one of my professors would take a busload of students to the annual Planned Parenthood Booksale in Des Moines. It was an annual ritual. I haven't been to that in many years now, but I just looked it up and it is still going strong. This year would have been the 60th annual book sale, but it was canceled because of Covid. We would come back with boxes of books. Think about the biggest book sale you've ever been to, and then multiply that. 45,000 square feet. 200,000 used and rare books. Last year they had 12,000 customers from 37 states....