...so here's a picture of some books. A good reference library is important to a geek in much the same way that piles of coins are important to Scrooge McDuck; we like rolling in piles of them about as much as we like reading them. It gives us comfort.
I've totally filled this unit and another just like it. I've probably got another five or ten shelves worth of big hardbacks on the floor, awaiting the day I can shanghai a friend with a truck to go with me to the Particle Board Forest in WallyWorld and chop down another shelving unit or two.
(The empty Ruination case on its side is being filled with Car & Drivers, preparatory to filing.)
How much of the bend in the shelf is fisheye from you camera lens and how much is actual sagginess
ReplyDeleteThe bow in the shelves is, sadly not a photographic effect...
ReplyDeleteThere are probably 400+ pounds worth of books on that shelving unit.
Isn't that your copy of American Zone - top shelf, righthand side, about 4" from the right?
ReplyDeleteYes, it was forked over in a sort of prisoner exchange on Friday. ;)
ReplyDeleteInteresting collection of books.. but.. Piers Anthony? Egghhh... I stopped trying to crawl through his books after I realized he has a very odd and recurrent rape fetish - I think it's mentioned at least twice in every one of his books, except possibly his space pirate-type series, where it happens at least twice (and in detail.. whee).
ReplyDeleteThe only Piers Anthony books I have are the Children Of Earth series because A) I'm a sucker for historical fiction, and B) The basic conceit is so novel.
ReplyDeleteEven if you don't like the author, you should look into the books if you're an anthropology/history buff.
I liked Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series. He had me hooked with the first book when the guy shot Death and killed him, heh.
ReplyDeleteŠhard
Looks like a good selection just in that small sample.
ReplyDeleteI'm done keeping fiction on my shelves. It just takes up too much space, and I've got a couple of library cards.
ReplyDeleteReference books, however, are worth keeping on the shelf.
I'm about to build yet another set of bookshelves--I don't like particleboard, so I get the lumberyard to cut hardwood veneer plywood into shelf widths (4 5/8 or so for paperbacks, 7 7/8 for hardbacks) and assemble them myself. You can get iron on veneer for the ends--I've done a bunch like that, or you can use wood filler on any gaps and just sand and seal the ends--This next one will be my fourth like that.
ReplyDeleteThe rest can be done with a cheap hand miterbox, a power screwdriver or drill and drywall screws.
I'm planning to do a howto blog
Looks like my S/F bookshelf has transfered it's contents to yours or vice versa.
ReplyDeleteTo Matt G: must be nice to live in the big city ... and have the self-control not to get your library card frozen two or three times a year. ;)
ReplyDelete"Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?" -- Henry Ward Beecher
Tam: Overflowing bookshelves. Looks familiar to me ...
"I have one hundred and fifty books, but I have no bookcase. Nobody would lend me a bookcase." -- Henny Youngman
Y'know, it only takes a little glue and some finishing nails to attach 1x2 just under the front & back edges of that particle board or plywood. Then the iron-on veneer (use it, love it, can't do Finnish carpentry without it) covers the whole mess, and it looks like the big library downtown. I know you give up something in grad-student chic, but it keeps the knick-knacks and old motrcycle parts in front of the gilded morocco spines from all rolling to the center.
ReplyDeleteI see quite a few titles I have on the shelf next to me here. Starwolf by Edmond Hamilton and all three of David Drake's "Hunting" books? I thought I was the only one who bought either of them.
ReplyDeleteRight now I'm re-reading Pratchett's "The Fifth Elephant" thanks to the discussion you prompted this past week.
Bloody Hell! I think I noticed a fast dozen or so that could have come from my shelves....
ReplyDeleteI almost walked into the other room to check their presence.
Tamara, you're like my favorite aunt...
ReplyDeleteOnly for real!
Ek
If you like David Drake and David Weber, you might try John Ringo.
ReplyDeleteDidn't like any of the Posleen stuff I've read, but the Kildar series is big, dirty fun.
ReplyDelete"Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?"
ReplyDeleteMy idea of hell: a bookstore in Japan.
They're usually enormous, and I can't read a single word.
Can you imagine?
Weber and Ringo: "March to the Hills-Sea-Stars" trilogy, and #4 "We Few".
ReplyDeleteBilly Beck,
ReplyDeleteJeez, that'd be like handing a starving Ethiopian kid a bowl of plastic fruit.
We have the same problem. Just yesterday my wife and I were taking books and tossing them (donating actually). Our first cut was all of the duplicates from College. Now 25 years ago I doubt we need to keep the other copy either but they survived the first cut.
ReplyDeleteBetween this action and buying some more shelves we can buy books again!
I am about to, for the first time in my life, actually carry some books into a used book store.
ReplyDelete"I am about to, for the first time in my life, actually carry some books into a used book store."
ReplyDeleteUh..... Why?
(Fingers in ears) (NANANANANANANA))
I don't want to hear the answer.
Next thing you'll be selling perfectly good firearms....
Oh, wait, I do that too...
There are probably 400+ pounds worth of books on that shelving unit.
ReplyDeleteLast time I moved, I had about seventy boxes of books. Depending on the exact contents (smaller books tend to be lighter, even in bulk), each box weighed somewhere between about 30 and 50 pounds.
The math is left as an exercise for the reader. ;-)
Did not see any Peter F. Hamilton.
ReplyDeleteGood stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_F._Hamilton
"...handing a starving Ethiopian kid a bowl of plastic fruit."
ReplyDelete{nod} I'm tellin' ya. You can't believe it: it's horrible. Many bookstores over there will have English-language sections (conversational and written English are important values to the Japanese), but they're comparatively tiny. One store that I know in Tokyo is five bloody stories tall and the English section is in one corner about the size of a pair of gas pumps.
And of course, I say "God bless 'em." It's their language and they can read whatever they want to in it. It's hell on a gaijin, though.
yA certain member of my family has problems with libraries, and no longer borrows.
ReplyDeleteThat member buys several new paperbacks a month.
That family member had so many of them in the house, that I finally, upon request, removed all of them, and took several hundred once-read paperback books to a couple of local nursing homes.
My, but you should have seen the way the project directors gushed.
I see that the Davids (Drake and Weber) have pride of place on the top shelf. Good choice!
ReplyDelete