I found a new toy. Actually I found it awhile ago and circumspectly avoided it as I knew my rabid cataloguing tendencies would make themselves known and I'd be sitting for hours putting my collection in there. I saw it again and I think the tiredness made me forget that I didn't want to start this...You see my dad's collection is now my collection, and it probably numbers high in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. Don't believe?
I started cataloguing the small bookshelves in my computer/craft room, which are the easy part. They are here. But I still have:
The one on the left is mostly mama's books so not too much of a problem there as I won't add many of them. The one on the right contains largely father's books (and just look at how many more there are and how fat they are and how many of them have something to do with Winston Churchill. My dad used to do a pretty good Winston Churchill when he got to WWII with his grade 11s-We will nevah...surrender!...but I digress.)
This one is the really deceptive killer. It's like the community chest of bookdom, a hodge-podge. Floor to ceiling books of all types double shelved. Pull out a book and you find...another layer of books. It is wider than it looks also.
Notice the two Gage Canadian dictionaries? There is another one somewhere. This goes to show the extent of our bibliolatry. Only in the Moore household do we fill every available nook with books. And there are roughly five boxes of them out in the shed as well. My brother wanted to take some of them, but I denied that request as I knew he'd probably just sell them. He took away the ten-volume set of children's stories we used to have, insisting he should have it "because I have kids". Never mind that they live closer to me than to him. Though rest assured that if I am trolling on ebay one day and happen to see them, he will die.Anyway, I probably won't get them all on there or even close to all on there, though it would be nice to have a catalogue of them all. I'll see how far I get before I get tired of it. I wonder if I should add dad's copy of Mein Kampf? Will that get me put on a "list"?
9 comments:
Woo hoo look at all those books! You just can't have too many.
This is so much worse than grammar it's not even funny. It is not a mistake that "thesaurus" is Greek for "treasure." (That's a trivia question, so next time someone asks you for another word for thesaurus, you have a good answer.)
I get lost in one-lane book stores. I think I stared at the pictures of your bookshelves for roughly five minutes. You have different books than I do, for the most part, though we share a couple. I would definitely lift some of yours; I have bibliokleptomania, be warned.
Oh, by the way. You realize that cataloguing is a form of organization, which is a form of cleaning, right? ::duck'n'run::
Ok, so I have a few photos online. I haven't got room for my books, either—they're just tossed many places. I admit I have a penchant for fantasy novels, though my interest has broadened since they stopped shoving them down my throat. I think you would enjoy (perhaps) Milosz's ABCs.
I do not have Mein Kampf, though I confess my familiarity with German has sometimes made me want to get it, just to see if I can read it.
The best place to get some books is at yard sales here. It's amazing what old books people will part with on the cheap. I picked up a few when I was in Chicago, but I didn't have time to really look at what the selection was. (I did, however, get an old typewriter for like $10.)
Also, have you seen Christiana's Bookshelf? I'm fairly sure that there are some real treasures there. I purchased a couple books from them recently for my Dad's birthday. In poring through their offerings, I remember getting a dry mouth.
It is very cool that your dad was a history teacher. I loooove history, especially the ancient sort. Herodotus and Tacitus are two of my favorite memories from freshman year. We did it mostly for the ethnographies, but I enjoyed the rest of it also. Reading Against Apion was really cool, and more recently Eusebius.
Just remember, you opened the floodgates. :)
Also, I can't help but think the title would be better as, "Moore-ish bookdom." I am not sure why that is in my head. And I know this is even worse, but when I first saw your nick online, I thought, "Charmeleon? Is this some kind of twisted fourteen-year-old anime fan?" Of course, your postings didn't sound like it. But nonetheless, I still associate you with that ferocious purveyer of flame.
Yes, yes, the best are my dad's. But I should get credit at least for Lawhead's Song of Albion trilogy, all of Milosz's books, Edwards, and Pink. ;) I've also loaned out many of my other books to relatives, like Byzantium and Hood. And I should get something for having two copies of Lord of the Rings. I still have a copy of the Hobbit somewhere that I stole from 8th grade reading (speaking of library raids...). And Surprised by Joy.
Many of my books originally belonged to my brother, and I co-opted them when he left for stonier pastures (i.e., the city).
I also have a truckload of books in the basement, most of which are textbooks. I don't have space for them upstairs. They include all of the history books (several of them, mostly ancient and Japanese) Shakespeare (not all of them, but some), German stuff, and others.
A lot of my reading happens on the computer, too. I abhor reading online, for the most part, though I found Hebrew for Christians to be quite well organized and readable. (I definitely wasn't look at this yesterday at work.) I've got, e.g., Pilgrim's Progress,
And yes, the books at CB are freaking expensive. I got cheap ones.
re: grammar. If it's any comfort, art for me is like grammar for you. Even the very simple things we did in our classes at school, like book binding. I once sewed the straps of a bag over the top instead of on the sides. Most five year olds can write straighter than I can. I took my C and ran on most projects.
Lord of the Rings is no mere fantasy. It's properly a work of mythology and grammar. The intricacy is amazing and the character development is unparalleled. The movies were okay, but you just can't get lines like this in there: "And taking Frodo's hand in his, Aragorn left the hill of Cerin Amroth and returned never again as a living man." It gives me goosebumps just to type it.
My nerd score was only 90%. Someone has obviously rigged it.
Hebrew is a wicked cool language. I don't know much about it, but learning it has been on the list of things to do for awhile. By learning, I don't mean exhaustively enough for translation, but just enough to fumble around in the OT like I do in the NT.
re: calgary. I talked to my friend yesterday afternoon, and as it turns out, it looks like his last assignment will be in Edmonton. He isn't given much advanced warning on when he'll be there, either (like about 24-hours notice last time). So perhaps I will fly to Edmonton via Regina, if there are any good speakers at the corner. :)
Re: everything else. I cannot read Arabic. It is one language I actually haven't really looked into at all, nor even really developed a temptation. I have thought some about Urdu and Farsi, as I came in contact with both at University, but I never followed through.
I am not sure what edition of the Arabian Nights I am reading, though I am thoroughly embarrassed to say that I own one I purchased from Barnes and Noble on the cheap. There is some introductory commentary that's interesting—about how some people didn't like them overmuch because the stories were somewhat immoral on occasion (though by today's Western standards, they're tame).
I hate reading online also. It's nearly impossible to do without getting a headache.
That's my story. It'll appear in my memoirs, when I never write them.
Also, the captcha text for this one was ukuurjai, which should be a foreign word in some language.
Edmonchuck? Is this a crazy canuck concept? As for the science center, I am more or less at the mercy of my friend's schedule and transportation situation, but I will mention to him as a recommended activity. The planetarium is playing the same movie that they're playing at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
Also, I meant to ask, is "honkers" slang for "pigeon" in Canuck? Because that made me laugh on several levels.
(My dad always felt that Canada should let Quebec secede...and then make them pay out the nose to get back in.)
The B&N edition of TAN that I have is edited by some guy named George and another one named al-Musawi. It is a new one, I think.
I have a love-hate relationship with the classics and with math. I spent my high school years more or less despising almost everything I read. I liked The Scarlet Letter, and simply couldn't dislike Screwtape. Sophocles made me barf (not literally, I'm exaggerating a little), Shakespeare struck me as over-hyped (I mostly corrected this issue in college), and Lawrence and Faulkner made me want to gouge out my eyes with a wooden spoon.
So now I populate my bookshelves with books I hated for no good reason, either to find a good reason or to find a good book. At least now I can take notes in them without fear.
And I have spent too much time talking to Catholics and Anglicans about interpreting Scripture to ignore philosophy, so I am trying to understand that from a different perspective, too. So a lot of this reading is academic, even if it's lighter. When things get really bad, I'll just re-read LOTR.
Hey, you haven't updated your book list in awhile. You're making it harder for me to procrastinate at work.
Hope it's warming up there some. Also, I live off of Moore Road—I was passing by the road sign today and though, "Oh, yeah!" And then I figured I'd tell you.
I trust things are well. Keep those Saskatchewanese Arminians in check!
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