Books few other people have

I bought Apollo's Song by Osamu Tezuka today, however it appears to be so obscure on LT that only 14 LTers own it, and it has no touchstone.

Does anybody else have books that they'd like other people to know about but have no touchstone or not many people owning it?

I seem to have a few obscure books as well...including one book which no one else has - Citiescape: Tokyo.

Most of my low-count, obscure books are my local Australian ones. In particular, there are only about 10 people with copies of the books from the Billabong series, a fantastic Australian children's series by Mary Grant Bruce. I also have some Ausralian constitutional law textbooks which only one or two others are claiming to own, but I wouldn't recommend them as light reading.

Some of my books on Japan are also a little obscure and probably mostly out of print eg. A Diplomat's Wife in Japan (biography), Japanese Identity (a book in both Japanese and English), Japanscapes (a photography book), Tales of Foreign Settlements in Japan etc. None of the above have touchstones - possibly that's not too surprising.

Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott. It's about this Manhattanite who gets divorced in the 20s. It's weird because this woman could be someone who belongs in the Sex and the City world yet it's the 1920s. I just found out that there was even a movie made in the 30s, I think, that was based on it called The Divorcee.

Several under five, mostly older books, from before 1980. Like Cherry Ames and Vicki Barr and the Dana Girls, and The Story of Roland.

My parents (pyattlibrary, I'm very slowly working on it for them) have several older books that were my grandfather's that are autographed. One even has an autographed picture in it. They're also rather obscure religious books, and given that the past three generations of my family have been ministers, my grandfather probably knew the author. My mom has a book Gaston and Lincoln Sketches that I believe is signed (we used to live in Gaston County, and before that, Lincoln).

The Genius by Theodore Dreiser, one of the best books I have ever read.

Brown River, White Ocean which is an anthology of Filipino literature in English edited by Luis Francia I'm surprised this book isn't on other people's shelves as it is a classic in the Filipino-American community. It has a fantastic selection of old and new writing, including classics by Nick Joaquin. It's rather large so not portable but this is true of many anthologies.

#6: What a coincidence. I just finished reading The Devil in the White City and Dreiser is mentioned a few times. I was going to put his Sister Carrie on my TBR list because it was also mentioned and I was curious--have you read it?

i'm really surprised that "The Song of Roland" is so rare, since it is required reading in any university English Litgraduate program, one of the first sustainable classics in English Lit, and the poem that Stephen King based his "Dark Tower" series upon.

Thx for mentioning Dreiser. I'd forgotten how the little bit I read of him in the 1960s turned me on. I'll go shopping for "The Genius" forthwith.

andyray,

What do you consider rare? There are over a thousand copies of The Song of Roland, scattered about under different authors. Not a match for Harry Potter, but. . . . There's also this item that comes up in a work search:

"beowulf (with the song of roland; the destruction of da derga's hostel; the story of the volsungs and niblungs) by anonymous (4748 copies) — matched on Beowulf: A New Verse Translation"

I haven't looked to see just what that means, or if there has been any bad combining.

Apollo's Song by Osama Tezuka seems to have a touchstone now. Maybe the dratted things weren't working earlier.

>8 thatbooksmell:,9 thatbooksmell and andyray

I didn't read Sister Carrie but I did read American Tragedy. The Genius is a thinly veiled autobiographical work that really touched me at the time I read it; I was dealing with a lot of teenage lust-type issues and it definitely involves that type of internal conflict. Plus Dreiser's prose is a joy, if a bit longwinded.

I actually have quite a few books that are rare among Librarythingers. Here's my obscure list:
Black Sand, White Sand by Jean S. Macleod, Creole by Saliee O'Brien, Defenders of Windhaven by Marie de Jourlet, A Great Fall by Mildred Savage, Henrietta's Own Castle by Betty Neels, The Light Fingered Lady by Sheila Rabe, Marilyn and Me by Susan Strasberg, A Morning Affair by Janice Kaplan, The Penningtons by Basil Partridge, The Silver casket by Patricia Lake, Southern Dreams and Trojan Women by Leo Snow, Star Dreams by June Flaum Singer, Sweet Golden Sun by Parris Afton Bonds, and Taboo by Ellen Archer
All of these titles I have only have 4 or less members with these books.

I have over 100 unique books - does that make me weird? ;)

Not at all. That just makes you awesomely unique, sarahemmm. I'm assuming that they're very obscure or old? Or are they so horrible that nobody else even wants them? Or are they foreign-language?

Well, none of those, really... Some are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. None are foreign language. In my opinion, none are horrible (I only keep books I like and want). So I find it rather odd. Maybe my number will reduce as more people join LT.

I think some authors just go out of fashion. Rudyard Kipling and John Masters seem to be very little read nowadays. I'm currently reading The Ravi Lancers which was written in the 1950s and is about India and WW1. Interesting and rather sad.

If you are interested, sort my catalog by Shared to see them.

Wow, that DOS/BIOS System reference is pretty cool. I can see why that isn't shared.
And I see a lot of cookbooks and series romances...
It's funny to me how you read all those fluffy series romances and then a bunch of comp sci books too. Contrast, much? ;-)

#14 not really.
However some of them aren't necessarily unique, just not combined.

A quick skim and one such case is The Fat Flush Plan you have a copy by GITTLEMAN but there are others http://www.librarything.com/search_works.php?q=The+Fat+Flush+Plan here.

You can combine them yourself, or edit your data to match and LT may do so automatically. (Friendly note - you may want to edit your data anyway, single surname authors can get confused with other people).

I tried a few and didn't find any others that need combining, but I didn't check all 100

> 18

I have to admit I haven't made any effort to check my singletons, though I have been watching the Combiners group.

>17 JDHomrighausen:

As far as the eclectic nature of the list - well I'm a programmer who likes to eat, thinks about the future occasionally and likes a bit of light relief. I think that covers the range ;)

I have around 60 with 4 or less, though I haven't entered all of my books into the system yet.

Nothing wrong with being unique.

I seem to be the only person who owns a good portion of the English Men of Letters series (7 of my 24 are not shared, another 5 only have one other person). Although there is another version of the series where they are combined 3 to a book, there may be some of those, I haven't checked.

Quite a few of my DVDs are unshared, unsurprisingly. Although I'm constantly shocked that one of the unshared is Glory.

And my book about the development of Rhode Island's libraries (Library Cooperation) is unique. No real surprise there either.

Sigh. Edited for typos, yet again. And the touchstone that worked the first time has changed to the wrong work and won't let me fix it.