Miembrotimothylord

My library is more in flux than I'd like -- books are heavy, and often get shed in moving. I hate that, which is why I've foisted so many books on my parents with the intent of eventually retrieving them. Since there are a lot of books I now can't prove that I still own (several years of moving around mean that I gave away or otherwise sacrificed quite a few), I'm limiting myself to entries that I know I still hold. The editions listed aren't necessarily the ones I actually own, but I'm lazy and thus far have not tried to correct this except in a few cases.

About my tags: lots of overlap! I can't guarantee that they all match up, either -- I may have some "murder mystery" books that I've failed to also tag as plain old "mystery," for instance. Also, I'm playing loose with time (century and decade) designation; I've tried to give every book at least a century designation, based on the year the content was written. Thus, my copy of Candide, though published in the late 20th century, is listed as "18th century" for my purposes. However, when there's a discrepancy between the writing or publishing date of a book and some substantial portion of its content, I've tried (or at least am trying) to give it a tag indicating this, too. Thus, Neal Stephenson's insanely good works of historical fiction I will at least selectively designate with tags indicating the time periods depicted.

Notes on my tags for bindings and covers:

- badshape - what it sounds like

- nojacket - only applies to hardbacks, whether they came
with no jacket or are now missing one.

- softback - high- (or at least medium-) quality soft cover, but too large / floppy to be a trade paperback; softback books generally will stay flopped open, at least to a middlish page

- hardback - any actually stiff cover, including most coffeetable books

- coffeetable - by size and graphical appeal well suited for this

- paperback - the pocket-sized softcover ones (trade paperbacks don't get this designation, nor do ones I consider "softback")

- trade paperback -- won't stay flopped open very well, but a notch above paperbacks per se.

Notes on ratings:

1) I'm only rating books I've read recently enough to have a strong impression of my thoughts on the book; unlike some people, I have a memory that requires refreshment.

2) I consider three stars a very good rating; ones above that I enjoyed especially, and many of the ones below that I still consider very good books. After all, it's my library, and there's a lot of winnowing in the selection process. There are a few books that I don't rate very highly but keep around for reasons from sentimentality to occasional reference, but unless I consider a book actually *bad* I probably won't give it below a 1.

I'll soon add links to a few reviews that I wrote while working for Slashdot.

As of 20060422, a first-year law student at Temple University (in Philadelphia, Pennyslvania, USA). So, for now -- and for who knows how long -- a creature of the East Coast.