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Today’s topic: LibraryThing authors. Who are your LibraryThing authors? What books of theirs do you have? Do you ever comment on an author’s LT page? Have you received any comments from an author on your LT account?
I have a few LT authors:
David Blixt (CALEDFWLCH), author of Master of Verona,
Dave Boling (daveboling), author of Guernica (review coming soon!)
Lisa Carey (axel), author of The Mermaids Singing, and the wife of Tim Spalding
David Ebershoff (Debershoff), author of The 19th Wife,
Sandra Gulland (SandraGulland), author of the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy,
Joe Hill (joehill), author of Heart-Shaped Box,
Sarah Monette (truepenny), author of Melusine,
Naomi Novik (naominovik), author of the Temeraire series (His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, and Empire of Ivory),
Penelope Przekop (pennyprz), author of Aberrations,
Dian Curtis Regan (diancurtisregan), author of Monster of the Month Club and Princess Nevermore (one of my favorites),
Patrick Rothfuss (Rothfaust), author of The Name of the Wind,
Brandon Sanderson (BrandonSanderson), author of Elantris, Mistborn: The Final Empire, and Mistborn: The Well of Ascension,
Caroline Comfort Shields (ccshields), author of Surviving Ben’s Suicide,
Janny Wurts (JannyWurts), author of To Ride Hell’s Chasm.
That seems like more than I expected! I also have a few books by LT authors on my wishlist. I’ve listed the books I own with links for reviews when possible. I haven’t interacted with most of these authors on LT, although I have with some elsewhere. I interviewed Penelope Przekop and I’ve communicated with her on Facebook and through email. I’ve emailed Brandon Sanderson and I’m a regular commenter on his LiveJournal. I’ve also interacted with him in the Green Dragon group on LibraryThing, along with Janny Wurts. There are a lot of authors who unfortunately aren’t on LT that I’ve communicated with, as well. Overall, I’m really enjoying all the interaction I’ve had with authors. Somehow, I expected them to be a bit more full of themselves – after all, they’ve written and published books, something I’ve wanted to do all my life and now believe I never will! Without exception, though, the authors I’ve talked with are all kind and generous and willing to either send me their books or find me a way to get them, and then discuss with me when I’m finished. It’s a great world, I’m telling you.
What’s your favorite bookstore? Is it an online store or a bricks-and-mortar store? How often do you go book shopping? Is your favorite bookstore (or bookstores) listed as a favorite in LT? Do you attend events at local bookstores? Do you use LT to find events?
I can’t say I really have a favorite bookstore. I like to buy books in multiple places. My favorite atmosphere has always been at the Barnes and Noble near where I live – big and wooden and cozy. Right now, my favorite bookstore is a new one I found called The Book Barn. It’s a charity bookstore associated with St Clare’s Hospital and all the books are $2 or less. It’s nice to make great finds, know that my money is going to a good cause, and have a place to donate those books that I don’t want to give away here. Usually, I only donate books that I really hate in the hopes that someone else might get some small enjoyment from them. When I have wishlist books that I haven’t found there in a while, I go to Amazon for them because it’s the cheapest and I can get free shipping and not spend money on gas.
I go about once a week. It’s bad because I usually acquire 10+ books and I definitely don’t read that many in a week, but I can’t resist the lure. It’s not listed in LT because I haven’t put it in there yet, but I have a couple of other favorites listed that I enjoyed up in Boston, like the Harvard Coop and Back Pages Books in my college town of Waltham.
I would attend events if they interested me, but there are never any in my area. LT local came a little too late for when I was living in the Boston area, otherwise I probably would have. I’m hoping for some interesting events in York, where I am moving in October, since there seem to be a lot of independents around there.
Today’s questions from Marie at The Boston Bibliophile:
What other weekly memes or round robins do you participate in? Is this the only one? Why Tuesday Thingers and not some other weekly Tuesday meme? Or do you do more than one?
I regularly participate in three memes: this one, Booking Through Thursday, and The Sunday Salon. I like them because usually, other book bloggers post interesting things and they allow me to discover new blogs without too much time and effort. I’ve considered joining Friday Finds because I always find those posts interesting from the blogs I already read, but every week since I discovered it, I’ve acquired a ridiculous number of books. Posting about each one would take more time than I really want to invest in a meme. Perhaps in the future when I acquire fewer books after moving away from my favorite cheap bookstore.
I believe I’ve been with Tuesday Thingers since the beginning, or at least close to it. Marie asks some interesting questions and I enjoy reading what the other LibraryThing bloggers have to say about various features of LT. I’ve done a fair amount of exploring so none of the questions have introduced me to a new concept, but they have caused me to think about just why I do things over there. I like the community and I expect I will be participating in Tuesday Thingers for some time to come!
Today’s question from Marie at The Boston Bibliophile:
Cataloging sources. What cataloging sources do you use most? Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources, or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most things through LT’s almost 700 sources?
I’m like most people I think – I use Amazon because it’s first on the list and I’m lazy. LT tells me I’ve used others, but I don’t remember doing that on purpose. I rarely have trouble finding anything because I almost always type in the ISBN. I have a few books that are too old to have ISBNs, and while I can generally find them, it’s annoying to go through pages of search results to get to them, and even more annoying to find my edition in particular. Luckily, my library is fairly young, so I haven’t had to do that very often. I have had to enter two books manually. One is a dual English/Russian book that my high school Russian teacher gave to me as practice reading. It has no sort of identification on it and typing in Russian on an American keyboard is a nightmare, so I just did my best to enter it in English. The other is a Nancy Drew book from the 50s that I couldn’t find in all my digging, so I just put it in manually. I can’t remember if I eventually found and combined it, though. It looks like I did since it isn’t in my list of books owned only by me.
Anyway, to sum up: I’m lazy and use Amazon. I like that LT has so many cataloging sources, though. Must be good for the parts of the world that don’t have an “all-knowing” Amazon.
From Marie at The Boston Bibliophile:
Today’s topic: Recommendations. Do you use LT’s recommendations feature? Have you found any good books by using it? Do you use the anti-recommendations, or the “special sauce” recommendations? How do you find out about books you want to read?
I don’t really use LT’s recommendations feature very much. It either shows me books that are related to old books I have, in which I have no interest, or books I already know that I want. In that respect, I suppose it works, I’m just faster at getting ideas. When I put in new books, usually then the “new” recommendations are the ones I want, because those ignore my high school collection of romance novels.
I like looking at the Unsuggester – like many others’, it’s mostly full of Christian works with a little mystery and suspense. I don’t like any of these and it’s occasionally entertaining to see what it comes up with. Of course, when a book I’ve heard about is on there, it actually makes me more interested to read it because I wonder if my tastes thwart LT’s view of me. I think they do, based on the Early Reviewer books I have and haven’t received, but that’s not the question here.  Actually, several books I own also show up on the Unsuggester, so I guess I’m already thwarting LT. Apparently people can’t like both fantasy and Tudor history.
I usually find out about books I’d like elsewhere. On LT, I usually read a lot of the Talk forums and as I have a good idea of what I like, I glean lots of recommendations from what other people are reading. If a book has several mentions, I’ll check out its reviews and ratings and add it to my wish list, either mental or physical. I try to find books that are similar to those I already have, as well. I also have a google reader full of book blogs, which are both wonderful and disastrous for my TBR list. I love reading them, though. And of course, I get books through ARC requests and offers, and if I don’t get them then I’m looking out for them when they come out. I rarely just pick up a book and decide I’d like it, unless it’s very cheap.
Today’s topic: Book-swapping. Do you do it? What site(s) do you use? How did you find out about them? What do you think of them? Do you use LT’s book-swapping column feature for information on what to swap? Do you participate in any of the LT communities that discuss bookswapping, like the Bookmooch group for example?
Nope, I don’t use any online communities to swap books. In fact, there are very few people I will actually let read my books. I don’t like to give them up! When I do, I usually donate them so that others can sell them for a good cause. I’ve contemplated joining Bookmooch, but I know I’d regret giving up the books and I’d probably just buy them again anyway.
Since we’re past the Fourth of July and the summer season has officially started, what are your plans for the summer? Vacations, trips? Trips that involve reading? Reading plans? If you’re going somewhere, do you do any reading to prepare? Do you read local literature as part of your trip? Have you thought about using the LT Local feature to help plan your book-buying?
I don’t have many exciting plans for the summer exactly. My fiance is coming to visit next week, which I’m looking forward to, and we’ll probably be going a few local places, but nowhere particularly interesting for me (maybe for him). After that, I will probably be working and taking time out to visit some friends back in Boston where I went to college. The fall is much more exciting for me – I’ll be heading to York, England, for a Masters degree in Medieval Studies, which I am thrilled about! I am not as thrilled about the paperwork I need to complete in order to get my visa, but it’s a necessary evil. I’m not-so-secretly hoping to get taken on as a PhD student there. I love the city and I can’t imagine anywhere nicer to live, and my own opinions have been nicely backed up by people I know who already live there.
Back to the question! I do love to read books about certain locations when I’m going there, both history and historical fiction. Sharon Kay Penman’s Welsh trilogy made the visit we took to Wales the second summer I went to visit then-boyfriend now-fiance even more exciting. All of my research in history has made my subsequent travels around England really, really cool. This is probably part of the reason that I love York so much – I’ve concentrated a lot of my history in the North and York is really its focal point. Sadly I haven’t traveled much beyond that, but I have been promised lots of travels around Europe and elsewhere, and I know that reading about the locations will make them much more enjoyable.
LT local has been mostly useless here in NJ where my parents live, but it was useful up in Boston. So far I think it will also be useful up in York, based on some looking around. I’m really hoping to find some used bookstores there because I will be poor.
I think the conclusion of this week’s post is that I really want summer to be over so I can get to the fall!
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Just a reminder – I am hosting a giveaway of Surviving Ben’s Suicide by C. Comfort Shields here! It’s open until this Sunday, please take a look!
Today’s question, courtesy of The Boston Bibliophile:
Here are the Top 100 Most Popular Books on LibraryThing. Bold what you own, italicize what you’ve read. Star what you liked. Star multiple times what you loved!
I hope all the American participants have a great Fourth of July weekend!
1. Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone by J.K. Rowling (32,484) *
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling (29,939) *
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling (28,728) *
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) by J.K. Rowling (27,926)*
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) by J.K. Rowling (27,643)**
6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by J.K. Rowling (27,641)*
7. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (23,266)
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (21,325)
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J.K. Rowling (20,485)
10. 1984 by George Orwell (19,735) ***
11. Pride and Prejudice (Bantam Classics) by Jane Austen (19,583)
12. The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger (19,082) ****
13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (17,586) *
14. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (16,210)
15. The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (15,483) ***
16. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (14,566) *
17. Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics) by Charlotte Bronte (14,449) *******
18. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (13,946)
19. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (13,272)
20. Animal Farm by George Orwell (13,091)
21. Angels & demons by Dan Brown (13,089)
22. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (13,005)
23. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (12,777) *
24. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah’s Book Club) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (12,634)
25. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) by J.R.R. Tolkien (12,276)
26. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (12,147)*
27. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (11,976)
28. The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Part 2) by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,512)
29. The Odyssey by Homer (11,483)
30. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (11,392)
31. Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut (11,360)
32. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11,257) *
33. The return of the king : being the third part of The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,082)
34. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (10,979) ***
35. American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman (10,823)
36. The chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (10,603) *
37. The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams (10,537)
38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (10,435)
39. The lovely bones : a novel by Alice Sebold (10,125)
40. Ender’s Game (Ender, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card (10,092) *
41. The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman (9,827) *
42. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman (9,745) ***
43. Dune by Frank Herbert (9,671)
44. Emma by Jane Austen (9,610)
45. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (9,598) *
46. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bantam Classics) by Mark Twain (9,593)
47. Anna Karenina (Oprah’s Book Club) by Leo Tolstoy (9,433) *
48. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (9,413) ***
49. Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (9,343)
50. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (9,336) (did not finish)
51. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (9,274)
52. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (9,246)
53. The Iliad by Homer (9,153)
54. The Stranger by Albert Camus (9,084)
55. Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen (9,080)
56. Great Expectations (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens (9,027) *
57. The Handmaid’s Tale: A Novel by Margaret Atwood (8,960) ***
58. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (8,904)
59. Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt (8,813)
60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery – (8,764)
61. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (8,421) ***
62. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (8,417)
63. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (8,368) **
64. The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) by John Steinbeck (8,255)
65. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (8,214) *
66. The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (8,191) *
67. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (8,169)
68. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (8,129) (can I give this one negative stars?)
69. The complete works by William Shakespeare (8,096) (most of them)
70. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (7,843)
71. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (7,834)
72. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Barbara Kingsolver (7,829) ***
73. Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare (7,808)
74. Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by John Steinbeck (7,807)
75. A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens (7,793) *
76. The Alchemist (Plus) by Paulo Coelho (7,710)
77. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (7,648)
78. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics) by Oscar Wilde (7,598)
79. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by William Strunk (7,569)
80. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (7,557)
81. The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman (7,534) *
82. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan (7,530) *
83. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (7,512) *
84. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (7,436)
85. Dracula by Bram Stoker (7,238) ****
86. Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) by Joseph Conrad (7,153)
87. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (7,055)
88. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (7,052)
89. The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (7,043) *
90. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics) by James Joyce (6,933)
91. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Milan Kundera (6,901)
92. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (6,899)
93. Neuromancer by William Gibson (6,890)
94. The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer (6,868)
95. Persuasion (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen (6,862) *
96. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (6,841)
97. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (6,794) *
98. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (6,715)
99. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (6,708)
100. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (6,697)
Wow, I’ve read a lot of these. I guess this is why my library isn’t very obscure on LT! Hehe.
Do you have any unique books in your library- books only you have on LT? How many? Did you find cataloging information on your unique books, or did you hand-enter them? Do they fall into a particular category or categories, or are they a mix of different things? Have you ever looked at the “You and none other” feature on your statistics page, which shows books owned by only you and one other user? Ever made an LT friend by seeing what you share with only one other user?
I have 7 unique books in my library. I actually think I had more than that when last I checked, but at the rate people join LT it’s not surprising that the number keeps going down, since I don’t think I’ve ever purchased any truly obscure books, and I’ve only had to enter one or two manually. I have an old half-Russian half-English book that my high school Russian teacher gave me to practice with that I am pretty sure no one else on LT is going to acquire any time soon and I also have an ARC that a friend gave me which mysteriously no one else owns – I guess its marketing campaign was not successful. I have an atrocious book that I had to buy for school and can’t get rid of, two romance novels, a book my mother gave me, and a cookbook.
When it comes to sharing a book with one other person, these are romances, cookbooks, and player’s guides, and there are 10 of them. I’ve never made friends with anyone over it unfortunately, mostly because I share no more than one with each person and I’m not particularly fond of any of the books on there. I do like to look at the statistics though, I find them really interesting.
What’s the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it? What’s the most popular book you don’t have? How does a book’s popularity figure into your decisions about what to read?
The most popular book in my library is, not surprisingly, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which I share with 32,518 other LTers, followed by all the rest of the Harry Potters. I certainly enjoyed it and I’ve actually been wanting to reread Harry Potter for its sheer comfort level and predictability. Can’t entirely justify it though with my TBR pile.
The most popular book I don’t have is The DaVinci Code. I have read this book and did not like it. Then gave it away. I think it’s only so popular because it was controversial, but I do remember a time in high school when it seemed like everyone was reading it, thus I read it too. I don’t really consider a book’s popularity now when I go to read it. I read books because I’m interested in them, not because the masses tell me I should. That said, if a book is really ridiculously popular and it sounds fairly interesting, I’ll probably read it to see what all the fuss is about. I wouldn’t read a book like Eat, Pray, Love or The Last Lecture just because everyone is talking about it, though, because neither of those topics interest me, much as other people might love them. I like to see what’s going on in the book world, but I always exercise my judgment, because the fact that a book is a bestseller does not mean it is a good book.
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