Category: Tuesday Thingers

Tuesday Thingers – Multiple Works

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Today’s question: Work multiples. Do you own multiple copies of any books? Which ones? Why? Can you share your list?

You can find the link under Statistics on LibraryThing, from either your home page or profile.

I have a few, mainly because I have old copies of these books (belonging to either my parents or D’s parents) and have bought newer editions or paperbacks. My favourite “multiple” is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. My copies are both hard backs.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is one I bought in a box set, along with Emma and Sense and Sensibility.

And this one belonged to my mother – she loved it too.

The others are:

  • Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte – I bought the paperback after the TV series was broadcast and not read either copy yet.
  • Tom Jones– Henry Fielding
  • The Pilgrim’s Progress -John Bunyan
  • Notre-Dame de Paris – Victor Hugo (paperback version) called The Hunchback of Notre Dame in my hardback copy – I’ve not read either book yet.
  • Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
  • Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Andersen – another old favourite
  • The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – both copies unread.

Tuesday Thingers

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

This week’s question: Legacy libraries. With which legacy libraries do you share books? Tell us a little about a couple of them and what you share.

I had no idea that this group I See Dead People’s Books existed! It is mind-boggling. People have entered the personal libraries of a number of famous people into LibraryThing and collectively they are called Legacy Libraries.

I share books with quite a few of them. Ernest Hemingway and I share 71 books, but he did own 7,411 books. One of those 71 books is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, which we both share with Marilyn Monroe!

 I share 4 books with Marilyn Monroe, out of the 261 books of hers that were sold at auction after she died. The four books we have in common are:

  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking glass and The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  • Ulysses by James Joyce

James Joyce and I share three books:

  • The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
  • The Iliad of Homer by Homer
  • The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

 

I’m thrilled that Leonardo Da Vinci and I share Dante’s Divine Comedy – I did start reading it, I must finish it one day! Oh, and Ernest Hemingway shares it too.

Tuesday Thingers – Early Reviewers

Published on by Margaret6 Comments


Today’sTuesday Thingers question: Early Reviewers- do you participate? How many books (approximately) have you received through the program? Have you liked them generally? What’s your favorite ER book? Do you participate in the discussion group on LT?

Yes, I’ve participated in Early Reviewers, ever since books were offered to UK members. I’ve received two books – the first was Our Longest Days from the second batch I requested. The second was Man In the Dark by Paul Auster. Although Our Longest Days is my favourite, I enjoyed both of them immensely,  – my reviews are on LT and also here on my blog (clicking on the titles links to my reviews). Currently I’m waiting for Tangled Roots by Sue Guiney. It should be arriving soon as it’s been on its way since August!

I don’t request every book that’s available, as I have so many books that I haven’t read yet and time is precious. So it’s been a real plus receiving the ones I’ve really fancied reading.

I haven’t take part in the LT discussion group, mainly because I don’t have the time. I haven’t even looked at it.

Recently Added – a LibraryThing Feature

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Tuesday Thingers

This week’s question: -LibraryThing’s Recently Added feature: do you look at it? Do you use it for ideas? Is there something listed there now that looks interesting to you? What have you added to your LT library recently?

My answer: I hardly ever look at Recently Added (the one that shows what other people have added, although Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: The History of Heat by Hans Christian Von Baeyerstrangely I do look at my own). I’ve looked this morning and my goodness it changes so quickly! Blink and you’ve missed it. One that did catch my eye is Warmth Disperses and Time Passes by Hans Christian Von Baeyer about the law of thermodynamics. It looks really interesting and I don’t normally say that about books on science. I’ve never even wondered why my cup of tea cools down, so I’m going to see if I can borrow a copy from my local library.

My own recent additions are a mixed bag. I’ve added:

  • Harald First of the Vikings by Charles Young (lovely illustrations by Gertrude Hammond), published in 1911. I need to scan the cover as at present it’s showing the horrible brown default cover;
  • England’s Last Glory:the Boys of 66 by David Miller, a book on football that’s really my husband’s but his books are in LT with mine; and
  •  Walking In the Wild: over 50 Celtic Walks in Devon, Wales and the Hebridean Isles by Brian Carter. This is not just a book of walks, but is also autobiographical and “a quest for Celtic connections from South Devon, and Dartmoor, through Welsh-speaking Wales to the Hebridean Isle of Mull off the West Coast of Scotland” (quote from the back cover). It has beautiful black and white sketches of places and wildlife as well as line drawings of the walks.

I quite like it when I add books to LibraryThing and see that I’m the only person who owns copies. It’s almost as though I’m keeping the books alive.

Tuesday Thingers

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Marie’s question today is: Members who have your books. Do you ever look at this feature? Do you use it to make LT friends, or compare notes? There are three tabs- weighted, raw, and recent. “Weighted,” which means “weighted by book obscurity and library size” is probably the least self-explanatory of the three, whereas “raw” and “recent” are more so. Do you get any kind of use out of this feature?

My answer: I have looked at it, and wondered what those three tabs mean. I’m sorry Marie but I still don’t understand them apart from “recent”. What is “raw”? I don’t “cook” my books!  When you hover over the tab it reads “raw overlap” which is equally incomprehensible to me. So, no I have never used this feature – until now, just to try to work it out. When I’ve added a book and seen that there are only a few others who have copies I’ve looked a few times to see who they are and what other books they have.

Tuesday Thingers

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

For this week’s Tuesday Thingers the questions are about the most unpopular books you own. 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?

My answer:

I have 44 unique books in my LT account. They are a mixture of books on cookery, yoga, gardening, local history/guide books, wildlife, biography/autobiography and a handful of fiction. I think some of these are just because they are different editions; for example I’m not the only person who owns D H Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, but presumably I’m the only one to own this particular publication.

I feel quite protective now about these books. Mountains on the Moon is by a friend so I’m sad I’m the only person with this book. Michael Arthern is a retired biology teacher and wrote this book when he retired having been granted a studentship at Regents Park College, Oxford. He is a Christian who believes that science and faith enhance each other and so he is interested in the science versus religion debate. His book covers a number of scientists through nearly three thousand years from Thales c.625 – c.547 BC to Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project, including Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Max Planck and Einstein.

As for cataloguing them some of them I found from the ISBN, but a lot I entered manually, which is like ‘proper’ cataloguing, although I’ve been brief with some of the information. I’m a bit particular about the cover I use as well, which means that I’ve had to scan many of my books to get the right cover. I still have many to do to get rid of the default covers. 

I didn’t know about the “You and none other” feature before today. There are 24 books listed there that I share with only one other person – and not one of them is the same person!