tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post6552463518490498592..comments2024-03-07T12:57:35.296-05:00Comments on Varieties of Unreligious Experience: BibliophilyConrad H. Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-39665259901242317222008-08-30T17:40:00.000-04:002008-08-30T17:40:00.000-04:00I have considered it. I am not sure I could face c...I have considered it. I am not sure I could face cataloguing all my books, and I'm sure I would fritter away too much time in hopeless library envy.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-25893320470160590852008-08-30T17:32:00.000-04:002008-08-30T17:32:00.000-04:00Have you considered using LibraryThing to keep tra...Have you considered using <A HREF="http://www.librarything.com/" REL="nofollow">LibraryThing</A> to keep track of your books? It's a wonderful site, and it gets better as more people join. Here's <A HREF="http://www.librarything.com/profile/brunellus" REL="nofollow">my library</A> as an example.Brunellushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08630207490739621242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-9193472190438365582007-10-29T12:02:00.000-04:002007-10-29T12:02:00.000-04:00'I never ceased marvelling at the swiftness of his...'I never ceased marvelling at the swiftness of his decisions. He knew at once whether he wanted a book or could pulp it. Some of his choices were puzzling indeed. His shop windows would suddenly display a shelf-full of what looked like worthless rubbish - prominently shown, and highly priced as a unit. Looking more closely, you saw that the first title was <I>Living on Leprosy</I>, and that the other items followed the same odd semantic pattern. Or that the successive titles composed some absurd and burr-like sentence.' (I.A. Richards on C.K. Ogden and the <I>Cambridge Magazine</I> bookshop)<BR/><BR/>I'm almost ashamed to confess my one experiment in this vein: when a friend of ours, an Anglican woman priest, came to dinner and held forth for the entire evening without ever noticing that the bookshelf directly behind her had Marie Corelli's <I>Holy Orders</I> alongside P.D. James's <I>An Unsuitable Job for a Woman</I>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-39862525938357524842007-10-23T18:04:00.000-04:002007-10-23T18:04:00.000-04:00I too have been shifting my books around into new ...I too have been shifting my books around into new shelves and you are right it is very pleasurable. I have done this before. Our collection of books which, at that time was in the region of 2,500, had to be arranged and catalogued. This fell to a very well read and literate “chap” who after a day or two told me that there were a few books that he thought were not really suitable for tender eyes however dyslexic and disinterested they might be in books. Many of the books were family books collected over some generations so I was surprised to hear that some might be inappropriate! On inspection they turned out to be Apuleius “The Golden Ass” and a few others of similar ilk. <BR/>On one of our inspections, by, surprise surprise, my old "A"English Teacher he made an observation that we did not have much of a library for our 30 odd pupils. Now 80 books each may be a little thin for some of us at any one time but for dyslexics who hated the very sight of a book I thought is was an unfair remark from an inspector who then conceded he had not noticed how many books we had! Now you know why I did so well at “English Literature” at school. Of course many of these books were not so much inappropriate as not intended for “the age”, either dated or for grown-up consumption in subject matter and language. <BR/>Sadly my books languish now and the few I have on shelves in my studio and home are dusty and unopened but still loved and cherished.<BR/>A daughter’s friend works at that great Oxford Library The Bodleian. He tells me that they are to move all their books soon. That will be some historical task. <BR/>I trust you and ily are thriving.Roberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00533678970029159873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-2839800276786260942007-10-23T06:08:00.000-04:002007-10-23T06:08:00.000-04:00We do have a lot in common. Seneca, I can see, wou...We do have a lot in common. Seneca, I can see, would be extremely annoying. I wouldn't mind getting a <EM>Monas</EM> chapbook; I've had an internet printout in a folder for a few years now, but it isn't the same.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-30773558620147122922007-10-21T00:06:00.000-04:002007-10-21T00:06:00.000-04:00Whenever I wistfully mention getting our library o...Whenever I wistfully mention getting our library organized, M. sternly reminds me that I have a Ph.D. to be working on.<BR/><BR/>The sheer disorder of my collection weighs heavily on my mind. One shelf of a case within my sight currently places Quine's <I>Quiddities</I> near Will Cuppy's <I>Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody</I>, a Loeb volume of Seneca (which I used to read to M. at bedtime to irritate her), a small chapbook of Dee's <I>The Hieroglyphic Monad</I>, Volume 2 of the Baring-Gould <I>Annotated Sherlock Holmes</I>, and <I>Kleinwagen</I> (a Taschen photobook of unusual small automobile designs). My conjunctions are not by design, though, but are emergent patterns drawn out by use from the stochastic distribution of haphazard unpacking.<BR/><BR/>I, too, remember the story of each volume in my collection: the smell of the bookstore where it was found, the place where I first sat down to read it, its shelf locations through my previous residences.<BR/><BR/>It would be nice, perhaps, to be hard-hearted enough to cull out all those volumes that are not excellent, but I'm still too much a slave to nostalgia to cast them aside.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-58383472730323596832007-10-20T13:50:00.000-04:002007-10-20T13:50:00.000-04:00Watching my dear Mr. Roth tenderly removing his bo...Watching my dear Mr. Roth tenderly removing his books from their boxes and lovingly organising them on our new/old shelves was a truly delightful spectacle.<BR/><BR/>Mrs. Roth<BR/><BR/>P.S. Reading 'Beowulf' in the Anglo-Saxon is very rewarding, but I have yet to have the pleasure of drooling over the Cotton MS in person.Mrs. Lily-Plum Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05113658106052915152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-13822963558102383052007-10-20T10:11:00.000-04:002007-10-20T10:11:00.000-04:00Cotton Vitellius A.xv is an amazing relic, and it'...Cotton Vitellius A.xv is an amazing relic, and it's worth learning enough Anglo-Saxon to look at it directly. Maybe Heaney's version will make it more accessible. I think that it's still underappreciated.<BR/><BR/>The same is probably true of Old Norse, but I don't think I'll live long enough.John Emersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12058849885222086640noreply@blogger.com