The Not a Book Club Club discussion
Random Musings..
Rob wrote: "I still try to buy most of my books though. I can afford it, and I like to support the authors. "Considering the number of books you've purchased that are still waiting to be read, I'd say you are doing a great job :)
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I said on Twitter that I bought 40 books this year and I think I have a problem. Rob said I haven't purchased enough. Only 6 or so of those were full priced books though. The rest were 1.99 deals.
I have a second hand store that sells books for 50 cents. You never know what they'll have, but I have bought whole stacks of books there before.Some for myself to read, others to mutilate and DIY into "floating" bookshelves.
Also, on my way to my previous job there was a news agent that had a "damaged goods" bin outside with 1-Euro-books. It was mostly short books of the "101 ways to..." variety, but they were fun to read on the train.
Oh God, I just made a collection on my Kindle and put all my owned/not read books in it - over a hundred! I'm totally out of control, Thanks Amazon!Actually, I'm not too out of control - I expect to be jobless soon for at least a couple of months so I went ahead and bought a bunch of books to sock away for hard times. But I hadn't realized quite how many lol. Those Daily Deals are just too tempting.
I thought that my To Read collection was bad at 53 books. Damn!
Rob, if you're wondering where your reading funk is, I have it. I have no interest in reading much of anything. I've completely stalled on Blue Remembered Earth. When work is slow, I've taken to reading the Mass Effect wikipedia. I hate when funks like this strike. It's like a sickness. I need to let it pass on its own.
Any time I try to read anything lately, my attention immediately wanders or I want to sleep.
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Dara wrote: "Any time I try to read anything lately, my attention immediately wanders or I want to sleep."Same here. I just returned two audiobooks I had for two weeks from the library and didn't get halfway through either one. Been having a hard getting into anything lately. Even with Rebirths of Tao which I really enjoyed It took a lot of effort to pick it up.
A random anecdote for an audience who may appreciate it:I have teenage daughters and they're fairly into anime. I don't mind anime, but they're much more into it than I am. So Attack on Titan has been getting lots of buzz around school and they got their hands on a copy and asked me if I'd like to watch it with them. All I know about the show is the title, so I'm assuming it's something science fictional about Saturn's largest moon. So I sit down expecting some sort of assault with aliens and power armor like in Caliban's War with Bobbi and the protomolecule monster on Ganymede ...
One very disappointing experience with naked skinless giants later ...
And I've never let it go, mostly for my amusement. Because the girls love this show and I keep complaining that the show I was looking forward to would have been so much better :)
That was all some time ago, but just this weekend I finally watched Jupiter Ascending. It was an entertaining beautiful mess, but I made a comment at the end of it to my younger daughter who had watched it with me along the lines of "You know what I liked about that movie? The title had Jupiter in it and then in the movie the planet Jupiter was actually in it." My younger daughter doesn't realise what I'm referring to as it's been a while, but then we hear this voice from upstairs (my older daughter at the top of her voice): "Oh my God Dad! Let it go already!!"
It's good to have kids who get you - even if they don't want to sometimes :)
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Haha Lindsay, that story made me laugh. I'm glad you shared it.
Last time I was in a funk, I played author A-Z. I made myself a list of fantasy authors, one for every letter of the alphabet, and chose a book of theirs to fill up my list.
I did not read anything rightaway, but choosing and looking at different books and authors gave me something to do. By the time I had filled up my list, I had found a few things that sparked my interest enough to get back to reading again.
I never found a fantasy author starting with Q, though.
And I believe for Y I branched out into SciFi, with Nicholas Yermakov.
Also: Book Bingo. I think I have a jpg somewhere if anyone wants to play :-)
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I'm struggling a bit on the audio side now that I've finished Crux.
I have a ton of audible credits that I need to spend and find myself waiting for stuff that's coming out this summer..or as is sadly the case for Apex..unable to buy/pre-order.
I'm sure before the weekend I'll start reading the S&L May pick though so I can have it done by May 5th to read Apex..since I can't do it in audio >.<
The German term for "audiobook" is "Hörbuch", literally "listening book".I confused a number of people recently by translating the English word directly to "Audiobuch".
I blame this group for discussing them so enthusiastically :-)
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What does Audiobuch mean?
I made it up by mistranslating it. Audio & buch (book).It should have been Hörbuch.
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:-)Now - does anyone happen to know a fantasy author beginning with Q?
Quinn, Quentin, Quorl... ? Anyone?
W.T. Quick. More SF than fantasy but at least you'll have a Q.
So as for too many books, I had so many on my shelf at one point that it collapsed. I had to move some to my boyfriend's place. I have a couple small cases all to myself. At home, I have 1 small case and a few on a other shelves.
That is probably very smart. I have this idea that when my kids (who are only 6 and 9 now) are older that I might have time to clean everything out, but I can't see getting rid of my books.Weirdly, I don't hold onto anything else. My partner is a packrat who keeps everything (but in a very organized fashion); I don't do that, thankfully, but I can't seem to give books up very easily. I did move a few I felt less attached to into a closet...but that's as far as I could go. It helps now to keep me from buying them though, because I mentally go through the lack of places I have to slot them in anywhere.
Oh, I have managed to get rid of some books from university and law school because I am seriously NEVER going to look at those again...that's something at least. But, then again, those probably don't count in the scheme of book collecting!
Have you got over your reading funk yet? That sucks when you don't feel inspired.
I have a friend who hasn't been able to enjoy reading since before he started law school. Shame.Ehhh, not really. Apex holds my attention for a little while but then I want to do something else. I'm also a little under the weather and when I'm sick, I don't want to do anything.
Law school ruins you for recreational reading. It was the only time in my life I stopped reading for pleasure (because I literally read 8 hours a day to study) and just watched TV or movies instead. I'm now 15 years away from it though, so it is just a bad, distant memory. Although I have seen every single episode of Law and Order. :)
Yeah, he's only two years out. It might take him a while. He watched a lot of Netflix and plays video games instead.
Hah, I'm just coming up to season 14 now, watching back to back whenever I have time :)And on the topic of too many books:
When I moved out from home, I left most of my books in my parents attic. But I collected more of course. When I separated from my husband, I left most of my books in our house and moved into a double bedroom in a shared house.
After 2 years I had bookshelves covering all 4 walls of my bedroom up to the ceiling. It was like sleeping inside a giant book cabinet. I had books stacked on the windowsill, under the bed (solidly all the way to the wall), and I slept on one half of the double bed while the other half was filled with books.
I also had 2 large bookcases in the shared living room, one large bookcase in the hallway, 2 tall bookcases in the stairwell, and stacks on the piano.
Then my husband moved out of the house we used to share, and wanted to offload all my "old" books on me. I rented a garage and moved stacks of boxes with books in there.
I moved to Belgium, and rented a 3-bedroom flat for me and all my books. I didn't even bother putting up nice bookcases or shelves - one whole bedroom was filled with towers of stacked boxes full of books, with just 2 narrow paths between them.
It's insane - I couldn't get to a certain book in a bottom box even if I tried, but I still would not part with them!
I finally got rid of a lot of books when I moved to Germany, but only because I literally had nowhere to put them when I moved into a 1-bedroom place and had no money to rent a garage for the boxes.
I already have piles again everywhere, and don't forget that I still have books in Dad's attic....
....I might have to talk to my therapist about this at some point.
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Then again I also have my Apple IIgs in it's original boxes, and unless my dad threw them out I have all the boxes for every video game system I've ever owned in his garage. I didn't take them when I moved for some reason. I have all the consoles here though.
So I'm a bit of pack rat. But mostly just technology and books.
I definitely need to get rid of old kids books (apart from my old favourites).And text books. I will probably never need Finar's Fundamental Principles of Organic Chemistry ever again. Not to mention that I have 2 copies because I spotted it in an Oxfam bookshop for next to nothing and was unaware that I already had it.
But what do I do with those? Who would need used English language chemistry and physics textbooks in Germany? Even if I donated them for free to the local charity shop they wouldn't be able to shift them.
Dara wrote: "So as for too many books, I had so many on my shelf at one point that it collapsed. I had to move some to my boyfriend's place. I have a couple small cases all to myself. At home, I have 1 small ca..."Haha...My wife's closet collapsed due to too many clothes hanging on the rack last weekend. Bookshelf collapsing would have been way more awesome
Law school ruins you for recreational reading. It was the only time in my life I stopped reading for pleasure (because I literally read 8 hours a day to study) and just watched TV or movies instead.Graduate school in the humanities, too. I completely lost the ability to read for fun there, for awhile.
And, like you, I can't seem to get rid of books that I will probably never need again; I'm too wrapped up in them as part of my (former) identity. So, instead, they sit in my storage unit in California and someday I will move them half-way across the world so that I can have them again.
Most of my books are still in California, in fact - since I moved to the UK I've largely embraced eBooks. It's been really strange to move from an apartment with many bookshelves in each room to a house that doesn't really have any. It doesn't quite feel like home....
I moved to Belgium, and rented a 3-bedroom flat for me and all my books. I didn't even bother putting up nice bookcases or shelves - one whole bedroom was filled with towers of stacked boxes full of books, with just 2 narrow paths between them.
I love this!
.My wife's closet collapsed due to too many clothes hanging on the rack last weekend
I fear this is imminent with in my husband's closet (but then again, he & his father actually own a clothing shop, soooooooo, it sort of makes sense.)
Rob wrote: "Then again I also have my Apple IIgs in it's original boxes, and unless my dad threw them out I have all the boxes for every video game system I've ever owned in his garage. I didn't take them when I moved for some reason. I have all the consoles here though."
I think it must be a techie thing, Rob. My partner is in IT as well. We have a Commodore 64 in our attic, and I would be shocked if it didn't have all the original manuals in the original packaging with it! Lots of other old tech kicking around up there, all nicely packaged and labeled...although to be fair, whenever I say, "do we have a plug for this" or "a cord that does that" we can usually dig one up.
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But it can't be all Techies. My friends are mostly all Techies and most of them gave me shit when they helped me move my old tech from my apartment to my house.
Well it's funny because I find some techies are keepers and they like to have that mix of new and old school...some go clean sweep and get rid of anything the second something new comes out. You probably see that all the time.My partner is definitely the former...he has an actual turntable in his office, with vinyl records that he plays while he is working. We also have a 30 year old VHS player hooked up to our flat screen...and it does get used to play actual tapes on occasion. I probably have the only kids around who know what "please be kind and rewind" actually means. :)
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Sadly my record player broke when I first moved here 10+ years ago. But of course I still have it. Maybe I'll get it fixed one day. I has an 8-track player in it too (belonged to my grandparents), but the only 8-track I have is Breakfast In America.
Yes, I basically wait until stuff doesn't work any more before I replace it. I'm more of a make do and fixer type myself. I don't like to make a lot of waste, and I won't replace things that work perfectly well...I'm not the person driving the economy I guess. :)
My Atari 400 still works. Sadly my Tandy and IBM PC's bit the dust years ago
I have a 3G Mac sitting under my desk. No packaging for it, but I haven't gotten rid of it because I think the harddrive that's still in it might have old photos on it from the days when we had our very first digital camera in 2001 or so.Some day I'll try to hook it up again and see if it still works.
I did some DIY and made myself some floating bookshelves. Don't have a picture handy, but they sort of look like these:http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I...
Cost me about 3 Euros in materials (this includes the book for 1,50 € from the charity shop).
Best of all: I sold a spare one on etsy for 12,99 €.
Wow, That shelf is amazing!No doubt I'll have some of my own soon, thanks for the great idea.
I've always wanted these bookends but they are not very space efficienthttp://www.amazon.com/Mustard-15006-M...
You guys have opened my eyes - I didn't realize bookends were so neat!
The Not a Book Club Club
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I still try to buy most of my books though. I can afford it, and I like to support the authors.