What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
► UNSOLVED: One specific book
>
Non-fiction: Asimov's(?): How many books you'll be able to read in your life...
Hmm. I see heaps of book related quotes on pinterest, and this one I saw someone had actually taken from goodreads quotes:“If you read one book a week, starting at the age of 5, and live to be 80, you will have read a grand total of 3,900 books, a little over one-tenth of 1 percent of the books currently in print.”
― Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History
Sorry, I have no idea about what issue of Asimov's.
Heh, what a chump. Only one book a week? :P
According to the Library of Congress' annual report for 2013, at that time they had 23,529,066 books in their catalogue. In that one year they registered 496,599 new copyright claims. It's a bit daunting.
I figure that if I didn't have to work, I could hit somewhere between 800-1,200 books a year.I definitely cranked through a ton of books when I was a kid (summer reading challenge lists say so), but mega-novels/adult stuff takes longer.
Yeah, 500K is daunting, but a lot of that is trash. Sturgeon's rule/Disraeli says that you only really need to care about 50K of those (or less; I'd argue for 5K). And that includes textbooks and all types of things that most of us aren't going to read, so even that number gets really reduced.
I think this is really hard, and I'm a person who really likes to quantify things (books read, countries visited, exercises completed). I read on my commute and when work isn't busy and I don't have much Italian homework I can easily read 250 pages a day. This is approx the length of a young adult book, half a fiction novel or non fiction book, or a quarter of a Game of Thrones sized book. I don't feel that books have more or less value - sometimes I like to read a classic or a non fiction history book (which takes more time) and sometimes I like to read a light hearted fiction book which takes no time. All time spent reading is valuable.
I don't think it should be the numbers of books, but rather the number of pages.
Meh, this is getting totally OT. :P Take it to chat :DAnyone got any ideas on the scifi periodical it might be in? (likely Asimov's).
Is there an index of articles? Usually they're not completely wacko on the names, iirc.
Do you want the specific periodical and issue the essay was in? Or is the book it was published in fine? Because the book I mentioned earlier The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History apparently has an essay with the above mentioned quote. Looking around Asimov's website, they don't appear to have a comprehensive all-time index, just for the last one or two years.
I have no idea whether anyone else published a similar essay.
The information within the quotes is all the information I have on the piece/essay I'd like more information on (like the specific publication, issue, date/year, author, name of the piece, etc).Are you saying that the quote I used is in the book? Because yes, it is by someone who could get their stuff published.
The point of my last post was that I think The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History, written by Lewis Buzbee, has the essay you are looking for.
Oh, so not the quote that I listed, but the essay that the quote was looking for?Completely misunderstood your prior comment. I'll have to try and get my hands on a copy of the book then.
re: the magazinehttp://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
Maybe something at the above link will nudge your memory, or lead you to a list. Or something.
Who knows. It went on a long time.
I have not gotten: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History, written by Lewis Buzbee - to see if that's the essay.Lewis Shiner plausible possibilities look like:
Read This (NYRSF, September 1988) (1988)
Read This (NYRSF, January 1994) (1994)
Forum: Dateline 1999 (1989)
Read This (NYRSF, February 1995) (1995)
James Patrick Kelly
Letter (NYRSF, November 1989) (1989)
Read This (NYRSF, April 2003) (2003)
Mod
You can try this search engine, which includes Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine as well as many other digest-sized magazines.https://archive.org/details/pulpmagaz...
It's a bit difficult to navigate the search engine, plus it's also pretty difficult to find an issue without something of Lewis Shiner's or James Patrick Kelly's (or both). You might not mind at all in the end, though, since it incudes page-by-page copies of all of the magazines themselves (so your book count is about to go way down!) (and your pulp magazine count way up!).
example: https://archive.org/details/Asimovs_v...
Sam wrote: "You can try this search engine"Excellent resource, I'd already found a ToC listing for every issue, and have narrowed it down to ~6 possibilities for those two authors. I'll have to see if I can set it to give just the issues I'm interested in, as the columns are generically named.
Otherwise, it'll just be reading every issue to try and find out if it exists in Asimov's, or does not. :P
You couldn't find it in the back issues?
Sam wrote: "You couldn't find it in the back issues?"The link promised 'search results', but only displayed:
Asimov's v14n06 (1990 06)
'Show all' - showed:
../
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06.cbr 01-May-2017 04:35 101.3M
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06.pdf 01-May-2017 05:24 5.1M
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_abbyy.gz 01-May-2017 05:15 6.0M
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_archive.torrent 01-May-2017 05:24 10.3K
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_djvu.txt 01-May-2017 05:24 466.5K
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_djvu.xml 01-May-2017 05:18 4.2M
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_files.xml 01-May-2017 05:24 3.5K
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_jp2.zip (View Contents) 01-May-2017 04:40 75.5M
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_meta.sqlite 01-May-2017 04:35 8.0K
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_meta.xml 01-May-2017 05:24 801.0B
Asimovs_v14n06_1990-06_scandata.xml 01-May-2017 05:24 57.5K
Which are all info related to that specific issue.
'SIMILAR ITEMS' showed:
Asimovs_v14n10_1990-10
Asimovs_v14n07_1990-07
Asimovs_v14n08_1990-08
Asimovs_v14n09_1990-09
None of which are the potentials listed in #21
I don't find an easy way to pull up the magazines by date; which are listed in message #21.
So, it appears I might be able to read stuff (and I've read other stories from issues in this archive), if I can get to the right location - however I've been unable to figure out the right location, as of yet.
Yeah, like I said, the search engine is pretty difficult to navigate. You can search by author, but (like I also said) both Lewis Shiner and James Patrick Kelly were writing fairly prolifically at the time.
Sam wrote: "Yeah, like I said, the search engine is pretty difficult to navigate. You can search by author"I saw that the link implied it was doing so - but did not find a list of results. If it listed all results, I could pick out the ones listed in #21, which are the non-stories, ie: columns/essays.
This isn't the article, but someone did do some math about it:https://lithub.com/how-many-books-wil...
The downside is that the numbers stop at "super" readers, at 80 books a year, which seems low.
You can see it presented differently here:
https://qz.com/939276/how-many-books-...
Sarah wrote: "The downside is that the numbers stop at "super" readers, at 80 books..."Yeah, I've done some math at my reading level, which far surpasses the mere 'super'.
But, I'd like to compare my analysis with other real readers, maybe someone who's smarter or more well-read than me (or has more experience)? Ie: I'd like to see what this author has to say about it.
I also am unsure how I should handle the old age factor. Brain slows down, arthritis, eye-sight starts going, etc, etc. Maybe an increase in desire to read stuff you've already read (and know is good).
Oh yeah, and *bump*
What's the Name of That Book???
Books mentioned in this topic
The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History (other topics)The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History (other topics)
I read the damn essay and even though I just searched for it on Google, I can’t find it. But the thing has never left my brain."
Anyone know which issue this was in?