Are you a Book Lover?

Do you surreptitiously observe what people are reading on public transit?

Is your stack of TRB books taller than you are?

Have you and your significant other developed a strategy for dealing with duplicate books? (and was developing it roughly equal to the Treaty of Versailles, in terms of complexity and effectiveness?)

When you see a box of moldy books on the side of the road, are you irresistibly drawn to look through it?

Have you ever photocopied all of a book you borrowed from the library?

Are you still sore over the Modern Library's top 100 books of the 20th century?

Do you read while standing in line?

Honestly now, did the NEA Reading at Risk report make you feel just a little bit good about yourself?

Have you developed, and implemented, your own system of cataloging, labeling, and organizing for your book collection? (and if you haven't done it yet, does this at least appeal to you as really really cool?)

Do you go on about how the em dash is a dynamic, exciting piece of punctuation?

Do you own a volume of Proust?

Do you consider eBooks the spawn of the devil?

Comments

[Leonard Bast]

Yes to all but the last one. eBooks are the spawn of a lesser demon--Mephistopheles rather than Satan himself.

[Dan Wickett]

I won't label my books, but once I thought of how to catalogue and shelve them I did regard it as an extremely cool system even though I waited about six months to even begin enforcing it.

You two are the only two others I've ever had admit to photocopying books. I did it frequently in college - Mark Costello's The Murphy Stories was the first and I still have it in a three hole binder.

Enjoy.

[Beth]

In eleventh grade I ran out to a copy shop the last week of school photocopied my favorite poems from my English textbook the night before I had to turn it in. Still have it. Some good poems there in eleventh grade American lit.

[Max]

I have to admit it. I'm obsessive about eavesdropping on the reading material of my fellow public transit riders. You can really make a game out of it. A sort of book scavenger hunt... 1 point for the Da Vinci Code... 2 points for a Harry Potter Book... 3 points each for Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and 1984... and on and on. Also, last time I moved, I arranged my books according to the Library of Congress catalog number. And all the rest a pretty true for me, too. It's a sickness.

[Michael]

On the question "Are you still sore over the Modern Library's top 100 books of the 20th century?" I will say, yes, but I was even more sore over the reader's list of the top 100 books (the one the Modern Library posted next to their list on their web site).

I own more than one volume of Proust but can't say I have finished it any.

[Joel Schettler]

Great Web site! I agree with them all, except the em dash. I tend to overuse that one myself, so I have learned to hate it.