TT: Favourite Bookstores

(From 12 August 2008): What's your favourite bookstore? Is it an online store or a bricks-and-mortar store? How often do you go book shopping? Is your favourite bookstore (or bookstores) listed as a favourite in LT? Do you attend events at local bookstores? Do you use LT to find events?
I must admit that I'm fan of big bookchains. In Australia, they're represented by Dymocks, Angus & Robertson and Borders. All 3 have huge stores in Sydney which I frequently visit during my morning tea and lunch breaks (although A&R is currently shut due to the redevelopment of Pitt St mall).

Borders is probably my main haunt, largely due to the fact that they cunningly send me vouchers every week for a certain % off books and most weeks I can't resist heading in to pick up a bargain. Both Borders and Dymocks have a pretty good selection of books.

I've also recently discovered Kinokuniya - they have a great range of books and are very good value, plus their website can tell you if they have the book you're searching for currently in stock AND it will provide you with an exact map of where the book is located in the store. Very cool! And it works: I tested it when I went to buy A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr.

There are quite a few secondhand bookshops that I love too. Too many to list here, but I've found a lot of great stuff when browsing through those shops.

Tuesday Thingers: Top 100 on LT

(From 1 July 2008): Here are the Top 100 Most Popular Books on LibraryThing. Bold what you've read, italicize what you own. Star what you liked. Star multiple times what you loved!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (32,484) ****
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling (29,939) ****
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling (28,728) ****
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) by J.K. Rowling (27,926) ****
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) by J.K. Rowling (27,643) ****
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by J.K. Rowling (27,641) ****
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (23,266) ***
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (21,325) ****
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J.K. Rowling (20,485) *****
1984 by George Orwell (19,735) *****
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (19,583) *****
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (19,082) ****
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (17,586) *****
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (16,210) ****
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (15,483) ***
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (14,566)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (14,449) ****
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (13,946)
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (13,272) ***
Animal Farm by George Orwell (13,091) *****
Angels & demons by Dan Brown (13,089) ***
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (13,005) ****
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (12,777)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (12,634)
The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) by J.R.R. Tolkien (12,276) ***
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (12,147)
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (11,976)
The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Part 2) by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,512) ***
The Odyssey by Homer (11,483)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (11,392) *****
Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut (11,360) ****
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11,257) ****
The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, Part 3) by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,082) ***
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (10,979) *****
American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman (10,823)
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (10,603) ****
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (10,537) *****
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (10,435) ***
The Lovely Bones : a novel by Alice Sebold (10,125)
Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card (10,092)
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman (9,827)
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman (9,745)
Dune by Frank Herbert (9,671)
Emma by Jane Austen (9,610) *****
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (9,598) *****
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (9,593)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (9,433)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (9,413) ****
Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (9,343)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (9,336)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (9,274) *****
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (9,246)
The Iliad by Homer (9,153)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (9,084)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (9,080) *****
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (9,027) *****
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (8,960) ****
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (8,904) ****
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt (8,813)
The Little Prince by saintexupryantoinede - 75k - (8,764)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (8,421) ***
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (8,417) ***
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (8,368) ***
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (8,255)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (8,214)
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (8,191)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (8,169)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (8,129)
The Complete Works by William Shakespeare (8,096)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (7,843)
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (7,834)
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (7,829)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (7,808)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (7,807) *****
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (7,793) *****
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (7,710) *
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (7,648) ***
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (7,598) *****
The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by William Strunk (7,569)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (7,557)
The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman (7,534)
Atonement by Ian McEwan (7,530) ***
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (7,512)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (7,436)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (7,238) *****
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (7,153)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (7,055) *****
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (7,052)
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (7,043)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (6,933)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (6,901)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (6,899)
Neuromancer by William Gibson (6,890)
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (6,868)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (6,862)
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (6,841)
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (6,794)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (6,715)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (6,708)
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (6,697)

Tuesday Thingers: Popular Books

(From 17 June 2008): What's the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it? What's the most popular book you don't have? How does a book's popularity figure into your decisions about what to read?
No surprise really, but the most popular book in my library is one of the Harry Potter books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (owned by 34,182 LibraryThingers). Of course I've read it! Multiple times in fact, and I'll be reading it many times more.

The most popular book on LibraryThing that I don't own is The Kite Runner (owned by 15,707 LibraryThingers). I'm in two minds about reading this book. Well, no I'm not. I'd definitely like to read it, but despite its huge popularity, I just can't get excited enough about it to go and a buy a copy and read it immediately. The subject matter just doesn't do it for me. Perhaps one day I'll get around to it.

A book's popularity doesn't factor into my decisions too much. If I read a lot of good things about a book, I'll probably be inspired to try it, but seeing on LibraryThing that a large number of people own the book isn't going to make me rush out and buy it.

Tuesday Thingers: Tags

(From 10 June 2008): Do you tag? How do you tag? How do you feel about tagging - do you think it would be better to have standardized tags, like libraries have standardized subject headings, or do you like the individualized nature of tagging? What are your top 5 tags and what do they say about your collection or your reading habits?
I absolutely tag. I find it very handy, especially when checking the size of my TBR pile or looking for a certain genre of book. I much prefer having individual tags - everybody likes to tag their books according to their own needs/wants, so why make it standardised?

My top 5 tags are:

'on goodreads' (563): this is just a tag I added to my books after joining another book cataloguing website called Goodreads. I was having trouble trying to identify which books I had yet to add to Goodreads, so I painstakingly went through all the lists (no easy task when Goodreads alphabetises books differently to LibraryThing) and added this tag once I was certain the book was also listed in my Goodreads account. I plan on removing it one day - after I'm certain all of my books are catalogued in both places.

'read' (431): pretty self-explanatory. This is the number of books I own that I have actually read.

'to be read' (326): again, self explanatory. The number of books I own but have yet to read. Thanks goodness this number is smaller than my 'read' pile!

'children' (250): apparently I have 250 books aimed at younger readers. Probably just over half of those would be my Baby-Sitters Club books. I really should change this tag to 'young adult'. It sounds much more dignified that way.

'second-hand' (248): the number of books I've bought second-hand. With a book addiction like mine, you can't afford to buy brand new books all the time!

I just have to mention the next 2 tags: 'classic' (170 - pretty self-explanatory) and 'bought 2007' (169). Yikes! I bought 169 books last year! As opposed to 52 so far this year. I'm trying to behave this year in an effort to get my TBR pile down.

Tuesday Thingers: Why LibraryThing?

(From 3 June 2008): Why did you choose to open and maintain an LT account? Do you/did you use other online cataloging/social networking sites, like GoodReads or Shelfari? Do you use more than one? Are they different or do they serve different purposes?
I chose LibraryThing for the simple reason that I wanted to keep a listing of all my books online and this seemed like a good option. I catalogued 200 books, which is the limit for a free account, and then decided that I liked it enough to purchase a lifetime account - a highly unusual move for me because I've never paid money to a website before.

I also have an account with GoodReads, which I keep pretty up-to-date. I enjoy catching up with various discussion groups there (for some reason I don't do the same with LibraryThing), but I don't like that you can't edit the details of your books. On LibraryThing, all of my books have been neatly edited so they're consistent in terms of capitalisation and the wording of series names etc. On GoodReads, you just have to accept the default, and the selection of covers isn't as good as LibraryThing.

I tried Shelfari for a while but didn't like the layout and the fact that many of my books didn't have covers, so I eventually deleted my account.

Tuesday Thingers: Cataloguing

(From 27 May 2008): How many books do you have cataloged in your LibraryThing account? How do you decide what to include - everything you have, everything you've read - and are there things you leave off?
I have 758 books catalogued in LibraryThing. This makes up the vast bulk of my collection. As far as I'm aware, there are only a few books that I haven't catalogued yet, and they're ones that I couldn't find through LT. I'll be packing up all my books to move house next week, and as I do so I'll hopefully have time to check that each one has been catalogued in LT, GoodReads and in my separate Excel spreadsheet. If I run out of time, I'll just have to check them off after I unpack at the other end!

I try to catalogue everything I have, and I've also included a few ebooks I've read over the past year or two, and a couple of books I've borrowed. According to my tags, 11 of the 758 books are ebooks, which means I most likely read them on my iPod and I don't own hard copies at all. Also according to my tags, 3 of the books were borrowed (2 from my brother and 1 from a library), although I have since obtained my own hard copy of one of those books.

I've thought about creating another LT account to list all my ebooks, but that would cost more money and take me forever to complete. I'll probably just catalogue them in another spreadsheet instead (actually I've already started; it's a mammoth task). As I read more ebooks I'll add them to my regular account, just for the sake of keeping a record of how many books I read each year.

Tuesday Thingers: Discussion Groups

In an effort to post blog entries more often, I'm going to start doing Tuesday Thingers. It started up in May so I'll have to play catch-up again. All the questions refer to LibraryThing - an excellent online book cataloguing system that I've harped on about before.

(From 20 May 2008): Discussion groups. Do you belong to any (besides Early Reviewers)? Approximately how many? Are there any in particular that you participate in more avidly? How often do you check?
Actually I don't belong to the Early Reviewers discussion group. I belong to a few discussion groups on LibraryThing but rarely visit them or post. Too busy with other forums and blogs for that malarkey!

The groups I belong to are the 50 Book Challenge (rough aim to read 50 books a year, which ties in with my own personal goals), Australian LibraryThingers, BCF (based on the Book Club Forum, that I've mentioned before), Books Compared and Science Fiction Fans. Now that I've looked them up to get the links, they're looking pretty good. There's an interesting discussion on comparisons of dystopian literature (that a couple of readers of this blog will appreciate). I really should check in more often - there are probably lots more interesting discussions happening.