stormdog | Entries tagged with books

So I still have a crap-ton of medical books. If I had the years and space to tell them, they'd probably be worth $15,000 to $20,000. I made a few thousand selling them already over the past few years.

But I can't take them with me, and they take a long time to sell individually. I've mentioned before that I'm looking for someone to take them, so I thought I'd mention it one more time.

Otherwise, weird as it feels, I'm just going to have to dumpster them all.

I got a decent amount of stuff done in the evenings this week. Last night I'd planned to bring several tubs and boxes, and maybe some furniture, out to the car. Instead, I found myself sitting in front of the computer lacking energy and motivation. I decided to go to bed at 6:30 and slept about ten hours. Hopefully this evening will be better.

Current Mood: awake
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1354634.html

My doctor friend who I frequently chat with at work had a copy of The Illustrated Man yesterday, and we ended up talking about Ray Bradbury for a while. I gushed about his writing style and how much I loved his work. The doctor, who is Ukrainian, was not very familiar with Bradbury, but is an inveterate book lover who is always buying classic texts for his own large collection, mostly on the topics of cognition and childhood development, though I've also pointed him at some books on electronics, infrastructure, and similar.

I told him that Fahrenheit 451 is basically written for people like him and he needs to read it ASAP. He told me about having a signed Bradbury book at home, and I told him how floored I was by having had the chance to handle some of Bradbury's typed correspondence while working at the archives at UWP; how amazing it was to hold these letters that Bradbury had personally typed on his typewriter and embellished with little doodles. The doctor said he'd bring his signed book for me to look at.

He handed it to me this morning and said "For you!" I froze and tried to make sure I understood correctly. Then I tried to say something and failed. I'm pretty sure that's the first time in my life I've been left literally speechless by a gift. I kept starting sentences that I couldn't find second words for. "Me? What? How....? Why? Really? Wow!"

So I have a signed copy of Quicker than the Eye now. The front dust jacket flap begins with this quotation:

"I have been accused of that capital crime which deserves capital punishment: I have committed optimism."

The world seems a little brighter today.

Current Mood: loved
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1303052.html

Looking through my collection of books on Library Thing is soothing. My books make me happy. Things being in order and organized make me happy. Thinking of reading more books makes me happy.

basefinder; That's a lot of books on thing shell concrete you've picked up lately! How technical are they? Are they readable for someone without much professional background? And what was "101 Things I Learned in Engineering School" like?

Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1298727.html

It's coincidental that I've started reading this time of year, but it makes for good holiday presents to myself! Four more books arrived yesterday.

*Pat Miller - How to Foster Dogs
*Mario Salvador - Why Buildings Stand Up
*Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori - Why Buildings Fall Down
*Niki Smith - Crossplay

A quotation from the NYT Book Review of Why Buildings Fall Down: "The reader is sure to find the disaster that suits his or her taste."

Current Mood: content
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1268953.html

One of the books we weeded today is an English language reprint of Cerebri Anatome a 1664 treatise in Latin on neural anatomy by Thomas Willis, considered the father of neurology.

Telling Harry about it, I mentioned that it has illustrations by Sir Christopher Wren. "The architect" he asked? Suddenly it struck me where I knew that name from. He designed some churches, right? I looked him up and remembered the wide range of architectural work he did in England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

I hadn't intended to keep the book, but the architectural connection made it rather more tempting! Still, Harry was interested in it and I would have just left it on a shelf, so it'll go with him.

But how nifty a thing a book like that is to come upon!

As a sidenote, the font in the book is gorgeous! It contains curved ligatures between lower case 'st' and 'ct' pairs as well as angled hyphens. The paper is pretty too, yellow and thick and reminsicent of vellum.

The note in the back of the book says that the font is English Monotype Poliphilus with Blado Italic and that it was printed on Curtis Rag paper. It's a pleasure to open and page through.

---

And now I've been distracted by reading about typographic ligatures online and trying to write my name with an 'st' ligature.

Current Mood: working
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1268591.html

As I typed the ISBN number of Geoff Maaugh's "A Burgler's Guide to the City" into Library Thing, I saw that the publisher categorized the book as both architecture and true crime. I love it!

Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1268281.html

I finished reading the architecture book and grabbed another one on the way out the door from the stack of interesting stuff that I took home during weeding. I read the introduction of Thomas Gieryn's "Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line" on the train and concluded that I can't read it right now.

This is the kind of book that was deeply important to me in my academic path. Why do people think about science the way they do? What makes it credible, or incredible, to people? How do the socially constructed elements of science affect/effect belief and, at least as importantly, policy?

But I think reading this right now is just going to make me angry and sad. I'm not up to dealing with that yet. I'm glad that I'm reading again, but maybe I should stay around the shallows for a while before jumping into the deep end of epistemology and trying to understand how people form beliefs about things that are important to me and that so many people are just wrong about.

Reading things like this hurts for numerous reasons.

So next is going to be Mario Salvadori's "Why Buildings Stand Up: the Strength of Architecture" (As well as Matthys Levy's "Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail"). I think that will be a good next step from Edward Allen on my way toward getting back to Condit's book. I'm gonna order them today!

Current Mood: sad
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1264908.html

This book, apparently, is an oddball. I am the only person on Librarything with a copy, and I have it listed, accurately I think, as both fiction and non-fiction.

Discover Kymaerica Travel Guide [Volume 6]

http://www.librarything.com/work/14952393/book/108480022

Current Mood: amused
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1264573.html

I haven't used Library Thing in a long time. Talking with a Facebook friend about having books to share with folks reminded me of it. I don't know whether it will last, but at the moment I feel motivated to start plugging in my books that are physically accessible to me. If any of you see things you'd like to borrow, let me know; I like sharing.

As I noted in my profile, I have many, many more books that are not listed and which are mostly in boxes at my parents' place right now.

http://www.librarything.com/profile/stormdog

Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1264371.html

I read a third or so of Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom." The writing is fantastic; I stopped because the future as depicted disturbed me. Maybe I'll come back to it another time.

I'm half way through Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." It's interesting, but a little dense and dry. I'll probably read it in bits.

I'm around half way through Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I saw the title when I was little and asked my parents what it was about. I don't really remember what they told me, but the memorable title stayed with me. When I saw it at a going-out-of-business Borders, I bought it. I'm finally reading it now.

It's a very interesting, difficult to explain, difficult for me to understand immediately, book about form vs function, classicism vs. romanticism, and maybe (I'm not quite sure) about mental illness and interpersonal relationships. I'm enjoying it. The narrator's explanation of how a motorcycle is really a collection of concepts wrought in steel made me happy. And this is the end of a sort of monologue by the narrator about the failings of a manual for assembling a rotisserie:

----------

"Well it *is* art," I say. "This divorce of art from technology is completely unnatural. It’s just that it’s gone on so long you have to be an archeologist to find out where the two separated. Rotisserie assembly is actually a long-lost branch of sculpture, so divorced from its roots by centuries of intellectual wrong turns that just to associate the two sounds ludicrous.

They're not sure whether I'm kidding or not.

"You mean," DeWeese [an artist and sculptor] asks, "that when I was putting this rotisserie together, I was actually sculpting it?"

"Sure."

He goes over this in his mind, smiling more and more. "I wish I'd known that," he says. Laughter follows.

-----------------

I'd barely even tried reading something for pleasure after Syracuse, and until now. I'm more me again.

Current Mood: thoughtful

After work, I walked over to the nearby Radio Shack. It was permanently closed, (I'd thought today was their last day), so instead I went to Market Fresh Books, a used book store that sells by weight. Because I have a new job, I splurged a bit.

I came home with copies of "A Field Guide to American Architecture" (

restoman, I suspect you already own a copy of that!), "An Imaginary Tale: The Story of √-1", and "Theatre and Playhouse", which is an illustrated survey of theatre design from Ancient Greece to the present. I was in a bookstore, or I would have squeed aloud when I happened to see that one sitting in the plays section (instead of architecture where I would have expected it) while browsing history.

And I brought some CDs home too. Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" (that was an exciting find!). Me First and the Gimme Gimmes "Are a Drag", "Guero" by Beck, The Crash Test Dummies' "A Worm's Life", "The Trinity Session" by the Cowboy Junkies (that first song about mining for gold always gives me chills), Tori Amos' "Scarlet's Walk", and finally Do Make Say Think's "Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead", because one way to get me to buy an album is to cover it with seemingly Dadaist collections of words that feel like they almost have some kind of meaning that I can't quite grasp.

While I was browsing the books, another customer, looking at the shelves of music near the front, asked the woman at the front desk whether anyone still uses CDs. I smiled to myself, back in the stacks. As I chatted with the clerk while checking out with my pile of CDs, I noted, "Yes, people do still used CDs." She smiled.

Current Mood: happy

*sharp intake of breath* There's a unicorn humble book bundle! Oh, I want it....

Current Mood: hopeful

So many books. I think I'm going to leave 95% of my fiction with my parents; I won't have time to read a lot of it. But what non-fiction do I bring with? Does the giant Marilyn Stokstad art history tome come with? It's wonderful reference, but will I use it? What about my equally weighty Kenkyusha Japanese-English dictionary? I absolutely plan to get back to learning Japanese, but not 'till I get conversationally fluent in Spanish. Which of my history monographs will I want access to? What about all of my (and my grandfather's) collection of books on blacksmithing and art metal? It makes me sad that I do so little smith work these days, because doing so makes me feel connected to him.