Posted on 03/23/2006 11:53:14 AM PST by Physicist
My book collection only barely outstrips my milk crate collection.
See, I think the main things, in addition to fresh fish, are the sauce being pink and full of fresh cilantro, number one; the breading on the fish - tempura batter, number 2; the cabbage being angel-hair sliced, number 3; and the tortilla of course being corn, yellow corn, number 4. Dying for one now!
Was absinthe still legal then? Any recipes using it?
Books and records, guilty and guilty.
I have broken down and given several hundred of each away. You'd never know I'd bothered. All my bookshelves are filled two-deep.
I removed my "I've read but still want" books to the Rubbermaid Archives in the basement.
I bought a new Crosley so I can still play my 78's and 45's.
Count me in, but don't tell my husband it's a mental illness please.
Several years ago, I spent a great part of three years -- and nine+ months straight at one point -- in a small town on a project for a client. There was nothing to do in the evenings and the client shut down promptly at 5:00 p.m. I wasn't allowed in the building after that time and couldn't remove documents.
There was, however, a Books-A-Million in town, so I applied for a discount card and visited the place each week, buying about two books for each day that I'd be in town.
At the end of one year, I received a letter (with some fairly personalized details) thanking me for being one of the 100 biggest volume customers of the chain. Enclosed was a special gold discount card with a one-year term, good for a 20% additional discount on all purchases (I think 30% additional on "President's Pick" books, which were 30% off to begin with), free coffee, etc.
I finished the job and didn't visit another Books-A-Million for almost four years (there are none where I live), then drive by one while on vacation with my wife.
She consents to stop so I can buy a book to read. I know better than to buy a hardback when I'm with her; it's not worth dealing with the comments about waiting for it to come out in paperback. At the cash register with my $6.95 paperback purchase, I ask if my regular discount card might still be good, say I don't have it, and if she can look it up by phone number. After all, I can save $0.70.
When my name comes up, it shows I had previously been a Gold Millionaires' Club member. She begins to fawn and scrape like she was a Lear Jet salesman and I'd just flashed a black American Express Centurion Card. Calls the manager, who fawns and scrapes and asks if I was pleased with the selection and service. Offers free coffee and pastries for me and the spousal unit. Gives me free copies of a couple of new paperbacks. The manager, clerk, and coffee counter lady follow us to the door and open it, wishing me goodbye by name.
My wife takes it all in stride without a word until we get into the car. When we're both inside and the doors are shut, she turns to me, bats her eyelashes, and says calmly: "And you're certain you don't buy too many books, huh?"
I hate it when that happens.
Thank you. I think the world would be very empty without books. I am going to become a grandmother any day now and I've already started buying books for the baby.
One of the joys I am looking forward is reading to him while we sit and cuddle.
I understand. I have comfort books. When I was very sick with the flu some years ago I made my husband go to the library and bring me Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gable's books.
Sometimes I want Potato Chip books, the same idea as your junk food for the brain. These are usually detective novels or thrillers. Jonathan Kellerman, Ngaio Marsh, Margaret Grimes, Patricia Cornwel. They are fun to read, you get through them very quickly and don't feel guilty for reading them in the tub.
Then there are the banquet books. Ones that are such gems of literature they awaken all my senses. Books that make you pause and absorb what you just read. These are the ones that feel are real loss for if you ever misplace them.
Many of these are older books and often out of print. Publisher's today seem to think readers like nothing better than reading about the anatomical acrobatics of greed obsessed whiny women and emasculated boorish men.
So to find a banquet book these days is a real treat.
Wonderfully expressed. I've been struggling with a "banquet" book for years- Ulysses. I have progressed farther with each attempt yet I've not completed reading the book.
I rip through the Kellerman's and Grafton's also..but savor writers such as Edith Whaton, Somerset Maugham and the great writers of various eras.
As to childhood books..did you ever read the "Twins" series by Lucy Fitch Perkins? They were marvelous little stories- kind of historical novels for children!
ME!!!!!!!!!
Naw, c'mon, that can't all be ebooks, unless you're storing them as bitmaps. The average book is about half a million characters, uncompressed, which is two books per megabyte in plain vanilla ASCII (Project Gutenberg format), which is two thousand books per gigabyte, which is two million books per terabyte.
The entire human library--every book ever printed--if it was ever put into a character-based format, would fit into about 30 terabytes, tops, without compression (and about 10 terabytes with compression).
(Now, you might quibble that ASCII isn't good enough for anything but English, and so the data size should be doubled to accommodate Unicode, but it turns out that that's not necessary. In reality, almost everything that's ever been published has been in English, but beyond that, you'd just need a small amount of data at the beginning of each text to specify the Unicode block range, and the rest of the text would generally be 8 bits per character.)
"I don't mind him going to the bar. It keeps him out of the bookstore."
Can I be in your will?
47.1 GB (50,657,410,243 bytes)
There, deal with that <g>...
I'm a pack rat. I know it. Even discounting the horrible duplication I've got I'll never get to 10% of this, I know. But I can't help it!!!!!
Sad.
I was in the apartment of a guy who was a serious, clinical bibliomaniac back about 20 years ago. In the large living room-dining room space there was desk with a TV on it, a swivel chair, and books stacked knee through the rest of the space, with little paths running through them. Down the hallway to the back, the books were stacked waist high along both sides. In the kitchen, the cabinets were full of books, except for one shelf of one cabinet, which held boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese.
Yes, they're always having those "Friends of the Library" sales. The most satisfying places I found to give them to were apartment buildings full of senior citizens. They reallly liked all the historical and political books, and ones that they could share with their grandkids when they came over. I think SallyAnn's was tired of seeing me drive up.
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