Slow Sunday

Have been enjoying a lazy weekend. Besides the usual things like laundry, grocery shopping, napping, and lunch at Ang’s (at our local shopping centre, in the area wonderfully named Dogswamp), I’ve been reading, pondering responses from everyone who’s responded to my survey and slowly replying to the great emails. I’m sorry it’s taking me so long!

The other thing I’ve been doing, is trying to finish cataloguing all our nonfiction books on LibraryThing. Some time ago, I suggested that we had around 2180 books. This weekend, I’ve discovered that we have somewhat more than that – I’m up to 2260 books at this stage, and there are still about three or four bays worth. It’ll be very good to finish and have a record of every book we have in the house! I’ve gotten very good at typing in ISBNs, I must say. Earlier on M borrowed a barcode scanner from work for me to use, but I’ve returned it.

I love LibraryThing. Before this all our books were just one great mess of titles – normally they are all neatly on shelves (not quite as bad as in the picture, which was taken when we were moving house), but it’s always been pretty difficult to know what we have and where they all are. Now that almost all our books are on LibraryThing, we’re also starting to get them in some semblance of order. For the first time in ages, all our fiction is in a rough order (i.e. grouped according to the first letter of the author’s surname) – this makes it so much easier to locate things, and has even given me the incentive to reread old favourites that used to be buried away. We do need more shelves, though…

I’m one of those people who, when I visit someone’s house for the first time, always looks to see if they have any books or bookshelves I can browse. There’s something infinitely interesting about looking through someone else’s book collection, no matter how small it is. Far more interesting than looking in someone’s bathroom cabinet – which has never appealed to me, by the way; I don’t care to know if someone has a 15g tube of elocon (mometasone) ointment 0.1% in their cabinet.

LibraryThing satisfies this book browsing urge very well – you can see other users’ collections, and the system even shows you who has the same books as you do, and then you can go and browse and see if they own anything else you might possibly like to read.

Speaking of reading, I might go and lie in bed and read for a while. Ahh I love Sundays!

Categories: books, LibraryThing, relaxation