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On LibraryThing and Rereading Books.


I've finally had the occasion to start using the excellent LibraryThing. I was intimidated to use it before because I feared the amount of time I had to invest cataloguing all my books, and I dreaded making a mess of my house (well, more of a mess than usual) by dragging my books to and from my computer.

But since I resolved to read 1000 books the other day, I now have the perfect excuse to start using LibraryThing. Instead of cataloguing ALL my books like what most of the other members are doing, I am adding my books, one by one, as I read them. That way, I can track what I've read and when, what my thoughts were, and I can even use those nifty zeitgeist tagcloud web2.0 thingamabobs on the site too. Hooray!

View my list so far here. And you can even keep track of the latest books I've read here (rss).

With my "1000 books list", I've decided to start from scratch. What I've read before doesn't count as being read. Unfortunately this means I've "never" read books like Nineteen Eighty Four, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, To Kill a Mockingbird or the Life of Pi. Fortunately though, this means I've "never" read The Da Vinci Code. Phew!

Anyway, I thought about what books I would like to reread so I can include it in my list (and perhaps get a new perspective on the books), and this is what I came up with so far:
  1. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  2. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
  3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
  4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  5. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
  6. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  7. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
  8. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
  9. Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  10. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
  11. Dracula by Bram Stoker
  12. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  13. Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
  14. The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien
  15. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
That's the few I can come up with at the moment. I suppose if I dig deeper into my shelves, I'll find more... like my old Pratchetts, Dahls, Adrian Moles, and who knows what else.

Comments

  1. ooh! would probably want to read Ender's Game and Speaker of the Dead too, but probably not Xenocide and Children of the mind... ugh!

    ReplyDelete
  2. yeah, it's always wonderful to reread those jewels from our childhood. You'll discover difference aspects of the book that you never noticed before - and love it all the more! A real classic can really do that.

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  3. Yup! Discovering details that went unnoticed before is one of the joys of rereading good books... I can think of a few books right now that I just *know* will surprise me... again!

    ReplyDelete
  4. If books from childhood counts, can Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory get itself listed? Haha. Nevermind, try Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ted, do me a favor please. Could you please change *counts to count?
    Thanks loads dear ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would certainly count... as with all the other Roald Dahl books I've read... hehe!

    Les Miserables? Wow... that's a bit heavy... I haven't read it yet... but I might one day. If I go into a French author phase. I think I'm about to enter a Russian author phase soon... but I'm till trying to push it off... russian novels are soooo intimidating!

    Sorry la laydiefa..i also got no power to edit posts. Bah with Blogger!

    ReplyDelete
  7. How about simplified versions? Do they count? :) There are a few abridged versions of classics that I had read during primary school - and now I wish I can read the unabridged version. Alas am too lazy and also such a slow reader - and there are way too many books still out there that I have YET to read! Argh!!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Personally, I'd go for the unabridged versions... but only to take in the nuances of style and writing. If you're not into that, well better off reading other, more contemporary stuff I suppose.

    Hehe... when I was little, I did worse. I read the illustrated classics. Whoa, those occupied my time more than they should've...

    ReplyDelete
  9. How ambitious of you to start 1000 books from scratch! I've taken upon myself to re-catalogue my bookself (a mess!) over the weekend after the Big Bookstore sale, and am in the middle of making a list of books to re-read too. How can one NOT include Harper Lee, right? I've re-read it so many times, I've lost count! Will check out the LibraryThing.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yeah... I remember Mockingbird being really awesome when I read it. (Only read it once though.) My gf's reading it now, waiting for her thoughts when she's done with it.

    The one book I've reread a lot of times is Nineteen Eighty-Four. I just love that book... and for the longest time, the only fiction I wrote featured authoritarian dystopia. Glad I'm over that phase now.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi Ted! Thanks for the bday gift. It was very thoughtful of you. BTW, if you wanna check out my book collection someday you're welcome to come anytime with sufficient notice. I dont normally lend people my books but in your case you're welcome to do so if there's anything of mine that might be of interest to you.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Glad you liked it.

    I shall be happy to accept your invitation. Tengoklah nanti, bila senang skit. I wish I could invite you to see mine... but mine colelction not in a displayable state. Haih. Tunggu dapat rumah sendiri dulu...

    Dont worry about me borrowing your books... I take very good care one... *wink wink* haha... but seriously, I do respect other people's ownership of their books so I take great pains not to even crease the spine of a paperback I've borrowed...

    ReplyDelete

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