Book Review: Knitting for Good

This is a lovely little book for any knitter's library. It jumps around a bit but provides a very pleasant read and a good deal of support and community building. Greer writes of her thoughts on knitting as a personal journey as well as an opportunity for both creativity and activism. Knitters can influence their own personal growth through knitting and particularly though not exclusively through knitting for others. She also profiles a number of other knitters (including bloggers, writers, designers, teachers, activists, and others), with their thoughts on knitting, fiber arts' place in the world, and what knitting means for them personally. The book includes simple patterns for a variety of projects which can be knit for oneself or for donation purposes, including basic survival items like scarves, hats, and blankets; toys and pet beds; and baby clothing. I would recommend this to the thoughtful knitter wanting a supportive volume on knitting's potential for positive personal and community change.

Knitting for Good!: A Guide to Creating Personal, Social, and Political Change Stitch by Stitch by Betsy Greer, Trumpeter, 2008, ISBN 978-1590305898

Sometimes she scares even me

I have LibraryThing set as my homepage for Safari.  When I open up my internet browser, that's the page I get first.  Tonight Kayla was looking over my shoulder as I opened my online profile, since I was going online to email a copy of an essay she wrote to her teacher.  She started singing, "LibraryThing, (da, da, da, DA, da)

You make my heart sing, (da, da, da, Da, da)

LibraryThing, I think I love you."

Then we emailed her essay on, I joke not, the bassoon.

Tuesday Thingers: Review your reviewing

Most of us book bloggers like to write book reviews- if we don't love to write book reviews- but here's today's question. When it comes to LT (and your blog), do you review every book you read? Do you just review Early Reviewers or ARCs? Do you review only if you like a book, or only if you feel like you have to? How soon after reading do you post your review? Do you post them other places- other social networking sites, Amazon, etc.?

I always review my ERs/ARCs (advance review copies), but as for other works, I'm pretty scattershot. On occasion I have reviewed works which I found amazingly refreshing or rewarding (such as Ann Patchett's Run), and non-fiction (especially reference) works I own which I find particularly valuable or flawed. As for the average work or mass market paperback, though, I rarely take the time to write and post a review.

When I do write a review, I normally post it here as well as on LT.

Tuesday Thingers: Most Popular?

What's the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it?

Well, no surprise; the most popular books I have are the whole Harry Potter series (while I'm not amazed that the first book of the series is the most popular at all, it seems a bit odd to me that book 6 of the 7 book series is second most popular). Next after that is The Hobbit (hooray, much love) and then Pride and Prejudice (much love from dd Kayla, who adores it).

On the subject of P&P, I have to relate that the film was on TV the other night and Kayla was watching it with Feivel. At one point I heard him exclaim as a particular character returned to the screen, "Hey, I thought she was dead!" To which Kayla exasperatedly replied, "She had a broken heart, Feivel. She went away. She wasn't dead!"

Tuesday Thingers: Winners

Today's question: Awards. Do you follow any particular book awards? Do you ever choose books based on awards? What award-winning books do you have? (Off the top of your head only- no need to look this up- it would take all day!) What's your favorite award-winning book?

Honestly, awards are totally beyond my radar except in children's books. There I do value the awards, or at least I investigate the award winning books I can track down and often find them to really seem deserving of the accolades they accumulate.

From the tagmash "children's awards" I have the following of the top 99 books:

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Holes by Louis Sachar
Don't let the pigeon drive the bus by Mo Willems
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka
My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
The High King by Lloyd Alexander
The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman
Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski
The Door in the Wall by Marguerite De Angeli
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson
The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byar
Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw
One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey
Arrow to the Sun: A Pueblo Indian Tale by Gerald McDermott (I think I have it, I certainly did, but come to think of it I may have donated my copy out some years ago).
Though I'm not sure that all of these have actually won awards that I'd know of.

But my favorite? You've got to be kidding. I could never pick from these one or even just a few favorites. Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type might have a headstart though...because 3 year old Gilad loves to snuggle in my lap reading that one these days!

Tuesday Thingers: Who's got your books?

Today's question: Members who have your books. Do you ever look at this feature? Do you use it to make LT friends, or compare notes? There are three tabs- weighted, raw, and recent. "Weighted," which means "weighted by book obscurity and library size" is probably the least self-explanatory of the three, whereas "raw" and "recent" are more so. Do you get any kind of use out of this feature?

A few months ago I did use this feature a lot. My linkages there haven't changed much, so I haven't made much use of it recently.

What I've found is that the weakness in the feature is me, or rather the limited degree to which I've gotten my personal library cataloged in LT at this point. Because I'm going around the house geographically, and my personal book collection is more or less organized geographically, this means that what's in my LT library listing isn't fully representative of my complete tastes and interests. I've entered a large number of religious books, children's works, and mystery novels, because those are the shelves I've gotten to so far, so the people who match me right now are those who have similar works entered. However, I have much more far-ranging interests, I just haven't gotten around to representing them within LT yet.

I did find a lot of people with similar tastes in mystery novels, but I don't feel a strong need to connect to those people. I identified a certain number of people with related religious collections, and was able to reach out to a few of them; but then I haven't gone to the trouble of hand entering a lot of the more obscure ones which would further identify our family within the greater religiously-read population. The one area where it really benefitted me is in fiber arts; I have entered most of my fiber arts publications, and I was very happy to be able to hook up with other people who have similar interests and tastes, based on the fact that they would bother to have shelves full of books related to sock knitting, knitted lace, and wool spinning!

All in all, I like the feature, but I don't find it changes much over time. Periodically I do take a quick look in case someone new has snuck in and gotten a lot entered that suggests I might like to make a new friend of them.

Tuesday Thingers: Author! Author!

Today's topic: LibraryThing authors. Who are your LibraryThing authors? What books of theirs do you have? Do you ever comment on an author's LT page? Have you received any comments from an author on your LT account?

I'm a piker here. My only LT authors are Susan Wittig Albert (susanalbert), Monk Ashland (Rettstatt), Shannon Okey (knitgrrldotcom). I have almost all of Albert's books (the ones written under her own name): her China Bayles and her Beatrix Potter mysteries. I might be missing the most recent of the latter, it's on my TBR/TBP/TBmooched list. Ashland only has a single book right now, The Sky Village, but my daughters both found it entrancing and are eagerly awaiting sequels. Okey is a knitting, not a fiction, writer; I have her book Spin to Knit and enjoy it quite a lot. It gave me a lot of support when I was new to the idea of spinning my own yarn for eventual knitting.

I haven't ever gotten or shared comments with any of "my" LT authors, but a few weeks ago I did win an autographed copy of a book from another blog (hi, Fyrefly!), and the author J. Scott Savage did comment here. I still haven't received the book, though (insert frowny face from someone eager for new sci-fi to read...make that devour).

I have to say when I first saw this question my gut reaction was that I was going to have a one sentence answer...but once I started thinking about it, I seem to have had a lot to say. Maybe it's a good thing more of my authors aren't on LT (no, it's not).

Catch up: SP Exchange, a Mystery that keeps on growing, and a round of smooches

I got my package from my Knittyboard Summer Loving Exchange:

BFL (that's Blue-Faced Leicester, a breed of sheep) top (combed fiber), thank you cards, a notepad and stitch markers.

I've been busily working on my Slow Bee Mystery II stole, now finished clue 10, with 5 more to go and then the second half to complete:

Meanwhile, back at the book shelves, a bad case of smooching has broken out at LibraryThing.  Thingamabrarians have been anonymously smooching each other over at BookMooch.  When you smooch someone, you give them the gift of a book point, worth a whole book choice.  I received two smooches in one day, and gave some to others too.  The only problem was that my first few choices for smoochees turned out to each have about 50 points accumulated in their accounts already.  I was afraid it would just be an empty gesture, albeit a nice and well-appreciated one, to give them the points, so I had to do a little digging to find members of both LT and BM who were newer or lower in points but had active accounts.  It's quite fun both to give and to get a smooch, as I'm sure you can imagine (think figuratively or literally here, I'm open).

Tuesday Thingers: Real Life?

Today's question: LT and RL (real life)- do you have friends in real life that you met through LibraryThing? Have you attended any LT meet-ups in your area? Would you be open to attending meet-ups or is LT strictly an online thing for you?

I can't claim to have met anyone in person, but I have developed at least a little bit of a relationship with several members of LT. At least one person who lives in my neighborhood and I have been planning for a while to get together for coffee one afternoon (okay, it's been months and we haven't met up, but we have hopes). Several people and I have traded books we've found, either on our home shelves or in shops, of which we thought the other person would make better use. Finally, I've found a few LT members on other sites (Ravelry, KnittyBoard, BookMooch, primarily) and continued the friending there to expand past our literary obsessions.

I'd be interested in LT meet-ups in my area, though my crazy scheduling might preclude me from actually attending. Thingamabrarians overall just seem to be my kind of people far more than the general population would provide statistically. I don't feel compelled to keep my online and my real lives separate.

Tuesday Thingers: Short answer on cataloguing

Today's question: Cataloging sources. What cataloging sources do you use most? Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources, or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most things through LT's almost 700 sources?

Remember, this question and its answer are specific to our cataloguing on LibraryThing. Here, I get most of my listings from Amazon in the US. Occasionally I've resorted to LC, but sadly, it's been rare that something not listed in Amazon shows up in LC. In 2 cases, I even had an LC call number in the book but could find no record. The other sources I've used occasionally are Israel Union List (for various religious or Hebrew language books), National Library of Australia (for some needlework books and pamphlets which were printed in Australia or New Zealand and which were catalogued there but not here), and Amazon.fr (for the occasional French volume, obviously).

The only things that I don't find in the systems and have to hand enter are very old books (I do have a handful of books printed before say 1950) and some religious books (because apparently a few of the Jewish publishing houses are not distributed through Amazon, don't register copies with LC, and haven't made it to the Israel Union List especially if they're actually published here). This last exception is getting to be less of an issue as recently it seems a few of the larger Jewish publishers (this is relative, I'm still specifically referring to publishers whose only audience is the US Orthodox population, a tiny number of people relative to the reading world) are newly distributing through Amazon, and books which in the past did not show up in their system do now.

I will be interested to see if others have specific sources with benefits or subject areas I don't know about.

Tuesday Thingers: Recommendations

Today's topic: Recommendations. Do you use LT's recommendations feature? Have you found any good books by using it? Do you use the anti-recommendations, or the "special sauce" recommendations? How do you find out about books you want to read?

I do use the recommendations, but I don't bother with a lot of the adjunctive features; I found they were redundant and mostly just suggested books already offered or ones I already owned. The anti-recommendations seemed split between ones I do already own and ones I'd never bother buying ever.

I find I get a lot of recommendations either from my friends list or member suggestions. I stalk my friends' recently added lists and get a lot of ideas from that. I've been known to email them to ask where they found certain unusual items (though the answers are usually something along the lines of "I was on vacation in this tiny village outside of Munich and I found this little shop in someone's back closet where they had a single copy of this volume, and incidentally the retail price was 100 euros" which tends to be disheartening). I mean, if with my weird tastes I think something's actually obscure and unusual, it's probably truly obscure and unusual, not just a mass market paperback I somehow missed in the NYT best seller list. It's a lot of fun doing this and it's an always-changing recommendation list I love. My LT friends have eclectic interests and tastes, and there's always something fascinating and promising among what they're newly cataloguing or reviewing.

I did get some ideas from the built-in LT recommendation lists, but since they're pretty static, it was more of a one time shot. Mostly what I found were volumes I'd already heard of but hadn't thought of for a while, but which I moved to my BookMooch wishlist (which functions as a TBR/to buy one day list for me as well as a Mooch list). It was classics, both among adult and children's literature for the most part, which I enjoyed seeing as recommendations, but there was very little new or surprising. Still, I really appreciate the feature and do check it periodically.

Tuesday Thingers:Books on the Move

Today's topic: Book-swapping. Do you do it? What site(s) do you use? How did you find out about them? What do you think of them? Do you use LT's book-swapping column feature for information on what to swap? Do you participate in any of the LT communities that discuss bookswapping, like the Bookmooch group for example?

I'm a BookMooch junky/hoverer/stalker. I love Mooching. I accidentally wound up with 2000 of the little BM business cards and I give them out everywhere (gave one to the lady at the PO yesterday when I sent out some books, in fact).

I just launched my first BM Journal: The BookMooch Needle Arts and Fiber Arts Journal! Go on, add it to your wishlist.

I love, love, love that LibraryThing has a book-swapping column. Every single time someone mentions a book that sounds good, I immediately use it to add to my wishlist. Of course, that might account for the fact that my wishlist is now 550+ and growing daily, but still....

I am a member of the LT BM forum. I'm a reasonably active poster there, and like the discussion. I never use BM's own boards, so I get my info and advice here. I did in fact learn about BM from LT; I think there were a couple of people with whom I was corresponding, and I noticed they were both members from their profile pages, so I checked it out and never looked back!

I only wish there was some way to get more people with books sitting around they'll never want or use to list those on BM so I could Mooch them right up.

I have such a strong relationship with books that for years I have had trouble giving them up. Books I'll never re-read, ones I'll never use, ones I wouldn't recommend to my kids, ones I bought and never bothered reading; I kept them all. Two things are getting them off my shelves, and those two things are LT and BM. LT because if the book is in the house I am compelled to catalog it; if I don't want it in the catalog, I have to inventory it and get rid of it now. BM because it gives me a sense that the books I don't appreciate are actually wanted by someone; rather than trying to convince myself I should donate or sell the book to a shop where it may sit on the shelves for decades, unwanted and unappreciated, when I Mooch a book out I can feel like I am helping someone else and getting them a book they actually desire or need. It's a very powerful motivator and a psychological impressor that I need to override my book-owning obsession. I'm actually quite grateful I have found both the LibraryThing community and the BookMooch service.

Tuesday Thingers--Mine! Mine! Only mine!

Do you have any unique books in your library- books only you have on LT? How many? Did you find cataloging information on your unique books, or did you hand-enter them? Do they fall into a particular category or categories, or are they a mix of different things? Have you ever looked at the "You and none other" feature on your statistics page, which shows books owned by only you and one other user? Ever made an LT friend by seeing what you share with only one other user?

There are quite a number of unique books in my library, for a variety of reasons. In fact, as of this morning, it appears I have exactly 100 uniquely held volumes. Most of them are Jewish religious esoterica or Jewish children's books. It's possible a few of these are held by others and need proper disambiguation, a project I should take on one of these days. A couple are books on specific special needs, published by support associations or family/patient support groups; it's not surprising that there aren't other people on LibraryThing who haven't cataloged, "The Terrific Tale of Teddy the (Previously Troubled) Tummy Who is Really Happy Now and Lovin' Life: A Book to Help Kids by APFED." I really need to upload that cover, though; Teddy's cute. Maybe I need to somehow attach a photo of Sachy with his plush Teddy the Tummy, too. Several are needlework or costume books which I collect as avidly as I collect smocked and embroidered baby wear; these include obscure volumes like "Great Costumes 1550 - 1950" which is an annotated museum catalog. I've had to hand enter all of these; there have been a number of works I didn't expect to find already in the system, but which it turned out one or two people did already own. Those are almost all Jewish or children's books.

What my kids consider the most unique volume in our collection, at least that I've catalogued so far, is our edition of "The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Household Edition" for while many do own copies of Longfellow's complete works, our volume was printed in 1881, and is still in quite fine shape.

There are about 32 other users in my "You and none other" feature list, but several of those other members share multiple unique listings with me. These are primarily again either religious books or obscure but not rare cookbooks.

I have found a few friends through the "You and none other" feature, and through matching unusual volumes in our library. I know that if others have several children's books meant for Orthodox Jewish families, they're likely to be Jewish and have children; if they have a number of odd but not rare cookbooks, they're probably like me prone to cookbook obsession. If they have books on now-much-neglected needle arts like smocking or French heirloom hand sewing, they just might be fabric or fiber obsessed, poor things. I do like friending people in LT, even though I don't in most other sites; here on LT I really feel like I have a connection with people who go to the trouble of acquiring and cataloguing books similar to those I treasure.

Tagging

Just a little funny: I was entering Sandra Boynton's Horns to Toes at LibraryThing and filling in the tags. In my fashion, I tagged it "little kids" and "monsters" but the next thing I typed in was "body parts." Somehow that just didn't sound right for a preschoolers' board book! I changed it to "parts of the body," even though that sounds contrived somehow.

Tuesday Thingers (a day late): Tags

Today's question is about tags- 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 do use tags quite a lot, but I keep changing how I look at them. Initially I used them very strictly, minimizing the number of tags used. It was more an exercise in my defining the book's role in our lives. Then I caught on to the fact that tags are used by the LT system for recommendations and for others' understanding of the books, and began to expand my tag use. I have standardised my own tags, and it makes me pretty nuts when I realize I've accidentally used an alternate version incorrectly; for me it would be lovely if LT would recommend tags based on the user's previously chosen or designated ones.

I don't at all like the idea of system-wide tagging standardization. The individual nature of people's LT use and of their thought processes is a big part of what makes LT so fascinating. With so many users, there is no way to include everyone's individual systems of book use; or to define what each user's library means to him or how he chooses to use it and think about it. To systematically define tag usage and curtail it would be a great loss to LT both as a system and as a social experiment.

Remember, I'm a librarian in training. I am not a cataloger, but I do have some experience in indexing. This definitely influences my tagging, but I have made an effort not to make my tagging not too much of a formal indexing tree. While I try to be sure to have some mandatory supercatagories (for example, anything tagged "knitting" I also automatically tag "fiber arts"), I am trying more and more to be free and open-mindedly creative with my tags. I have seen how reading others' tags on certain books has helped me make determinations about those books' value as potential additions to my own library, and I'd like to be able to provide that same service to any who look at my books.

Within my library, my current top 5 tags are: Jewish, series, little kids, mysteries, and needlework. This is somewhat artificial as standing results, though, as it depends on the books I have cataloged, which represent only about 20% (if that much) of what is in the house. Since I have cataloged these geographically, going through the house shelf by shelf; and our shelves are arranged somewhat categorically; eventually the numbers will be quite different. I expect sci-fi and mysteries to be far higher in the numbers, as are kids' books overall. I have entered almost all the Jewish books into our library listing already, so that number will not grow much. As time goes on, I would expect fiber arts to surplant needlework since I do far more knitting, spinning and weaving now than I do quilting, embroidery, or smocking, and I buy more reading and reference material based on my current obsessions (though I still do pick up the odd lovely embroidery book now and then). The little kids/kids tag is somewhat ambiguous I know and actually reflects an arbitrary in-house difference of shelving: anything tagged "little kids" is something Gilad has discovered, which now lives on his Winnie-the-Pooh bookcase; anything tagged "kids" is simply something provided primarily for the children and housed on a bookcase accessible to all of them or else in one of the various children's rooms. The "kids" books range from classics like The Velveteen Rabbit to modern beauties of picture books such as The Quiltmaker's Journey to The Secret Garden to Pokemon adventures and just about anything in-between. Much of the sci-fi is or will also be tagged "kids" so long as it is something I would allow the older girls to read, which is almost everything I would have anyway. Already pretty much all the Norton, LeGuin, McCaffrey and so on is or should be tagged in that way. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I rarely use my YA tag, reserving it for material that was definitely written to appeal directly to that age group as opposed to adult material which is appropriate for teens to read.

I'm sure I have a lot more to say about tags, but actually I can't wait to read what everyone else has said. I see the use of tags/keywords in LT's system as a wonderful social cataloging experiment, expanding the future of library systems and retrieval capabilities, as well as a small window into what each user thinks about his own library and collection.

Tuesday Thingers: Why LT?

Today's Tuesday Thingers question is:Why LT?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 was so excited when I discovered LibraryThing. I didn't even investigate the details, I just immediately opened a free account. Within a week I had paid for a lifetime account.

Never before, even in library school, have a met such a group of people who are well-read, conversational, pleasant, well-spoken, intellectual, and with such far-reaching interests. The other LT members have jumped right in to so many conversations with interesting suggestions, useful ideas, fascinating tangents, and even straightforward answers.

I won't really speak to the technical aspects of LT. I am one of the proponents of the advent of a collections feature so I could better separate out my own books from the children's books, and even more so that I could in good conscience include a collection of material I have read but do not own and of books to be read. I am a LT purist, and maintain a single account with a collection of books only including those in my physical possession. I do not like to try to use tags, which I see more as an indexing feature, as a collections management tool, but that is a personal bias and I know there are those who do just that. I actually am sort of fearing LT upgrades because I really shouldn't be spending any more time on the site than I already do.

I don't have accounts on other similar sites. I do (as is obvious here regularly) belong to BookMooch and also BookCrossing, but I don't use those at all in similar ways. BookMooch is strictly used in our household to get rid of books we really are not using (which are few) and acquire more books we will use (which are far too many). I have met nice people through BookMooch, but I don't look there for conversation, ideas, or networking. I don't even use their recommendations for the most part; I use LT recommendations and then link to my Mooch account to wishlist those. I view BC as an interesting social experiment but since it is such a small movement overall still today, I have yet to encounter a BC book "in the wild" and have only received one tagged book via BookMooch. I have released one book myself, and have another which I plan to release in the wild after I finally get around to reading it. BC is more about the books, though, and much less about the people.

The only other networking source I use so frequently is KnittyBoard. Of course, I am on so many email listservs that I get about 200+ emails a day and I interact with other people with overlapping interests in that manner, too.

I definitely recommend any bookworm check out LT! Have fun, discover more books, read, meet great people, and generally become obsessed.

Tuesday Thingers--What's in your LT Account?

The question this week is- 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 almost 900 books catalogued so far in my LT account. That's out of probably 5000+ books in the house (a number which never stops increasing, mind you). My plan is to be all-inclusive, and I'm going about it geographically, working my way through the house. Because of the way we have the books organized (certain areas of the house contain certain collections), this means that until I'm done the catalog will be skewed depending on which areas I've completed. So far I've done most of our religious works, most of the cookbooks, about 25% of the kids' stuff, almost all of the little kids' books, and about 50% of the needlework books. Then there are other random sections I've done, like most of the Russian literature, certain mystery authors and most of the comics books (heavy on the Bloom County, Garfield, Foxtrot, Calvin and Hobbes, Baby Blues and Doonesbury).

This works because our books are somewhat contained within their areas, but it leaves me with very skewed recommendations!

I'm trying to be sure to enter every book that comes into the house for the first time, but even there I'm failing occasionally. Just this weekend I bought a book for Sachy and realized this morning that I didn't enter it. It's disappeared into the pit which is my boys' bedroom, so who knows when I'll see it again (well, when I catalog the books in their room, obviously). I'm pretty good about getting in what we Mooch, since the BookMooch system allows you to do that directly.

The bigger, unasked question is why? Why do I feel compelled to do this? Why do I care to catalog the household book contents? It doesn't affect anything in the greater world. I am a librarian, though, afterall, and I have certainly established previously that I am flat out obsessed with books: having them, reading them, re-reading them, treasuring them, offering them to my children, and interacting with other people on their basis. Somehow cataloguing my holdings gives me greater control over this as well as giving me an old-fashioned warm fuzzy about my books!

I have to thank LibraryThing for giving me a renewed relationship with my books. I have for once pared down our holdings a bit and sent books out via BookMooch, spurred on by the thought that any books we'll never use can be treasured by others and that any book removed in a timely manner is one I don't have to worry about getting to and cataloguing unnecessarily. I've rediscovered books I hadn't looked at for years, and found ones the children are now appreciating just when they are ready for them.

I think of my LT catalog as an extension of my bibliophilus, and in fact of my book obsession. In a very real way, it is of course and extension of myself and my view of myself and my family

Name that Book: Barbara Michaels? Werewolf

UPDATE: Mabel found it! She remembers it being Barbara Michaels' The Dark on the Other Side! Hooray for the book obsessed with long memories.

I've been searching for a particular book for a while and I think I'm getting close to finding it. I thought the author might have been Mary Stewart, but now it's been suggested that it might be Barbara Michaels, and having checked out her title list, it's sounding possible.

This is a book I read in middle school, in the late 1970s I suppose. We were reading Mary Stewart, H. Beam Piper and Nancy Springer at the time, so it would fit in with that genre and reading level. The only thing I remember is that it involved a couple and a third person, another man, and that the last line of the book was "It was a silver bullet." This referred to the fact that one character had shot another, a suspected werewolf, and wanted to ensure that he successfully ended the terror of the story.

I looked at the synopses of several Michaels titles, and they sound quite familiar, so I think that even though I had totally forgotten she was a favorite author back then, it's likely. Still, I can't pinpoint the exact title. Sons of the Wolf doesn't look quite right, but if it fits the rest of what I have written, it may be the book I'm looking for. If any Thingamabrarians or others reading this can identify the book, I will be quite grateful. Otherwise I may just have to wait until I can go to the public library, find everything they've got on the shelves by Barbara Michaels, and check the last pages of each volume!

Tuesday Thingers: Discussion Groups

Today's LibraryThing discussion area is our discussion groups. I'm something of a discussion group obsessor and a pretty active participant; I check my groups throughout the day when I can. I belong to 24 at this point: (Dis)ability Politics, Ask LibraryThing, Bookcases: If You Build/Buy Them, They Will Fill, BookMooching, Caregiving, Early Reviewers, Fiber Arts, History of Science/Technology/Medicine, Jewish Cookbooks and Cookery, Jewish History , Judaica, Knitters Inc., Language, Librarians who LibraryThing, Maryland Librarythingers, Mawrtyrs, Medicine, Name that Book, Needlearts, Nurses, Redwall Abbey, Weavers, בעברית LT in Hebrew

How's that for a variety? Hobbies, special needs, intellectual interests, alumnae, and more books; that sounds like a pretty good summation of a large portion of my life. Well, in truth, not the alumnae part; I'm not the least bit active in BMC alum stuff, I kind of wish I could block a lot of my college experience out of my memory, but I'd love to hook up with some people I've lost, so that's my motivation to belong to that group.

I think my favorites are the BookMooching and the Name that Book groups. BookMooching is very important to me both from a recycling/reuse point of view and a money saving one. I don't find the BM forums very functional, so I prefer to discuss activities on LT. In fact, it was through LT that I first discovered Mooching. My wishlist there is now close to 350 books; I've sent out something like 30 already, and more keep going in and out.

Name that Book is a delight. I just love discovering books I'd forgotten, tracking down ones I can't quite place, and even finding new ones I'd never heard of which others describe. The energy and excitement they express about certain books they had once treasured and now have re-discovered translate into a deep desire on my part to find and read their bookloves.

A few of my groups are extremely inactive, but it's always nice to have them around in case an issue ever arises.

In any case, I definitely have found that of almost all the social interactions in which I engage online, LT groups are one of the better areas. Most participants seem intelligent, coherent, pleasant, well-spoken, well-read, and interesting. The only other online message board or virtual community I find so pleasant is Knittyboard, but of course while we go quite off topic there, the community is composed of knitters, spinners, and general fiber artists.

I'll be checking other LT bloggers' thoughts on this area, but comments and suggestions for groups and boards are more than welcomed; they're encouraged. Help me pretend to be social!

My books

I've started cataloging my books on LibraryThing as you all may know. I've gotten about 720 in so far, and extrapolating to what's sitting around the house I realize we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 4500-5000 books. If anything, that's a low estimate. And we're not shy about using the library, either.
I go into some people's houses and they have one, maybe two shelves of books; others have bookcases covering every free wall of every room and every staircase. Needless to say, I feel more at home in the latter. My parents have some books, but nothing like our library. We have bookcases everywhere, every child's room has at least one, many of our shelves are double-shelved. There are books piled on my nightstand, books on Kayla's floor, books in 9 month old Adele's room.
I am spending a lot of time on BookMooch now trying to get rid of books we'll never use or never read again (nasty science fiction, lovely craft books of crafts we'll never actually take up, duplicates of mysteries I didn't realize I had already bought, and more). I'm racking up the points sending them out, and I don't want to use the points to bring in more books right now (I should just donate the points right away so I can't use them). There have been times when I have brought 5-6 grocery bags at a time to donate at the library book store and we STILL have all these books (what in the world have I already given away?!)!
I realize I have a very deep relationship with my books. I can't bring myself to give up a good book. I re-read, I treasure, I love them. I can't pass up a good read, and I am somewhat obsessed with providing good books for my children. Books the older children all hate I keep on the chance that in a few years one might change his or her mind, or one of the younger ones may have a different opinion. Books that are classics I stock around the house just in the hopes that one child or another will pick it up at some point (it's worked with Heidi, The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Little Women, Black Beauty, and more). I've started searching out books I read as a teenager to see if they pique the girls' interest the same way (Tirtze does like Nancy Springer, but rejects H. Beam Piper; she hasn't really checked out Mary Stewart yet--I have to find the werewolf one).
My name is Leesy, and I'm a bookaholic. I don't think I'm ready for recovery.