Four To Ponder

[jazzy_dave]

What book or books  are you  embarrassed to admit you’ve read?

What is the coolest bookshop you’ve ever been to?

Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? Where do you draw the line between the two?

What is your preferred bookshelf organisation scheme?


Ivy - Four in the Morning

Comments

[thespian15.livejournal.com]

Hmm, not sure if I am embarrassed by any books I have read.
Thankfully I haven't read Twilight or 50 Shades. :p

Nothing too cool around here. Unless you count the Barnes and Noble that use to be a cool movie theater that's interior was like a castle and the book store kept quite a bit of the look.

It use to be nearly 100% non fiction, but lately it's been mostly fiction thanks to a bunch of series that I have gotten into.

Sadly, it's mostly where ever I start a pile of books. :p
Hugs, Jon

[ba1126.livejournal.com]

What book or books are you embarrassed to admit you’ve read? Can't think of any. If I get a book (from the library) and it's 'smutty' or bad in some other way, I simply return it.

What is the coolest bookshop you’ve ever been to? I borrow books from the library or from the thrift store. On my last plane trip I picked up 4 or 5 paperbacks from the thrift shop and read them on the plane. When I finished one, I offered it to fellow passengers. A friend owned a bookshop/coffee shop place some years ago, and that was cool. I used to decorate her window for holidays with related books and other items (like Xmas ornaments, for instance).

Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? Where do you draw the line between the two? Nearly always fiction, especially 'Murder Mysteries". I like matching wits with the 'slueth' and trying to figure out the 'Whodunit".

What is your preferred bookshelf organization scheme? Books I own get put on a particular bookshelf. Most get donated to somewhere, because I'm not one for 're-reading'.

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

1. The Twilight series. Hey, at least it wasn't 50 Shades of Wrong!

2. Quadrant in Easton, PA. Cafe and bookstore. The food is amazing, and the store is in this wonderful, rambling old house. The rooms are themed: art and architecture, fiction, etc. I DO think it is totally unfair that they cafe portion is almost entirely cookbooks though. I spent SO much money there when I was living in PA!

3. Both. The ratio depends on my mood. I'm not sure where I draw the line, really. I write what I call fictionalized nonfiction, so the line is really blurry for me.

4. Make it fit, then make room for more!

You DO realize that was technically more than four questions, right? ;)

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Aha, someone is alert! Yes, well spotted.

[ladyblue56.livejournal.com]

1. Maybe "Twilight" when my daughter had an interest although after she moved on to something else I did have to finish reading the series to find out what happened at the end. I usually don't read books that are badly written, that seems to be my main criteria of choosing books, and lately I've read in the cozy witch mystery genre on E-reader - surprised myself but the brain needed less taxing work and I needed to read and it works. If the writing irritates me I delete it off the Kindle and find another writer bc that genre is enormous.

2. From some years ago when we vacationed in FL, a combo bookshop/tea shop that was quaint and had shop cats. A mix of used/new books, comfy chairs here and there and a couple of tables/chairs for tea and reading - my dream of a book shop of my own and to have my cats at work w. me. I visited it every day we were on vacation to comb through the titles shelf by shelf and pet the shop cats.

3. Both but depends on the mood I guess. Ratio? I don't know - lately it is more fiction but that is brain issues more than anything else. I haven't read history or true crime in a while but I have read a lot of them in the past. Art books and fiction seems to be my main interest for now but it's a brain thing.

4. Overall I organize by theme/genre and then work w. sizes of books to maximize shelf space. Art books are all in the studio, medical/alternative medical on two shelves in bookcase, comics/humor, classics and fiction in another.

I have a glass door case for valuable books and collectibles that are more mixed than the other areas but that was so my husband doesn't just box up everything when I pass and donate them all - there's some books to be sold for a tidy sum for my daughter to deal w. and husband knows the book case is hands off.

[everville340.livejournal.com]

I truly cannot think of one, which may be more about memory than lack of having read any.

Book Passage (Tamal Vista Boulevard, Corte Madera,) and The Booksmith (Haight Street, San Francisco), as they hold special memories and experiences with my husband.

More fiction than non-fiction, though there are both on the bookshelves.
(Including autobiographies that shame me in their unread-ness.)

Alphabetically Last Name, First....with several sized exceptions, as for some odd reason the top shelves are proportionally taller than the others. The menagerie across the top of the bookcases is certainly in an organized fashion that made complete sense at the time.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Not sure. Mostly I'm unembarrassed by what I read, but I admit that sometimes, like when I go to the doctor's office, I'll put aside the YA fantasy and take something 'serious' so they won't be tempted to think me intellectually lightweight.

There (back in the early '70s) was a book shop/tea & coffee shop in I think Redondo Beach. Or one of those beaches in that general area. I loved that you could have refreshment while you browsed, and even take books to the table and just sit and read them. They seemed to specialize in Beat generation stuff, Existentialists, and authors like Hesse, all of which I was into at that age.

Both, with more fiction than non. The ratio depends on what Vine offers me and what turns up on the new book shelves at the library.

My nonfiction is all in different areas- gardening in one spot, cookbooks in another, history in another. The fiction is in the living room, just shoved into a giant, deep bookshelf. All spots have outgrown their shelving and are spilling out all over the floors. They are shelved by size and how they'll fit!

[soundofsunlight]

What book or books are you embarrassed to admit you’ve read? - I can't think of any that I'm embarrassed by.

What is the coolest bookshop you’ve ever been to? - There was a used book store near where I went to high school that let you either buy with money or by trading other books. I've seen trading become more common since then, but at the time it was the only place I knew of that did trades.

Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? - Mostly fiction.

What is your preferred bookshelf organisation scheme? - Primarily by author, and also by height.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

Fear Street series by RL Stine, lol!!

Hawley-Cooke. They no longer exist now, alas...

Fiction mostly. Non-fiction only when it is case-file based.

Alphabetical.

*HUGS*

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

None.

I don't remember. It was in New York City, about 1960.

Both. I don't know the ratio. The line runs through Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda and The Tent, which I bought and read after you recommended it.

I don't have a preferred scheme for other folks, and my own scheme is the actual one: I haven't thought much about whether I might prefer something else. It's a mix of matching size of book to height of shelf, and the history of when books and bookcases were acquired, and a way-leads-on-to-way organization by subject (guides to identifying and eating wild plants, followed by the works of Carlos Castaneda, followed by the traditional holy writings of several religions, followed by the definitive dogma of objectivism*, followed by an ancient handbook of chemical and physical constants and mathematical formulae).

* When I correspond with the guy who gave me that book, I like to annoy him by spelling it Objectivism, as if it were the name of a proper religion, because after all, it is.

Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

nice song.. i hope i'm in bed by then..

RE: Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Classic tune by them.

RE: Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.

[pigshitpoet.livejournal.com]

i gave it another listen. kind of like zero 7, urban drone.. i like the singer - is that dominique durand? will add to my lounge lists

actually it's stellar!

thanks!
; )

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Back when I was but a leveret, I bought a book with a UFO-like spacecraft on the cover - I was a sci-fi sort pretty much from the beginning. Trouble was, the writing on this was.. atrocious. It was one of John Norman's Gor books. ^_^;

Well, Powell's in Portland is deservedly legendary, but there was a nifty, huge used bookstore I stumbled upon in Sydney somewhere, with just endless shelves of all manner of books, even including almost everything from John Varley.

I tend to just read as things take me. ^_^

I'm essentially all digital now, so I'm no longer subject to the tyranny of objects - the works appear as I may find convenient. And all without occupying any space or weight, too - very, very helpful when moving, as I eventually learned. (Of course, anybody who'd prefer to haul all 19-odd volumes of Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia around, each with some 1000 pages of documentation and photographs, in total covering every single animal species, can do so, but I find 970MB of PDFs on the iPad much more convenient)