#My private Library

[sohmariku]

Riku's Random Life: Books (again)

I visited Leiden last Wednesday and I never noticed this before but...

How on earth did a single, roughly 1km long shopping street (Breestraat) end up with 7 bookstores!?

How on earth do all of those stores survive! Sure, some of them specialize in secondhand books and one is a comic book store, but... that's still 7 bookstores competing in a single street!

I only ended up visiting 4 or 5 of them and... I bought only one book I somewhat planned to get. My wallet absolutely hates me now.

Just saying, I was planning to get maybe two (or three) books. Depending on the prices.

Books I was looking for and considered to possibly buy if available:

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Terciel & Elinor by Garth Nix

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss

The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman

Visiting the stores I considered I might want to get:

The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix

Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs

What I ended up buying:

There is no dog by Meg Rosoff

Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink

Scarlet and Ivy: The Lost Twin by Sophie Cleverly

Scarlet and Ivy: The Whispers in the Walls by Sophie Cleverly

Papertowns by John Green

De Aardmagiër by Anne West

By the Grace of the Gods (Book 1-4) by Roy

Books 1-6 are all secondhand books, costing me roughly €6,5 a piece. Which is the only reason I could "afford" to get that many.

De Aardmagiër (#6) the one I sort of planned on getting, but did not expect to find. Owned it (and the other books of the series) at some point in time, but I cannot seem to find them anymore. I suspect one of my siblings may have claimed them. So, I'm trying to collect them again, because I absolutely loved the series as a child. Unfortunately, the books are hard to find.

By the Grace of the Gods I bought because they were priced down and came in at €6,5 a piece as well. I quite enjoyed the anime, so I figured I'd try the light novels.

UPDATE: I finished "The man who Died Twice". I am currently considering to finally pick up and read that copy of "Pride & Prejudice" I bought like 10 years ago and then never touched.

[nando161mando]

Behold.. Idaho becomes the first to require ID.. for the PUBLIC LIBRARY. Knowledge and Thinking is the enemy.

[prima-after-dawn]

This is a safe space.

Tell me what nasty things you’d do to him.

[moth-time]

It's BOOK TIME again! It has been forever since I last bound a book wow.

This is Interim by @punishandenslavesuckers, which is a fantastic botw post-canon Link/Zelda/Ganon fic that you all should go read if you haven't already. It's great, go check it out. I stayed up way too late reading it.

The binding is a sewn-board binding, which means the cover stiffeners are sewn directly into the text block, instead of wrapped around and glued to the endpapers. This makes for a very tidy and modern looking binding, AND because the boards are doubled (sewn in like the endpapers) allows for fun shenanigans like that indented triforce.

I'm SO proud of how the triforce came out! I was really careful with all of my measurements and it really paid off.

Oh yeah and I finally found a place with a good guillotine, so now I can make SMALLER books and still have nice crisp edges. Look at it, it's such a cute size. Perfect for holding.

Next step… painted fore-edges, maybe owo

[vanalex]

[sad-emo-dip-dye]

I have actually never ever recovered from this

[shalom-iamcominghome]

The amount of jews I know who are planning on or are currently running private libraries is a non-zero number. Can't beat the well-read allegations for real 😭

[geraldofallon]

Fallen London Travel Guide:

Mr Pages’ Private Library

Someone inside the Ministry is collecting stories of romance and obsession. They joke that their employer is 'munificate' and 'protrusive'.

[marzipanandminutiae]

"dark academia isn't strictly academia; it's the AESTHETIC!"

please explain what the "aesthetic" of academia is, besides Actual University/Library Buildings and Relevant Accoutrements

like

how can academia have an Aesthetic when it's not an aesthetic concept? it's just the abstract idea of institutions of learning

I understand calling certain specific academic buildings "dark academia" and not others. it's an aesthetic WITHIN the sphere of academia

but if there's no academia...it literally can't be that

[rustbeltjessie]

I checked My Own Private Idaho out from the library, because I haven’t seen it in far too long, and when I was looking for it in the library catalog, I stumbled across a book that I’m super excited to read. Here’s the description from the Fantagraphics website:

Mannie Murphy is a gender queer Portland native. This work of graphic nonfiction, told in the style of an illustrated diary, begins as an affectionate reminiscence of the author's 1990s teenage infatuation with the late actor River Phoenix but morphs into a remarkable, sprawling account of the city of Portland and state of Oregon's dark history of white nationalism. Murphy details the relationship between white supremacist Tom Metzger (former KKK Grand Wizard and founder of the White Aryan Resistance) and the "Rose City" street kids like Ken Death that infiltrated Van Sant's films -- a relationship that culminates in an infamous episode of Geraldo. Murphy brilliantly weaves 1990s alternative culture, from Kurt Cobain and William Burroughs to Keanu Reeves and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with two centuries of the Pacific Northwest's shameful history as a hotbed for white nationalism: from the Whitman massacre in 1847 and the Ku Klux Klan's role in Portland's city planning in the early 1900s to the brutal treatment of Black people displaced in the 1948 Vanport flood and through the 2014 armed standoff with Cliven Bundy's cattle ranch. In Murphy's personal reflections and heart-racing descriptions of scenes like infamous campfire kiss in My Own Private Idaho, the artist's story becomes a moral anchor to a deeply amoral regional history and marks the incredible debut of a talented new voice to the graphic medium.

[cursemewithyourkiss]

I'm haunted by the surviving reel of The Dark Angel (1925). The other night I dreamt of it, I think. I keep fantasising about what it might be like and about actually going to Washington just to see it. Going insane.

[sohmariku]

Riku's Random Life: Books

Long overdue, but I finally started cataloging all the books we own... because truly, what's more blissful than leafing through books to check the page count? Or the translator's name? The publisher? (I stopped recording copyright years and edition information at some point because the list got too messy)

To be honest, I decided it was about time after I realized I bought a book I already owned... Still, I'm quite enjoying the process. Leafing through books and recording the information is quite blissful.

And now, after hours of work... I've finally finished listing down all the books... of the first bookcase... A whopping total of 251 books! Oh, and I also cataloged the 7 books floating around my living room! So, that's a list of 258 books in total!

Just 3 more bookcases to go. They admittedly aren't full as the one I started with, but I'm suspecting I'll end up with more than 500 books in total! That's a pretty decent number I suppose. xD

FYI, when I say books, I mean... novels.I have a separate list for all the manga we own. Children's picture books have also not been included in this list (yet). However, there are a few guide bookish books included in the list.

Some notable observations:

We own books in three different languages: Dutch, English & Japanese. (The single French picture book I own is not included on the list yet.)

We do not own a full set of Harry Potter books in any language. In Dutch we miss book 1 & 2. In English we miss book 3 & 4. And in Japanese we miss book 5 to 7. (I'm absolutely sure I owned book 1 & 2 in Dutch, but it seems they went missing at some point. Maybe one of my siblings has them?)

We do have full sets of Lord of the Rings in multiple languages. A full Dutch set and a full English set. We also have doubles of some books.

We own 4 copies of the Hobbit. Two in English, one in Dutch and one in Japanese. (And we also have a graphic novel version!)

I realized I still haven't bought all Narnia books! Even though I said I would... nearly 15 years ago! (I have read all books however, I borrowed them from our public library at some point)

There are roughly 50 books in this bookcase I have not read, but still want to read. About half of them are Agatha Christie books.

The list of books I want to buy has only grown longer! (You evil publisher's, don't add recommendations at the end of a book! You'll make me want to buy more books! I don't have the money for that!)

BONUS: I'm currently reading "The Man who Died Twice" by Richard Osman, which is the second book in the "The Thursday Murder Club" series. I'm only a 100 pages in, but... I absolutely love it! Gotta get the other books of the series too! Seems the fourth book will be released soon.

[xxgoldie]

got a study room booked at uni for the max allowed time tomorrow n I'm gonna lock in so hard so I can get home and actually write my silly little fanfics without the guilt of "I should be working on my multiple dissertations" ruining it

[prima-after-dawn]

He 1000% bounced on more than one Prime’s spike

Just look at that Experienced Whore™️ stance

[kariachi]

That feel when you're doing too good in a game that you can't actually progress so now, yippee, you have to try to make this purposefully worse so you can get anywhere.

[flyingfishtailoutpost1]

I work in a school

A para just came in and handed me a pile of laminated items made out of construction paper, and said, “I need these laminated.”

Me: They…already are laminated?

Her: Yeah, these belong to Ms J. I need them laminated.

Me:

Her:

Me: Do you mean…you want me to scan these, print them out, cut them out, and laminate them, so you can have your own set???

Her: Oh. Yes. I can come back for them in, what, fifteen minutes?

Me: Try an hour?????

We need a collection development plan written for our media center. I’m not supposed to be in charge of it, because I’m just a librarian and not instructional staff.

The literacy coach is supposed to do it. She has no idea how.

They give it to the AP to do. He has no idea how.

I fill out the collection plan. All I need the AP to give me is one paragraph of information. He emails it to me 10 minutes before it’s due. It’s a block of text written in all caps with no punctuation, full of spelling errors.

I’ve been trying to order supplies for a month and a half. The person issuing me the quote keeps having to reissue it. They got the school wrong, then the number of items, then the type of item, then the person it was issued to, then the number of items again.

I have a cartload of books to be shelved. Ask my TAs from the high school to shelve them. Have to keep explaining what “alphabetized” means. There are two stacks of books on the bottom, with post-its that say FOR DISPLAY DON’T SHELVE THESE.

They shelve them, except for the top two books with the notes attached, which they give to me and remind me not to shelve them because they’re for display.

Principal offers me Textbook Coordinator position. The previous one is like, yeah, I can’t train you, I don’t know how it works.

Me: But you did it for a year???

Her: Yeah but I didn’t know what I was doing at all.

So I figure at least organizing the textbook stock so you can move in the storage room without being crushed is a good place to start.

Everyone: You’re a miracle worker!!!

Me: I opened some boxes and put some books on the shelves, my god you guys.

My beloved library volunteer who saves my sanity, trying to encourage a student to try checking out a book: Come on, we have books about AWESOME stuff. I bet EVERYONE can find a book about stuff they like in here.

*turns to his teacher, standing nearby*

Ms V, what do you like to read about?

Teacher *rolling her eyes*: I don’t read.

Us: ….ok.

Student: *walks away*

Also, and I cannot stress this enough: