First Trip to Powell's Bookstore in Portland

My first trip to Powell's largest bookstore in Portland was absolutely amazing! I ducked in with a friend for a few minutes while we waited for our dinner table to open up down the block and was immediately amazed. I've been frequenting used bookstores my whole life - most commonly the Half Price Book chain in and around Seattle - but this is on an entirely different scale. After just a few moments, it became clear we'd need to return so I stashed my cache in the vegetarian cookbook section (which was unbelievably broad!) and headed to dinner. We came back after dinner and beer and spent some quality time roaming through the fiction section.

The selection of quality used paperbacks is very high - it was like looking through a well stocked regular bookstore. Being picky about the condition of my books always restricts me when used book shopping, to the extent that I shop by browsing the entire fiction section fully, pulling out all the high quality volumes and then selecting from them. This was completely impossible at Powell's. In fact, I didn't even make it through the full fiction section. My feet got tired after approximately half of the alphabet and we didn't even go beyond the fiction section!!

I bought several books but managed to restrain myself to limit how many books I would have to pack for my upcoming move:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (Heritage Press edition from the '60s to supplement my grandmother's collection)

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Collected Novellas by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (this book is terrifyingly heavy for a paperback)

Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon

Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi

Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie

Empress: A Novel by Shan Sa

Project 2010: Library Catalogue

In light of how unsuccessful my 2009 resolution turned out to be, I have decided to start of 2010 with a full inventory of my personal book collection (all those pretty paperbacks I have been stockpiling for years) as well as the books my grandmother left behind. The goal is to get a comprehensive list to assist me in flushing out my classic literature collection and to help me properly organize my physical library.

Currently, I have catalogued 170 of my own volumes and 260 of my grandmother's. I was surprised to see that her collection is heavy in Dickens, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Kipling, Steinbeck, Hemmingway, and Russian Literature. It's also very light in Asian Literature and women authors.

Admittedly, a large reason for my failure to finish reading many books last year was to the extensive amount of time spent playing MMORPG video games - hopefully my retirement in this category of games will allow me to return to my happier, heavy reading days!