Project 2010: Library Catalogue

I was absolutely astonished by how long this project wound up taking me! I started cataloging while I was packing to move into my new condo, and it took weeks to get most of my grandmother's collection entered into my spreadsheet and boxed up. I did make it hard on myself by cataloging a number of properties - title, author, publisher and year, along with any notable comments about the editions, but it seemed best to do everything all at once.

The hardest part was letting go of some of the books, but I decided it was better to have a manageable collection that I would be able to keep on the limited shelf space in my home, rather than keep every book my grandmother collected in her lifetime. I passed a number of books along to family, and took most of the paperbacks, mystery novels, and some others to the used bookstore.

I also went through my own collection of books and finally turned in most of my books from college, save my collection of used philosophy and classics texts. All in all, I was very proud that I was able to let go of some books that I should have parted with years ago. I even managed to get them all on the shelves - I only have a few boxes with oversized coffee table books and my grandmother's individual volume Shakespeare collection in storage.

More New Books

There are an extraordinary number of great books coming out this summer, and I've been picking them up much faster than I can read. The queue already has bloated to include:

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
Descartes' Bones by Russell Shorto
Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay

R.I.P. Jose Saramago

I was really sad to hear that Jose Saramago passed away yesterday. I've had several of his novels sitting on my nightstand waiting to be read for some time now and am nearly through reading Death With Interruptions. I was drawn to his writing when I heard of his novel about Fernando Pessoa's heteronym Ricardo Reis, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis.

His style is often dense, but enjoyable, and I cannot wait to really dig in to the remainder of his works.