h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi there!
Just thought I'd say hello and welcome to H2G2. Why? Just cos I saw you online and liked the look of your name!
You a real life librarian or just like books? I'm waiting to see what's in those boxes once you've started unpacking.
There'll be all sorts of people along soon to help you find your way around so I'll just drop off a and and leave you to settle in. Have fun
MC

Thanks for the warm welcome! No, I'm not a librarian in real life (RL); I work as a technician in a doctor's office. However, I do LOVE books and am currently an English major at a university. My personal library is quite large. Of course, I don't think it's large enough, but visitors to my home are usually impressed! It might be a while before I unpack as there are only five weeks left of the semester so it is getting to crunch time with the studying. Keep checking back though!

In the meantime, I'll probably be getting used to tooling around the Guide for a bit. Although I'm brand new here as a registered researcher as of the wee hours of Sunday morning (the 7th of April), I have been checking in with the Guide every so often. It's changed a lot since I was last here (probably two years ago!).

Back to the homework!

G'day and Namaste,
Reika

Hello Reika! Books are cool, what authors do you like?

Well plato....what makes you think eres perdedor?

Let's see....books?! authors?! I literally read everything. Recently I've been getting into non-fiction stuff. This is what is currently on my nightstand in various stages of completion: Hildegard of Bingen-A Visionary Life (she's a Catholic saint); Alchemy (a history of the pursuit for turning lead into gold); China-An Introduction; Zen and Japanese Culture; A Practical Guide to Buddhist Meditation; Cultural Literacy.

This is what I have waiting in the wings for when this semester is over (I'm an English major): Acorna's World, by Anne McCaffrey; The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan; My Dream of You, by Nuala O'Faolain; Inheritance, by Indira Ganesan; The Self-Aware Universe, by Amit Goswami, Ph.D.

Of course there's more waiting on the shelves too! Sci-fi is my first love. I have a lot of Alan Dean Foster, Isaac Asimov, Robert Aspirin, Piers Anthony, Elizabeth Scarborough, R. A. MacAvoy, and Patricia McKillip. There are a lot of other books by quite a variety of authors. I have absolutely everything written by Anne McCaffrey (including the drama fiction) and my ultimate favorite, Jo Clayton.

Is this enough to start with?

G'day and Namaste,
Reika

Wow. Just wow. Read Dante? Paradice Lost?

Yes, to both. Absolutely required reading at some point or another when you are an English major. I did like both and hope to someday pick them up again. They are in my collection as well. I have been collecting "classics" (again, an absolute must for English majors to use as references in the middle of the night when writing that research paper that should have been started weeks ago!) for some time now. I tend to frequent used book shops and thrift stores as much as I can. My favorite store closed last year--paperbacks were only 10 cents! Sigh....as far as Paradise Lost....well, that will have to be revisited when I no longer have to read 10 books per semester per class!

G'day and Namaste,
Reika

I've only read each once... a friend and I are literary fans, especially in the areas of older works.

Me thinks I recognize Reika from the before time! Just a suspicion but in three years I have only remembered one member in the past using the blessing Namaste. Of course, 800,000 others use it too, but not on h2g2. Literature: ah, my first true love. "Dull sublunerly lovers love/whose soul is sense/ cannot admit absence/for it doth remove those things which elemented it." I was *this* far from an MA in Literature when I decided History might provide better subject material for my poetry. Oddly, now I spend much more time teaching history than writing poems. I love both so it comes out even.

"Your eyes have sent their arrows into my heart." I am a bit weak on the classics, an "albatrocity" (groan, sorry) on my part. I try to read 200 pages a day but some new duties {ACE) have slowed me down a bit. How many volumes in your library? I am fortunate: as faculty member at a major University I have "virtual" access to any volume I want. An awesome privledge and it means I do not have to buy so many books (but I do: as Prospero says take his books to destroy the man. I am so very weak on Shakespere).

Careful of your back moving those boxex of books! Micheal Mole ACE

How many volumes in my library? Whew....just finished counting (I actually counted; no one asked before and I was curious),and the grand total is.....1072! About 100 of them are reference books of various kinds: dictionaries and thesaurus's of English, foreign language dictionaries, guides to literary theory, a small atlas, usage guides, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, etc, etc.

I would say that I have read at least half of the books on my shelves at least twice and some of them more than that. I do read quite a lot. Of course, during the semester my reading is a bit truncated, and I usually keep it to a book a week or so. During the summer, I may read up to three or four books a week, if they are fiction. Non-fiction takes a lot longer. Say, anywhere from two weeks on up. It took me six months to read a book on discoveries in theoretical physics. Fascinating subject but pretty heavy going; you actually have to think about it! I used to be a biology major so I'm still quite fascinated by books about science.

In the world of the classics, I would say that Shakespeare is my favorite. Of his 36 plays, I have seen or read 19 of them. One of the biggest trips I take during the summer is to the local Shakespeare festival. There is nothing like seeing the plays performed live!

Of the Shakespearean sonnets, the following is my favorite: Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments; love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds,/Or bends with the remover to remove./O no, it is an ever-fixed mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken;/Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken./Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending sickle's compass come;/Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/But bears it out even to the edge of doom./If this be error and upon me proved,/I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Say, Michael Mole, what period or person in history is your favorite?

G'day and Namaste,
Reika

Say, I just finished reading the House Rules (and related links) and it is a tad creepy. As we would say here in the U.S.--Big Brother.

Reika

Wow... i say soy un perdedor because it's a line to cool song by Beck... "loser" ... i actually used to be a loser but i don't think of myself as one now...

oh and moderators suck...

Yipes! How to respond? 1) Jeff Beck yea! Have you heard the stuff he did with Rod Stewart before Rod went "mod"? 2) everyone knows how I feel about moderators 3) Holy Moses Reika! Over a thousand volumes! At home I keep about 600 voumes at home (sorry, too lazy to count them all, plus many are historical phamphlets: do they count?) and maybe 200 in my office. As I said, since I have recourse to the library, which will order any book I wish, I am trying not to collect as many books (but I do).

4) Love the Shakespere poem. Reminds me of Brownings: "Come grow old with me/the best is yet to be/ the last of life for which the first was made." (not sure if exact--quotation book out of reach)

5) My field of specialty is US Foreign Relations With the USSR, with a sub-specialty in Asian History (India, China, Japan, Middle East). Little did I know when I wrote my Masters Thesis that the USSR would be gone a few years after I finished. Thats history: also in a way made my field obsolete since the Cold War is over (I'm glad, I'm glad). Little call for USSR history but a lot for Russian history which I also teach. Sadly, I never mastered any of the foreign languages I would need to finish my PhD. As long as I can teach I am happy.

6) plato, glad you realise you are not a loser: the only losers are those who chose to be. So, you never were one.

7) I gotta go! Much to get done! Good to talk with both of you.

Micheal Jay Mole ACE