To Read Piles

[jennythe_reader]

How big is yours?
Where do you keep it?
How many books by our beloved PTB are in it?

Mine is 16 novels, plus two books of embroidery patterns that I need to look through to pick my next project.
It lives on my desk, next to my computer.  Mostly, this is because my nightstand is not sufficiently cat proof for a stack of 18 books.
At the moment I have New Amsterdam and War for the Oaks in the pile.  I also just finished A Companion to Wolves last night.

[ilande]

How big is yours?
Where do you keep it?
How many books by our beloved PTB are in it?

Refuses to answer on the basis that one should avoid incriminating oneself.   

[glinda_w]

Half a dozen books from the library right now. I've always read too fast... *wry*

[jeffy]

I'm reminded of an old Steven Wright joke that (if the internets are to be believed) went something like "I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world... perhaps you've seen it."

I recently started a list on GoodReads, but it's mostly just a pile of books I found in a recent lj discussion based on a panel at Denvention. Other than that I have a lot of unread books on the shelves waiting for the right mood and a mental list of authors I need to mop up one of these days. I don't have anything as orderly as an actual stack. No idea what I'll read next after the current book (Fragile Things).

[txanne]

Formerly on top of the bookshelf by the window. Currently all mixed up among the rest of my books. Sigh.

[Elizabeth Bear]

My to-read pile is actually a to-read shelf, and it's groaning. And I am failing to read it!

...in fairness, because I have been working, and now I get to read again. Apparently, my brain can read OR write, but not both.

[VCorvidae]

Right now, I'm working towards an accreditation, so my recreational reading is at a minimum. And what I do read that isn't studying seems to be of the anything-by-Sandra Boynton/Goodnight Moon/Sheep in a Jeep variety. Because my little boy LOVES books. He'll sit and 'read' his favorites out loud (he has a good number of them memorized).

We just introduced him to Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[hawkwing_lb]

There are, ah.

47 novels on the two fiction to-read shelves by my desk;
38 or so non-fiction on the two not-college non-fiction bookshelves, also by my desk;
13 non-Classic 'classic' works on one of the shelves by the end of my bed, counting the collected works of Shakespeare and Marlowe each as one book;
14 of the Greco-Roman classic authors; and
19 non-fiction books from my college course reading lists, these last two again, on shelves by my desk.

I may have missed a few. I've been collecting reading material whenever I was in funds for the last three years, and getting to it rather more slowly than I expected over that same period.

Looking at those numbers, they seem rather excessive now. But a month ago they were even higher.

[glinda_w]

...counting the collected works of Shakespeare and Marlowe each as one book;

Oooooh, Marlowe. Haven't read Marlowe. (Why on earth have I not read Marlowe??)(::opens library site in another tab:: ::places hold on The Complete Plays:: ) (not that I'll retain all that much of what I read, but still... )

14 of the Greco-Roman classic authors...

May I ask which ones? I've read a fair number (in translation; my Latin's gone from rusty to nearly nonexistent).

[Cherith]

I read constantly, so my to be read pile revolves a good deal.  I'm horrible at keeping track of what's in the pile though since I just stick them on the shelves and grab whatever looks good when I need something new.  New books are currently part of the double and triple stacking on the bookcases that are making even the heavy-duty case sag.

[hawkwing_lb]

14 of the Greco-Roman classic authors...

May I ask which ones? I've read a fair number (in translation; my Latin's gone from rusty to nearly nonexistent).

I only read them in translation myself: I'm working on my Greek and Latin, but they're nowhere up to reading the literature in the original.

Mostly Penguin editions: Xenophon, The Persian Expedition and A History of My Times; Plutarch, On Sparta, The Age of Alexander and Makers of Rome;  Arrian, Campaigns of Alexander; Pausanias, Guide to Greece Part I; Josephus The Jewish War and Antiquities; Livy, The Early History of Rome; Homer, Odyssey, a collected Hippocratic Writings and the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, the most recent edition. Technically the latter isn't exactly a Greco-Roman classic, but it comes from the same period and region, so.

I've read bits of some of them, of course, but I don't consider a book read until I've done the cover-to-cover thing.

Some of the others - all of Tacitus bar the Histories and On Oratory, Sallust, and Plutarch's Greek lives - I've already gone through, in aid of my courses; some of them I still haven't acquired. I keep saying I'll have to go into research when I'm done with my degree, because otherwise why do I have all these books?

[winterwind]

I'm in the middle of Georgette Heyer's Faro's Daughter. I also picked up one by her set in the Napoleonic wars (I'm a sucker.) I've also got a huge compendium of the Year's Best SF, including Bear's Hugo-winner. (I picked up all 3 at Dragon*Con.)

I've got the Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) on my shelf at home.

In the non-fiction section, I'm working on The Germans by Gordon A. Craig and The Dao of Taijiquan by Jou Tsung-hwa (my teacher's teacher.) I've got a printed list of books about WW1 and the late Victorian period in Europe (The Guns of August, for example) to check out from the library.

I also want to check out the last couple Dresden Files books from the library. (A friend gave me the first 2 for my birthday. Then I went to the library to find some Bull or Bear, and, well, Butcher is right next to them. And they didn't have any Bear! That needs fixing.) And I've got the new CJ Cherryh on my wishlist. I also want to track down some Liavek books.

Of course, since I'm taking an online class (in epidemiology. Yay?) I should have less time to read. But since I do my homework at my job, I have plenty of evening free time. (Which may change, because I have a job interview on Thursday, and if I get it, I'll actually have to do *work* at my job, which is completely different from the current circumstance. Bleah.)

[sleary]

I too have a shelf rather than a pile. (Also a book acquisition problem.) Includes Bone Dance, Finder, and Nevernever. I'm caught up on Bear and Monette except that I'm still halfway through The Bone Key, having misplaced it several weeks ago. Oh, and I have Holly Black's third faerie book around here somewhere.

Currently reading A Room of One's Own, because I somehow got a degree in English lit -- including a few courses on women specifically -- without having read it. No, I don't know how this is possible, and I think I'm going to track down my professors and beat them senseless.

[CJ]

Mine's an amorphous pile that frequently is subject to feline rearrangement.  Right now, I'm reading Ink and Steel, with Hell and Earth next in the stack, but what comes after that remains to be seen.  Lots of possibilities.  I don't count how many are in the queue. 

And that's just leisure reading!

[kvon]

One of the better things about LibraryThing for me is that I am very aware that there are 220 books in my unread piles and I really shouldn't stop at any more used book stores/library sales.  (Yeah, like that works.)  The most likely to be read next are on an overflowing shelf in the library.  They are also piled on the floor and in the computer room.  I have two Bears in there somewhere.  But I know exactly where to find them.

Yea, I got to decrease the pile by one, because I hadn't yet marked Territory down as read.