! That’s right! Library Thing has a page to share what people are saying about Library Thing. The best part? They have areas for quotes from sites (including Wendi’s Book Corner and a few others I’ll bet you’ll recognize), What Librarians are Saying, Prizes and Awards, Should It Be Illegal?, quotes from mainstream media, and even Tweets! So, take a peek and see what people are saying.

Questions: Were you aware that Library Thing had a Buzz page? Were you surprised by anything you saw or read on the Buzz page?

My answer: I had no idea this was on LibraryThing. I don’t find it the easiest site to find things on – except for of course cataloguing my books and finding book reviews, which are the two things I do most on the site. I tried to find it on my own but failed and had to get there from the link on Wendi’s blog.

Lo and behold there is a quote from me on there!

“I like being able to have an image of the book and other members’ listings and reviews. You can find photos of authors and suggestions for more reading. It’s easy to add in books as LibraryThing does all the work for you using data imported from booksellers and a long list of libraries.”

BooksPlease: Ramblings of a Book Worm

It’s about a third of the way down the page the last entry in a blue centre column called “Librarians say”, which is amazing – I’m not a librarian any more, although I used to be one! The link is to a Booking Through Thursday post on cataloguing I wrote nearly two years ago on my old blog on Blogger. I’m thrilled!

Here are the current memes available:

You and None Other. Books shared with exactly one member.
Dead or Alive? How many of your authors are dead?
Dead or Alive Comparison How do you stack up against others?
Male or Female? What gender are your authors?
Work Duplicates. Works you have more than one of.

Question: Do you visit the memes section often? Have you visited recently? Have you discovered anything that surprises you when you visit the memes for your library?

I don’t visit the memes section often and when I looked this morning there weren’t any real surprises. Apart from the “Male or Female? What gender are your authors?” I have 111 authors whose gender is “not set”. Oops, I don’t think rugby players like Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio and Bill Beaumont would be too happy with that!

In the “You and None Other” meme which means me and only one other person in LT (confuses me this section but that’s what it means) there are several books. I’m particularly interested in this one – Bradshaws ancient rock paintings of North-West Australia by Grahame L Walsh. This is a book that I inherited from my sister and although it is beautiful it is not really of much interest to me and I would like to sell it. Anyone interested please contact me for more details.

Most of us book bloggers like to write book reviews- if we don’t love to write book reviews- but here’s today’s question. When it comes to LT (and your blog), do you review every book you read? Do you just review Early Reviewers or ARCs? Do you review only if you like a book, or only if you feel like you have to? How soon after reading do you post your review? Do you post them other places- other social networking sites, Amazon, etc.?

I review most books that I read, although in the summer this year I came to a full stop with reviews, so there are several I read that have no reviews. One of the reasons for writing this blog was to write about the books I’ve read – I hesitate to call my posts reviews and some are only a few comments on points that have interested me or quotations that I want to remember. I’ve found that I remember a book much better if I’ve written about it, so I try to write something about each one.

I’ve only had a few books from the Early Reviwers Programme and have reviewed each of them. Sadly I didn’t receive the last one I snagged so I’m hoping the one I snagged in November will arrive soon.  I’m a little behind on reviews at the moment as I have three to do. I like to review books soon after I’ve finished them, but it’s not always possible. It helps if I’ve made notes as I read but sometimes I’m so caught up in the reading that I don’t manage it.  I’ll review a book whether I liked it or not, but as I’m quite picky about the books I choose there aren’t many that I actually dislike. I don’t finish reading books I dislike, unless it’s a review copy and then I try to write a balanced review saying what I liked, what I disliked and why.  

I’ve posted 17 reviews on LibraryThing – some are the full reviews and some are links to my reviews on this blog. I can’t decide which is better as it can be off-putting to leave LT to read a review on another blog. My local library has a facility on line to post reviews and I have posted one on there which is a shortened version of my blog post. I have also posted one review on Amazon a few years ago before I had my blog.

It took me a while to remember where I would find this information. I looked at nearly all the tabs on my LibraryThing page and finally found it under Zeitgeist. The most popular book is the book most people on LT own and it is Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (37,356). I have a few, not all of the Harry Potter books and thought I didn’t have this one as I didn’t recognise the title – but I do, although my copy is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I hadn’t realised that the American version had been renamed – I wonder why? Maybe someone can enlighten me?

It’s not my favourite book and I don’t think it’s one I’ll read again, but I did enjoy it and the film too.

 Blog Widgets. Do you use them? Do you have them on your blog? Do you know what I’m talking about? A blog widget is that list of books “From my LibraryThing” and such, that you’ll sometimes see on someone’s sidebar. If you use it, do all of your books show up or do you have it set to only show certain books? Do you have a search widget, which would allow your blog readers to search your library? Have you ever made a photomosaic of your book covers? You can find widgets and photomosaic information on the “Tools” tab in LibraryThing.

I don’t think I’d come across the word “widget” until I started blogging and it wasn’t at all clear to me just what a widget was. My dictionary defines it as “a gadget, or any small manufactured item or component”, and a gadget is, of course, a “small ingenious device; a what-d’you-call it”.  I rather like them – they are so clever and neat.

I have several on my blog including some from LibraryThing – the Early Reviewer logo and a link to my LT catalogue, plus the Random Books from my library, which I like as it changes each time you look at the blog. I also use a widget linking to the books tagged currently reading. I use other widgets too – I like the Quote of the Day and the WordPress Recent Comments ones in particular. As I’m not very technically minded sometimes I mess up my sidebar by adding widgets, somehow making some of them disappear – it’s something to do with the order they’re in I think, or maybe not I don’t really know.

I read about making a photomosaic a while ago on LT and thought I’d have a go at doing it, but it’s still a thought so far

Until today I’d never looked at the list so I’ve never used it at all. I haven’t read any of the books on the list, I don’t own any of them and I haven’t read anything by any of these authors. Some of them look interesting and certainly they have been reviewed many times on LT – is that the measure for their popularity or is it the number of people who’ve entered them in LT?

1. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – I’m tempted to read this.
2. Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron - cats and libraries, may give this one a go sometime.
3. Nation by Terry Pratchett - I think I should maybe have a look it this.
4. Brisingr by Christopher Paolini – I don’t think so.
5. Anathem by Neal Stephenson – this looks interesting but I’m not sure if I’m up to reading “esoteric mathematical philosophy” as one reviewer on LT describes it.
6. American Wife: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld – not for me!
7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer – I’ve written about my reluctance to read this one, but if I see it in the library I’ll have a look.
8. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski – described by one LT reviewer as a “coming-of-age novel, set in rural Wisconsin”, “ a modern take on Hamlet” – tempting.
9. Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland – I don’t think so.
10. Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) by Stephenie Meyer – definitely not for me.

I’ve found it interesting to look at this feature but I shan’t be using it to get ideas on what to read. Reading tastes are very subjective and I prefer to choose books by reading reviews, mainly on book bloggers’s blogs and by picking up books off the shelves in lbraries and bookshops. The books on this list have varying reviews on LT anyway – some good and some not so good.

You can find the link under Statistics, from either your home page or profile.

I have a few, mainly because I have old copies of these books (belonging to either my parents or D’s parents) and have bought newer editions or paperbacks. My favourite “multiple” is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. My copies are both hard backs.

This is one I bought in a box set, along with Emma and Sense and Sensibility.

 And this one belonged to my mother – she loved it too.

The others are:

• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte – I bought the paperback after the TV series was broadcast and not read either copy yet.
• Tom Jones- Henry Fielding 
• The Pilgrim’s Progress -John Bunyan
• Notre-Dame de Paris - Victor Hugo (paperback version) called The Hunchback of Notre Dame in my hardback copy – I’ve not read either book yet.
• Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
• Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Andersen – another old favourite
• The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – both copies unread.

I share books with quite a few of them. Ernest Hemingway and I share 71 books, but he did own 7,411 books. One of those 71 books is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, which we both share with Marilyn Monroe!

 I share 4 books with Marilyn Monroe, out of the 261 books of hers that were sold at auction after she died. The four books we have in common are:

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking glass and The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Ulysses by James Joyce

James Joyce and I share three books:

• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
• The Iliad of Homer by Homer
• The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

I’m thrilled that Leonardo Da Vinci and I share Dante’s Divine Comedy - I did start reading it, I must finish it one day! Oh, and Ernest Hemingway shares it too.

I don’t request every book that’s available, as I have so many books that I haven’t read yet and time is precious. So it’s been a real plus receiving the ones I’ve really fancied reading.

I haven’t take part in the LT discussion group, mainly because I don’t have the time. I haven’t even looked at it.

This week’s question: -LibraryThing’s Recently Added feature: do you look at it? Do you use it for ideas? Is there something listed there now that looks interesting to you? What have you added to your LT library recently?

My answer: I hardly ever look at Recently Added (the one that shows what other people have added, although strangely I do look at my own). I’ve looked this morning and my goodness it changes so quickly! Blink and you’ve missed it. One that did catch my eye is Warmth Disperses and Time Passes by Hans Christian Von Baeyer about the law of thermodynamics. It looks really interesting and I don’t normally say that about books on science. I’ve never even wondered why my cup of tea cools down, so I’m going to see if I can borrow a copy from my local library.

My own recent additions are a mixed bag. I’ve added:

• Harald First of the Vikings by Charles Young (lovely illustrations by Gertrude Hammond), published in 1911. I need to scan the cover as at present it’s showing the horrible brown default cover;
• England’s Last Glory:the Boys of 66 by David Miller, a book on football that’s really my husband’s but his books are in LT with mine; and
•  Walking In the Wild: over 50 Celtic Walks in Devon, Wales and the Hebridean Isles by Brian Carter. This is not just a book of walks, but is also autobiographical and “a quest for Celtic connections from South Devon, and Dartmoor, through Welsh-speaking Wales to the Hebridean Isle of Mull off the West Coast of Scotland” (quote from the back cover). It has beautiful black and white sketches of places and wildlife as well as line drawings of the walks.

I quite like it when I add books to LibraryThing and see that I’m the only person who owns copies. It’s almost as though I’m keeping the books alive.