Top 7 Warning Signs In a Man's Bookshelf:
— Jess McHugh (@MchughJess) August 24, 2020
1. A Dog-eared copy of Infinite Jest
2. Too Much Hemingway
3. Any amount of Bukowski
4. AYN. RAND.
5. Goethe
6. "Lolita is my favorite book."
7. "'Fathers and Sons' Is my favorite book."
I'm sure many of you can write better "Top 7 Warning Signs In a Man's Bookshelf" lists!
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122 comments:
While we're at it, we could list "Top 7 Warning Signs In a Woman's Bookshelf". Give me a little time and I could remember what books my first wife had on her nightstand.
Now will someone write about how a male is about to have a "basic instinct" relationship by reading the contents of he medicine cabinet and make-up kit?
Any book by the Clintons, the Obamas or Oprah on a man’s shelf and he has to have gender reassignment surgery paid for by Soros or one of his minions.
I have read Ayn Rand and To BUILD A CASTLE - Bukovsky's landmark memoir of his years as a political prisoner, fighting from within, Vladimir bukovsky
did the tweet spell his name right?
I would recommend both to one and all.
That’s not a bad list if that’s your criteria.
What's a bookshelf?
The real warning sign is looking at the bookshelves for warning signs.
I did my downsize about two years ago, so my bookshelves are drastically different. Same person, though.
Dagny Taggart is my hero. I know I'm on the outs.
But really... we can't even safely seen to read *Goethe* now?
Hate all the things!
If a man has actual dead-tree books on more than one slim shelf, run away. He's a pack rat who promises a life of clutter and hoarding.
Mine would definitely include "White Fragility" (if you feel you must read it in order to understand the banal outer ring of hell we're inhabiting, sure, do that, but for gosh sakes get it from the library - don't give that impossibly silly woman your money), "The Anarchist's Cookbook" (ahem, my ex-husband had that), probably any of the LOTR books (sorry, fans including my dad, they're just not my cup of tea)...
Our bookshelves include very little from the past two decades. Mostly required reading from the kids' schools, saved so that we wouldn't have to re-purchase for the upcoming kids. And coffee table books gifted by our parents. But I do have some very tattered Heinlein juvies, a bunch of Tom Robbins from when my husband was going through one of the oddest phases I've seen him go through, and a little grouping of nonfiction of the ilk of "Moonwalking With Einstein."
My Kindle is all over the board, including some real lemons that I just haven't deleted.
Top 10 Warning signs on a man's bookshelf:
1. Kegel Exercises for Men
2. The Guy’s Guide to Feminism
3. A dog-eared copy of “Das Kapital”
4. ROD. MCKUEN.
5. A Hipster’s Guide to Des Moines
6. My favorite book is “White Fragility”
7. My favorite book is “Mein Kamph”
No one is Lazlo but Lazlo. -CP
1. A Confederacy of Dunces
2. Anything by Deepak Chopra
3. A dogeared copy of Earth in the Balance
4. Silent Spring
5. It takes a village
6. Fifty Shades of Grey
7. Any more than two by either Hunter S. Thompson or Jerzy Kosiński
Any technique that shortens search time and lowers search costs is all to the good. We all want to be rid of incompatible people as soon as possible. Impressive that Jess McHugh has so many potential partners that she can immediately eliminate such a large sub-population of heterosexual men. Also impressive that she makes these judgments without regard to race, economic status, looks, personality, or physical strength. This is a woman on the way to either a very happy or very sad life.
i think it's Charles Bukowski that's intended. mansplainer
I have first editions of both Infinite Jest and Atlas Shrugged. Neither signed, alas.
Narayanan said...
I have read Ayn Rand and To BUILD A CASTLE - Bukovsky's landmark memoir of his years as a political prisoner, fighting from within, Vladimir bukovsky
did the tweet spell his name right?
Yes it did, but she's talking about Charles Bukowski, the American poet, novelist, and drunk.
Just for the record. A man does not have a copy of 'Infinite Jest' on his bookshelf, dog-eared or not. And any woman afraid of Ayn Rand is afraid of thinking. Probably not someone I'd see, after tonight.
We could.
But why would we?
I am so fucked. Thank God I’m Married.
I have a copy of Infinite Jest on my bookshelf. I like his non-fiction better, by a lot.
Actually, I would have figured the number of books he'd read in John Norman's Gor series would have been included.
I have a copy of Infinite Jest on my bookshelf. I like his non-fiction better, by a lot.
Avoid anyone who is afraid of ideas.
Any man who has read Hemingway, Bukowsky, and David Foster Wallace, is someone worth conversing with.
Almost nobody reads Goethe. That's a stupid addition to the list. Surely it was included merely to brag about being so well-read as to have an opinion on Goethe at all.
Catch-22
Death in the Afternoon
Hugh Thomas' Conquest
Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence
and of course
Clifford Ashley's Book of Knots
What does two shelves of Derrida and four shelves of Coleridge mean. Lots of French poetry in translation. A shelf of Wittgenstein. No Ayn Rand.
There are no warning signs in bookshelves. The very notion is a bit demented.
I've got about 75 l.f. of my own books; I'm not counting my wife's, which are fewer and of no interest to a man.
I guess I pass the test, since nothing on JMc's list can be found among them.
Narr
Pale Fire's my fave, though Lolita is good too
If I see a dog-eared copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on a person's bookshelf, I know we probably can't be friends.
Narr
Especially if they suggest I should read it
I got about one hundred pages into Gravity's Rainbow before I gave up. Well, I didn't actually give up. The book remained on the bookshelf for a number of years before it got Goodwilled. It just sat on the bookshelf reproaching me.....I'm currently reading Melbourne by Lord David Cecil. Melbourne was the British PM who was married to Lady Caroline Lamb. Caroline Lamb openly cheated on him with Lord Byron and Bulwer-Lyton. She had a lot of range in her favored writers. Melbourne was a model of forbearance and forgiveness during the marriage.....I picked up the book because the blurb on the cover said that it was JFK's favorite book. You can't judge a book by its cover or a man by his favorite book.
Huh. What's the beef with "Fathers and Sons"? (The title??) I just read it last month and it seems pretty innocuous.
on the other hand, if I met someone who had Nabokov's "The Gift" (or any of his Russian novels) on her shelf, I would be enormously intrigued.
Post Office is funny
A man with a collection of books is already better than average.
Kate said...
If a man has actual dead-tree books on more than one slim shelf, run away. He's a pack rat who promises a life of clutter and hoarding.
That's me. I think I have 7 bookcases now, all full. I have given away another dozen.
The moral authority women once held was lost once it became evident they were just repeating the daily tropes.
We have Big Brother and no need for Big Sister.
"Any book by the Clintons, the Obamas or Oprah on a man’s shelf and he has to have gender reassignment surgery paid for by Soros or one of his minions."
Not at all. The State of Oregon will be happy to have your balls whacked off at taxpayer expense. Which is why there are so many batshit crazy psycho trannies in Portland.
Top warning sign in a a significant other:
They have an Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook account and care about the number of followers they have.
1. The Game
2. A dog-eared copy of The Game
etc.
The book is funny but the audio book is even funnier.
Catch-22 is also funny.
What the fuck?
“If a man has actual dead-tree books on more than one slim shelf, run away. He's a pack rat who promises a life of clutter and hoarding.”
Me! Me! Me!
She was warned. When we first got together, over 20 years ago, I had stacks and stacks of books everywhere. I finally got enough bookshelves at our last house - 4x 7’ bookcases for hardbacks, law, engineering, science, etc. And 208’ (13x16’) of shelving in the garage for my sci fi/fantasy Paperback collection. Then, after 3 1/2 years there, we moved. The 7’ tall oak bookcases are now split between the new den and my office. May need another one - I was supposed to inherit my parents’ classical collection, and my 4th brother (who got their house) has been holding them for me. The SciFi/Fantasy bookshelves will go up a lot faster this time, since I have most of the hardware already AND the books are all sorted now.
But she is almost as bad. I have a lot of dress clothes. She has a lot more. Bought marble topped furniture for the last house for the master bedroom. Started with a huge dresser. Then several months later did a deal with her that I would buy the matching chest of drawers, if I got half the drawers. I wasn’t fast enough. She told me that if you snooze, you lose. I lost. The two nightstands are full of her cloths too. She also has boxes and boxes of photo albums, vinyl records, DVDs, etc, that we never got put away before. We have 10’ ceilings upstairs, and I plan to put in cabinets in all of the closets just for our excess stuff.
We have warned our kids that they are the ones who have to clean up after their hoarder parents when we are gone. We have filled two houses, and I am building a garage this year that should ultimately give me another 1k sq ft of storage.
I am not clear here: exactly WHAT are these titles a warning sign of? That this person reads and has some ideas?
I have Goethe on my bookshelves. In the original German.
I have a whole section devoted to German literature.
Another small section to Hemingway. Because really, he didn't write that many books. And they're all short.
I remember one of the last American white girls I dated. She said she loved to read. She had not read any Shakespeare.
Why Fathers and Sons? (See that question already appears, but not the answer.)
PS Michael K: Something to admire you for. (I have never lived in a big enough place for that.)
As for books, a shelf that contains more than 1 with a title that starts, "Killing . . . "
Goethe? Who reads him anymore? "Too much Hemingway" what does that mean? "Sun also rises" is OK, But "Green Hills of Africa" is Verboten?
Lolita as his favorite book? Yeah, I wouldn't spend too much time around him. Women should also avoid men who read John Scalzi or "too much" Truman Capote, or Gore Vidal.
Ditto with Norman Mailer or Hunter S. Thompson.
What's wrong with Goethe? The Sorrows of Young Werther still gets the occasional ripoff. Ernst Jünger would make me curious, Herman Hesse would be worrisome, Sartre would be a siren with flashing red lights.
From looking at all the Zoom screencaps, it seems the real value of physical books is to be seen by others.
BTW, the list I posted above is a warning to others that, wow! this person can't be serious!
After a stay in the emergency room a couple years ago when thing were touch-and-go, and I nearly went, I decided to divest of most of my books. I ended up donating about 4000 to friends and clubs that could use them, keeping only about 1000 for my personal collection (Religious Apologetics; History, English Lit, Reference Books, Architecture and Building Codes, various programming languages, SF/F). I'm an eclectic reader at about 100 pages-per-hour. I only keep the cookbooks for the pictures. -CP
#1: No books
#2: Zip tie handcuffs
#3: “Herstory”
What a weird list. As somebody has already pointed out, there isn't that much Hemingway to be had; if your copy of Infinite Jest isn't dog eared, you read it the wrong way; and I think somebody has never read Lolita, or missed the point. Goethe? Really?
Dear Jupiter
I, shamefully, did not realize Oregon approved of taxpayer expensed surgical mutilation.
If he can read the books on his shelves he is a keeper.
cold pizza writes: 3. A dog-eared copy of “Das Kapital”
There's no such thing as a dog-eared copy of "Das Kapital". Even diehard, drooling commies will only attempt to read it once, and most of them won't finish it. Too much like work -- as in mindless, pointless drudgery. Reading Marx is like sorting carpet tacks. If Zeus wanted to really fuck with Sisyphus he'd have replaced that silly boulder rolling task with reading every last word of "Das Kapital".
The biggest warning sign is that he has books. That only means he will eventually be canceled.
Am I the only one who thinks the Turgenev novel is on the list because of its name, and doubts she has read it?
I read Pynchon through Gravity's Rainbow, and said uncle.
Catch-22 has been on my reread list for a while.
Narr
My personal library is 90% history, but that's not all I read
Funny how no commie books are listed. Huh.
We have warned our kids that they are the ones who have to clean up after their hoarder parents when we are gone. We have filled two houses, and I am building a garage this year that should ultimately give me another 1k sq ft of storage.
They will have the stuff on Craig's List a week after the funeral. I'm resigned to that. I have furniture that has been in my family 150 years. Nobody wants it. I have a Seth Thomas clock I rescued from a trash can when I was 10. Someone had undoubtedly died and the family was throwing things away. The clock works perfectly and must be 150 years old. When my grand kids come for a short visit Friday, I will have to stop it as they cannot abide the chimes.
Lots of treasures that will not last long after we go.
readering, we have 2k sq ft on one level. No stairs. Tile floors for the dog. Barely enough room for the book cases.
Narr
My personal library is 90% history, but that's not all I read
Pretty much mine, too. I read fiction but almost all is on Kindle where I have another 200 books.
Lots of Civil War and WWI history. I have Freeman's biography of Lee and "Lee's Lieutenants."
Some are just collectables, like an 1864 edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Also all volumes of Pepy's Diary. I used to keep it at my bedside table.
When we lived in DC, one of the fun things to do was to go on house tours in Georgetown, Cleveland Park, Old Town, etc., and look at the books on display. Usually there'd be a bunch of about-10-years-old books about politics and/or by political figures, and if the book was left out on a desk or table it would be autographed to the homeowner. None of these books looked particularly worn by heavy use.
What's wrong with Ayn Rand?
And, dbp: A Confederacy of Dunces is hilarious.
If you looked closely in my bookshelves you'd find a paperback of The Brothers Karamozov with a bookmark at p. 86. That's as far as I was able to get a year ago when I tried to read that book again (I read it when I was in high school, but I liked the movie better).
"I did my downsize about two years ago..."
When I downsized I dropped about a dozen boxes at the local library. It had occurred to me that one book was probably the most commonly donated book because (1) everybody had read it in hardback; and, (2) it didn't form really deep personal connections with readers. The librarian agreed that they had about ten donated copies at that moment. Any idea what it was?
Anybody want a 1913 Britanncia? Nice leather binding.Unfortunately, I'm similar to Mr Hayden. or Road and Track from 1968?
What about two shelves all of Samuel Elliott Morrison’s 24 volume History of the United States Navy Operations in World War Two. That should scare most women off.
Rory,
That's a hard one, because there are so many deserving books that just need to languish in a dark corner somewhere:
"Dreams of my Father" B. Obama
"Art of the Deal" D. Trump
Everything a ghost writer wrote for Hillary Clinton
If you're sensing a trend....
"The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up" M. Kondo
C'mon, man. You're gonna need to give a better hint than "I donated a book..."
-CP
DavidUW said...
I have Goethe on my bookshelves. In the original German.
---------============
hopefully not in the original Gothic script/print/font?
The worst thing a woman could see on a man's bookshelf?
Signed, leather bound copies of John Norman's Gor series. With a set of John Ringo's Ghost books next to them.
I'm shocked Jordan Peterson wasn't mentioned by the Twitter poster.
Inasmuch I can't read a book more than once, in oppo to Althouse, I have no bookshelf. However, my local library has several hundred books filling their bookshelves at no taxpayer cost.
To be fair, I'm sure that Jess McHugh's twitter feed serves as an effective warning sign for many, too. To each his/her/zir own.
Her Twitter handle reminds me of a wonderful old Simpsons gag.
ngtrains asks: Anybody want a 1913 Britanncia?
I have the 1771 edition in three volumes. Half the esses look like effs, which makes for some unintended humor.
My bookshelf has a lotta Tom Wolfe, Tom Sowell, William Manchester, Larry McMurtry, Elmore Leonard, Leon Uris, and a lotta other stuff.
Dagny Taggart is my hero. I know I'm on the outs.
I still love you. All alone. With a broken down train.
Any idea what it was?
Jonathan Livingston Seagull?
Sheeit. One book: Deliverance by James Dickey.
"Madness and Civilization" by Foucault
"Meditations" by Descartes
"Prolegomina to any Future Metaphysics" by Kant
"Metamorphosis" by Kafka
"The Guide for the Perplexed" by Maimonides
"Corpus Medicorum Graecorum" by Galen
"The Interpretation of Dreams" by Freud
If male or female and they have 50 Shades of Gray or sequels in book or movie form- turn around and leave.
Query: Why is cocaine trending #1 on twitter?
Top 7 Warning Signs In a Man's Bookshelf:
1) Lack of books.
2) Preponderance of self-help.
3) Exclusively books of copyright within the last thirty years.
4) No significant collection of books on a single subject.
5) Too many books on a single subject that is idiotic.
6) Great number of children's books for a man with no children.
7) Number of self-published books written by the man himself.
Perhaps collect enough variety, and you can bequeath some tiny town its first library.
Michael K said:
" Also all volumes of Pepy's Diary. I used to keep it at my bedside table."
I love Samuel Pepys, reading his diary( laughing out loud many times), and reading about him. Great fun reading the 3-volume "life of Samuel Pepys" by historian Arthur Bryant https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-Bryant
I have the Diary , but it's much easier on my eyes(nowadays)to just pick any day of the diary, on the internet.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/
Jerome Tuccille It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand
Apparently a long-after revised edition, which is uaually a disappointment, but the original was great in the 70s.
Infinite Jest is not dog-eared. A dictionary lying next to it is dog-eared
1. What Happened — Hillary Clinton
2. A Higher Loyalty — James Comey
3. Too Much and Never Enough — Mary Trump
4. The Room Where It Happened — John Bolton
5. A Warning — Anonymous
6. Fire and Fury — Michael Wolf
7. The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
I saw the humor in A Confederacy of Dunces, but it seemed really dated--like watching one of those zany movies from the 1960's. If I can find it, maybe I'll give it another try now that our daughter is going to school in New Orleans. Death in the afternoon though...I was wandering the stacks looking for material for a term paper and came across this work. I'd heard of it but didn't really know much about it. I read the whole thing, standing there in the Holland Library (WSU). Now, maybe some of why it was so compelling was that it was way more compelling than whatever I was researching, in the same way that doing the dishes is a relief when you ought to be doing something more taxing...
The Perfect Storm was the donated book I had in mind.
Yes, I know. All of the cool kids hate Ayn Rand. And, all they need to do is say those two words, knowingly, and be done with the "discussion". OK, sometimes they add such deep lit-crit nuggets as "trashy" or "adolescent" to bolster their point. Or they point out that she depicted rough sex with some ambiguity as proof that her ideas are not worthy of examination. Or, they repeat what they have heard about her personality to disqualify her before even reading a word.
But really, they are simply made fundamentally uncomfortable by her ideas. These ideas challenge their very core - the core that has been inculcated by parents, teachers, clerics, and politicians from the day they could understand language. They cannot integrate her philosophy with their own, and the cognitive dissonance does not lead them to question or even consider, but to shut down. This is when they choose to name-call instead of argue.
I am not one of the cool kids.
While we're at it, we could list "Top 7 Warning Signs In a Woman's Bookshelf". Give me a little time and I could remember what books my first wife had on her nightstand.
1) The Harry Potter series
Up until a few decades ago, my bookcases and shelves were awash with all sorts of titles: the entire Ellery Queen series for one. I sold my comic collection and downsized. I now have my books on comics history, the Marx Bros., and recovery titles. And a few old favorites. Not many. A few copies of the books I've written and published but out of sight of visitors and my 400 page tribute to my father. A woman, if I let her, would have better luck perusing my Audible collection: James Burke, John Sandford, Jordan Peterson, some classics, Victor Davis Hanson and the like.
THEOLDMAN
But for show: Fifty Shades of Grey, a pair of handcuffs and some flexible rope. Now THAT'S a bookcase worth discussing.
Hey, no worries for most millennials. The only books they seem to have read are Harry Potter ones. A few might have read "A Handmaid's Tale" but more have watched it on TV. "White Fragility" might adorn millennial coffee tables, but given the sheer crappiness of the excerpts I've read, I suspect it serves the same purpose as the BLM sign on the front lawn. "I'm a GOOD white person!"
When I've tried to talk to millennials and Zoomers about books, the conversation turns quickly to what they've watched on Netflix.
Here's your warning: The left wants a repeat of Rand's We The Living.
So all I have to do to protect myself from mental case skanks is show them my bookshelf? Cool.
"Sheeit. One book: Deliverance by James Dickey.”
That’s the best “What I did on my summer vacation” book ever written.
“If a man has actual dead-tree books on more than one slim shelf, run away. He's a pack rat who promises a life of clutter and hoarding.”
What bullshit. But sure, run away. Please.
This may be a bit out of date, but here goes:
1. Jonathan Livingston Seagull
2. Trout Fishing in America
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
4. Siddhartha
5. The Prophet
6. Love Story
7. Slaughterhouse Five
I was watching a western and the rancher was sitting at his roll top desk with the pigeon holes full of papers and envelopes and I thought that that is what once passed for a computer. Add a telephone and it’s complete. The nice thing about dead tree is that while you are reading them, they don’t drag you onto the internet to see what kind of foolishness somebody wrote now. Plus I just like them better.
Reading collected stories of Henry James right now, I highly recommend A Landscape Painter as a short story, BTW. The stories were written on dead tree to be read on dead tree. Just like Olympia is a painting intended to be viewed in person, not in a tiny rectangle on your phone.
Rory - another reason “The Perfect Storm” gets read just once and then donated could be the reason I only read it once: the description of those men drowing in an enclosed space, where the air pocket get smaller and smaller, and what happens to you when you drown, was absolute nightmare fuel.
Great book though.
I don't need 10.
Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake.
Woke women and their earlier feminist incarnations don’t like Hemingway. I think the fact that so many women hate his work sort of validates it for me. It was written by a man about what it is like to be a man, isn’t that what authenticity is about? You know who else is a pretty good writer nobody need apologize for liking? Louis L’Amour.
There are many great writers out there who worked on dead tree. Supposedly Lord Byron composed with a quill on paper using his girlfriend’s ass for a desk. It’s best read that way too, aloud, the poem laying on your girlfriend's ass.
Quite a number of ebooks I've bought from Amazon have been so badly formatted that they are almost unreadable [one recently was Mirabeau and the French Revolution by Charles Warwick--an excellent read, otherwise and I recommend it--in 'dead tree' form].
Lots of hate for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on here.
I took away three key points from it 40 years ago.
The lesson about using used beer can material for shims because it works, vs his friend who was annoyed it was not an expensive part for his expensive BMW bike. We run into this divide between an engineering problem-solving mindset vs. whatever you call those other people, ALL the time.
Ultimately we should pursue what is good vs what is true. Pursue both, of course, but prioritize on what is good. Great life advice. You need to nourish your soul, not just your brain.
Also his point about de-cluttering your brain when you get stuck by removing obstacles is very useful too — when you’re mentally blocked from moving forward on anything, reduce the scope until it gets easier. If you have a giant list of stuff to do, make the list and then randomly pick one thing and just do it, then the rest of the list gets easier automatically because you removed the obstacle of deciding.
"e the reason I only read it once: the description of those men drowing in an enclosed space, where the air pocket get smaller...”
I have never seen True Grit beyond the point where Little Blackie dies, and I only watch it again when I forget that Little Blackie dies near the end.
To read these comments, you would think I only read westerns, I read whatever I find interesting. Right now I am reading the historical accounts of the Bronze Age as related in the Bible, the description of Goliath’s armor is worth the reading of the story, this is after working through The Iliad and The Odyssey. I am betting if she saw that I have a Bible in a prominent place on my bookshelf, she would skedaddle too.
Here is a warning ladies, if you get involved with a man who loves books, you are going to have to entertain yourself much of the time.
Here is a warning ladies, if you get involved with a man who loves books, you are going to have to entertain yourself much of the time.
Fortunately, my husband and I both loved books. Not always the same books--he gravitated toward spy novels and mysteries and I preferred history. But we each were always involved in a book.
I didn't hate Z&TAMM (Pirsig), I just found it boring and not relevant to anything that interests me.
The guys (I've never met a woman who has read it, or admits to it) who press it on me are usually not great readers, but make exceptions for manly-sounding titles and topics.
We liberrians have a saying: A book for every reader, a reader for every book.
Narr
May a hundred flowers bloom
"What about two shelves all of Samuel Elliott Morrison’s 24 volume History of the United States Navy Operations in World War Two. That should scare most women off."
It didn't scare my wife off. Fortunately, she's quite self-contained and is perfectly happy with my spending time surfing the net, or curling up for an hour with "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire". She's only unhappy when I try to talk to her about it.
I've been wanting to cut down on my library, but which books to get rid of. I start out with the firm intention of getting rid of 100, then find reasons why I should keep them, and end up donating zero.
At some point in my old age, I'll start donating books in earnest because, if I read 52 books a year and I'm 80, what's the point of 1,000 books? I'll probably only be able to re-read 520 of them. That's if I live to 90.
I have NONE of those. I do have a lot of books, though.
"The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire"
Rcocean, is that Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or another book?
"Lolita is my favorite book" sounds Biden-ish.
I have Rand, Hemingway and Goethe in my library. I understand why Rand would be a warning sign (Galt forbid people should get the crazy idea that their lives and property belong to themselves and not to Holy State), and possibly Hemingway (the party line keeps changing on Papa); but Goethe?
"What about two shelves all of Samuel Elliott Morrison’s 24 volume History of the United States Navy Operations in World War Two. That should scare most women off."
Anybody getting rid of that, I want it please. Also anyone with a collection of the Naval Chronicle.
I suspect that these days, with the Rise of the Dumbest Generation, anyone having a lot of books is seen as eccentric, or maybe a crazy hoarder.
"They will have the stuff on Craig's List a week after the funeral. I'm resigned to that. I have furniture that has been in my family 150 years. Nobody wants it. I have a Seth Thomas clock I rescued from a trash can when I was 10. Someone had undoubtedly died and the family was throwing things away. The clock works perfectly and must be 150 years old. When my grand kids come for a short visit Friday, I will have to stop it as they cannot abide the chimes."
May I have it, PLEASE? (This is a serious request.) I will pay for shipping.
Also ... if you are serious about the 1913 Britannica, I will take that, too.
There was no 1913 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. What's referenced is probably the single volume Yearbook.
The 1911 Eleventh Edition EB is known as the scholar's edition, and the title is apt. I find
the handy-volume set I inherited from my grandparents endlessly fascinating, and the three volume supplement issued as the Twelfth Edition in 1922 (guess why) likewise.
Narr
Opa bought them to show off his immigrant success--there's no evidence he ever used them
I still can’t get over Goethe, the man was a fucking genius. David Foster Wallace had some serious flashes of brilliance in that sometime inane book too.
Re: Seth Thomas clock.
If your progeny are so nekulturny as to turn up their noses at it, sell it yourself and use the money to splurge on something decadent, useless, or consumable. If they are exceedingly lucky, there might even be a bottle or two of the good stuff left in the case when the time comes (in which event your will should make it clear that it should be poured on your grave, or poured overboard as your ashes are scattered: they did not wantit in one form, so they should not get it in another.)
"Funny how no commie books are listed. Huh."
What are "commie books?"
That dude's been in my house...
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