Miss Thing

I noticed in college that the more books I had in my dorm room, the fewer questions visitors would ask me about literature. So, in the never-ending quest to cover up my intellectual inadequacies, I keep lots and lots of books around.

Since I get far fewer visitors at home than I do on my site, I post things like All The Books I’ve Finished Since 1989 and Books On My Nightstand (most of which have not been there since 1989, although I still use the alarm clock I got from a girlfriend back in 1994) to keep people from asking about my literary interests.

This weekend, I discovered yet another great way of keeping any of you from asking me about my literary interests! It’s a website called LibraryThing and I just used it to upload a complete list of all the books I own.

I already have a database of all the books in my library downstairs (we need to figure out more shelf space, so we can unpack more of Amy’s books), thanks to the fantastic Delicious Library program, which uses my computer’s camera to scan the bar codes of my books and search them out on Amazon. LibraryThing is capable of using DL’s export file to reconstitute that library on the website.

LibraryThing looks to be a neat type of social networking site. It’s not exactly a Myspace for nerds, but it looks to be a pretty neat tool for finding other people who’ve read the same obscure books you have.

Anyway, go check out the site (and my library). It’s free to upload as many as 200 books in year, or $10/year or $25/lifetime for unlimited uploading. I sprung for the lifetime membership because my geekiness is worth it. For fun, click on the “Books In My Library” item in the sidebar on the right side of this page; it’ll open a random selection of five books from my library.

Just don’t ask me which ones I’ve read.