"All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. . . With each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not." (125)
I have to say I mostly agree with this. My book collection does come pretty close to communicating who I am as a person. To get the full picture, you'd need to see what I've been listening to on my iPod and check out the athletic/outdoor gear in my closet. But the books get you most of the way there. Here's a small sampling of what's on my shelves:
- Almost everything by Neil Gaiman, prose and graphic novel, including the coplete Sandman collection
- Alan Moore's Watchmen, Promethea, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and others)
- The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (red leather collected edition)
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (leatherbound collected version)
- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: A Novel, by Susanna Clarke
- The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
- A leather bound collected edition of Dracula and Frankenstein
- Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein.
- The Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon, and Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson
- A collected version of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories
- The recent Harry Potter books (I borrowed the earlier ones)
- Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling
- Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
- A History of God, by Karen Armstrong
- The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil
- An enormous rpg collection featuring many books for GURPS, Vampire, Dungeons & Dragons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Castle Falkenstein, Warhammer FRP, and In Nomine
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