Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Tuesday Thingers: Legacy Libraries

This week's question from Boston Bibliophile: Legacy libraries. With which legacy libraries do you share books? Tell us a little about a couple of them and what you share.

Well, I’ve really only looked at the “completed” libraries. And among those, I share the most books with Walker Percy (109) and Ernest Hemingway (117). Of course, since Hemingway’s library contains more than seven thousand volumes, I suppose he shares books with just about everyone! After those two, I think I have the most books in common with Sylvia Plath (51) – one of which, interestingly, is Baby and Child Care, by Dr. Benjamin Spock. And just as interestingly, that’s a book I also share with Marilyn Monroe.

I always learn something from these Tuesday Thingers exercises. I already knew about the legacy library project, so for once I wasn’t completely surprised by the topic. But this week, while looking around at the various libraries, I found I had 27 books in common with the Jewish Serbian-Hungarian author-poet-translator Danilo Kiš – someone I’d never heard of. But a little surfing around on the internet has got me interested. Now I’m going to have to try to find an English edition of his short story collection, The Encyclopedia of the Dead. And that’s one of the great things about LibraryThing, isn’t it – always so many intriguing, unfamiliar works to be discovered.

9 comments:

  1. Joy, you've been Boo-ed! Come find out what that means. :-O

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  2. This was a new to me feature. I only have 1 book in common with 2 different libraries.

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  3. Wow - Joy! You have tons of books in common with the Legacy Libraries.

    Shana
    Literarily

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  4. Wow, I think that's the most in common I've seen so far!

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  5. You are amazing! So many books in common!

    Wow - I've just started entering my books as I just learned about this part of the site this morning! I've got 2 with Marilyn Monroe and 6 with Ernest Hemingway!

    This was fun - to see the rest of my list: http://wendisbookcorner.blogspot.com/2008/10/tuesday-thingers_28.html

    :) Wendi

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  6. I had a few "Who dat?" moments too when I ran through the list! Good post, Joy!

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  7. That's an incredible number of shared books!

    Good luck tracking down the volume you're interested in :)

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  8. How many books are in your library? YOu've got a ton of matches with folks. Are all the ones in your library what you own or read and own?

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  9. This was such a fun post to do. I discovered a few writers I hadn't even heard of. And I matched with quite a few people.

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