Member: aethercowboy

CollectionsYour library (552), GT3 (988), Read but unowned (804), Have read (1,265), Currently reading (5), To read (103), Favorites (25), Met author (21), Signed (8), Featuring me (6), Sold (72), Borrowed (5), Amber's books (9), Library's book (21), Ophelia's Books (2), Work's books (1), At work (11), Audiobook (323), eBook (144), Advanced Reader Copies (27), Early Reviewers (56), Member Giveaway (83), Collected (996), Fix cover (8), League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (31), 2017 (5), All collections (2,373)

Reviews574 reviews

Tagsfiction (949), speculative fiction (610), literature (478), prose (474), fantasy (358), nonfiction (294), science fiction (262), American (248), to:review (222), anthology (124) — see all tags

MediaNot set (770), Book (1,600), Paper Book (877), Audiobook (207), Ebook (88), Sound Recording (2), Digital sound recording (2), Other (1)

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud, tag mirror

Recommendations39 recommendations

About meI do so love cataloging my books. I'm also an avid reader and an author of mostly short fiction. I don't blame you if you've never heard of me.

In my free time, I design accounting software, and spend time with my wife, daughter and a noisy house cat, fixing up our shabby old house. Prior to that, I reverse-engineered ancient ECM tools and drove the migration of billions of documents from them to a more modern one. Before that, I helped send people, robots, and spiders into space, and get back again. And before that, I was designing a system to do bioinformatic data visualization and phylogenetic tree reconstruction in zebrafish.

You can check out my latest project, a literary character database, at http://whatcharacter.com.

About my libraryBooks to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
-Arnold Lobel

My library contains all the books I have read and still own, and all the books I am currently reading.

Additionally, if I have borrowed a book from somebody or the public library, they will appear here.

I tend to have borderline bibliophily, so I do enjoy collecting books, even if the subject matter doesn't interest me. I'll read them all anyway, because that's what a good bibliophile does.

I dole out stars depending on how many relative utils a book provides me. 5 stars is equivalent to 2 relative utils; 4 stars is equivalent to 1 relative util; 3 stars is equivalent to 0 relative utils; 2 stars is equivalent to -1 relative util; and 1 star is equivalent to -2 relative utils. Half stars would naturally fall somewhere between the two (and a single half star is a truly horrid book for me).

Here it is in more humorous terms:

0.0 - I haven't read it, or haven't gotten around to rating it.
0.5 - I wouldn't wish this book on my worst enemy.
1.0 - I pray to the powers that be for an acute case of alexia.
1.5 - I would wish this book on my worst enemy, if the Geneva Convention allows.
2.0 - The Half Price Books employees are on a first-name basis with me.
2.5 - Can I have my time back, plz?
3.0 - Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
3.5 - This book was definitely worth reading.
4.0 - This is a good book.
4.5 - This is a pretty danged good book.
5.0 - This is (one of the) the best book(s) I've ever read!

To see what books I've read, click here.

Groups75 Books Challenge for 2008, 75 Books Challenge for 2009, 75 Books Challenge for 2010, Board for Extreme Thing Advances, Bug Collectors, Google Wavers, Hacking LibraryThing, Le Groupe des Mignon Photos, More Power to the Date Fields!, Texans Who LibraryThing —show all groups, Tropic of Ideas, Until the hunt is done, Writer-readers

Favorite authorsDouglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Lewis Carroll, Susanna Clarke, Mark Z. Danielewski, Neil Gaiman, Joseph Heller, Frank Herbert, James Joyce, Michael Moorcock, Chuck Palahniuk, Thomas Pynchon, Quentin Tarantino, Hunter S. Thompson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bill Watterson (Shared favorites)

VenuesFavorites | Visited

Favorite bookstoresBarnes & Noble Booksellers - Baybrook, Borders - Baybrook, Half Price Books - Clear Lake

Favorite librariesBainbridge Library (Geauga County Public Library), Harris County Public Library - Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch

Favorite listsSimulated Reality in Fiction, Works Referenced in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Homepagehttp://whatcharacter.com

Also onBlogger, deviantART, Facebook, Flickr, IMDB, LiveJournal, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia

Membership LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway

Real nameJacob

Location44065

Account typepublic, lifetime

URLs /profile/aethercowboy (profile)
/catalog/aethercowboy (library)

Member sinceOct 4, 2008

Currently readingThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014 Edition by Ellen Datlow
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend by Maria Leach
Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan
NPCs by Drew Hayes