Learning About a Person from Their Libraries

pustelniakr

pustelniakr

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When visiting the digs of a new, or old, friend for the first time, I find that I learn alot about him/her, by examining their book and music libraries. What could a person like me learn about you by examining your libraries?

Me? I love books, all kinds of books. My library is mine, and huge. I have more books than I have shelving, and I have shelving lining most walls. You may come and read anytime you wish, but the books stay here. Lent books tend to stay lent. I have law, SciFi, religion, political intrigue, physics, engineering, mathematics, medicine, electronics, software development, and the list goes on and on.

Musically, my range is as broad as the world, excluding only most rap, hip-hop, German opera, and Louisiana-style jazz. I have 8-tracks, CDs, SACDs, vinyl, reels and cassettes of tape, Revere tape cartridges, Karaoke and various digital formats. My gear is fully restored vintage, high-end Pioneer gear, from the big silver period (76-81), with some modern sources to round things off, including a sweet XP-Pro-based music mastering and serving PC. My main rig occupies an entire wall of my living room, with 3 pairs of speakers stacked floor to ceiling, and three full 20" racks full to the brim with gear, video included (Kodi box, LED TV of serious size, etc.)

What do you learn about me? What can we learn about you?

Enjoy,
Rich P
 
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I'm a huge SF nerd and musical omnivore. Unfortunately you won't get the latter on inspection because most of my collection is CDs and most of it is in the closet at my girlfriend's place, as we've ripped all of our CDs to FLAC so there's no shelves to look through. Books, I still haven't drunk the digital kool-aid yet though, although I do have a tablet that I got "free" with my last cell phone, I've downloaded only a few books onto it.
 
My wife and I are both avid readers. She loves mysteries and cookbooks and I'm all over the place, mostly music, art and history. We both have tablets, but having a book in our hands is much more satisfying to both of us.

We have bookcases around the house, a whole wall of built in shelves in the dining room for her cookbooks, and boxes and boxes stored downstairs. I have a twin brother and when we visited his house, we noticed that he did not have one book that we could see. To each his own, I guess. I have been doing purges to reduce the amount on the lower level, but the purges just keep us around the same number of books. We just replace some with others.

One of the big sellers on my tables at the flea market is books, so I have quite a lot of inventory. I buy oddball titles, local history, military and TM and anything bizarre. The thing I've enjoyed is that the buyers range from college kids to senior citizens. It's nice to see that books are still hanging in there in the electronics age.

As far as music, I have every media except reel to reel. For some reason I never went down that road. I love 60s-70s psych and acid folk. I also like the Blues, 50s and early 60s jazz, funk, field recordings of African and other world music. Very small amount of classical. The wife mostly likes Motown and male and female vocals from the 40s and 50s.
 
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I might be but only half of a ventriloquist's act, all of my books' titles ends with; Dummies.

But on a serious note, I have a small bookcase that is full of code books relating to the construction fields, some law, some medical, some fiction, non-fiction, friction, fraction, and function.

As for music, mainly vinyl that runs the gamut minus rap. Cassettes are gone, CDs are packed away, and I have a large DVD collection.
 
I generally read about five books a week, if I have the time. It is even better if I can also catch a good album at the same time.

Here is the main music library, with classical and jazz on the left rack, and pop and rock on the right. Most everyone that visits can find a couple hours of tunes they like.
 
I have eliminated my library when we moved. Put an ad on CL, told someone they could have it all, the kicker being they have to take it all and not cherry pick it.

I like to read, but have not done much of it in the last years. But once read a few times, I am finished with a book. I will re-read a couple of times. But I prefer not to have stuff dominate my life today, so out it went. Same with the VHS collection. With any luck I will rip discs to hard drive and box them up to.

These days I value the experience of a good book, not having a whole bunch of them.

Regards
Mister Pig
 
My book collection consists of a small amount of reference material.

Recent purchases have been mostly kindle. Most of my reading is done the net.

Music collection (hard media) ... mostly Vinyl ... late 60's - 90. Some new Vinyl.
Some Jazz & Classical on CD.

Lastly ... a little bit of this & a little bit that.
 
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You'd learn I'm a car nut, and collect some rare old books. But it wouldn't tell the whole story, those are only the books that make it to the shelves. The majority of my reading is SciFi, history, crime, etc, and those are usually read once and passed along.

bs
 
I am not a big reader of fiction so my bookshelf contains mostly Reference material on Gardening, Health and Fitness and a whole array of Spiritual books along with Computer and Cert Training material.

My Music Library is pretty eclectic and includes everything from Glen Campbell to Yanni but lacking in Classical Country and Hip Hop-Rap or any real Pop or Commercial music.
 
pustelniakr said:
When visiting the digs of a new, or old, friend for the first time, I find that I learn alot about him/her, by examining their book and music libraries. What could a person like me learn about you by examining your libraries?

Me? I love books, all kinds of books. My library is mine, and huge. I have more books than I have shelving, and I have shelving lining most walls. You may come and read anytime you wish, but the books stay here. Lent books tend to stay lent. I have law, SciFi, religion, political intrigue, physics, engineering, mathematics, medicine, electronics, software development, and the list goes on and on.

Musically, my range is as broad as the world, excluding only most rap, hip-hop, German opera, and Louisiana-style jazz. I have 8-tracks, CDs, SACDs, vinyl, reels and cassettes of tape, Revere tape cartridges, Karaoke and various digital formats. My gear is fully restored vintage, high-end Pioneer gear, from the big silver period (76-81), with some modern sources to round things off, including a sweet XP-Pro-based music mastering and serving PC. My main rig occupies an entire wall of my living room, with 3 pairs of speakers stacked floor to ceiling, and three full 20" racks full to the brim with gear, video included (Kodi box, LED TV of serious size, etc.)

What do you learn about me? What can we learn about you?

Enjoy,
Rich P
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"What did you learn about me? "
Hmm, first thing, that you don't get outside that much.. If I had all that I would hole up for weeks! :)
 
Interesting thread. I often look at a book and music shelf/selection and find it provides a lot of insight.

I also have a lot of shelves overflowing with books. The majority are fiction--especially from 1910 to present--but there's also a lot of music, poetry, drama, reference, philosophy, religion, astronomy, science. There's also a Calvin & Hobbes set, which is fairly noticeable, as well as a rather large Complete Works of Shakespeare. There are a number of works by Saul Bellow, TS Eliot, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf.

There is also quite a bit of music in both vinyl and CD formats. The majority is jazz, especially with the vinyl, but there's a fair amount of rock and classical as well as a smattering of other genres. Someone would likely notice that there's a disproportionate number of releases by John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, as well as quite a few by Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Thelonious Monk. I suppose the few CD box sets I have are noticeable. They are the Miles Davis/John Coltrane Complete Columbia Recordings, Brad Mehdau's Ten Years Solo Live, Django Reinhardt's Classic Early Recordings in Chronological Order and ZZ Top's Complete Studio Albums 1970-1990.

I'm tempted to provide some context and even self-analysis, but that would spoil it.
 
A synopsis of ME.2.0.17(beta)?

Good luck with that, as the version and supporting documentation changes with the seasons and the years. Let's just say the amalgam of media here constitute an ... eclectic ... representation of where I've been, am now, and ever hope to be. Ohmmmmmmmmm ...
 
I'll read pretty much anything that I can get my hands on. I have several Patrick Mcmanus books, plus collections of the Far Side and Bloom County cartoons. I have several books on rock/pop music history, atlases, railroads and related equipment, computers, electronics, weird facts, Guiness World Records, etc.

My musical library mostly consists of 60's, 70's and 80's rock and pop. I've been keeping an eye out for punk and new wave of the late 1970's, plus 60's blues. I have some jazz/fusion such as Miles Davis, Weather Report and Chick Corea, a little funk such as George Clinton et al, some older country and a smattering of soundtracks. I just finished entering my record collection on discogs and I'm up to 1,019, which is tiny compared to some others! :biggrin:
 
I've always been a "big" reader, and I almost wrote I rarely read anymore, but I read constantly. Mostly online, a lot here, and on Amazon a lot, researching purchases... and other audio sites - you know 'em. But being a Southern Gent born'n'bred in the bible belt, then when I do read from a book, that's one-a the likeliest choices, these days. Like writing, too. Haven't written any bible, though if I hear any great'n'mighty voices, I'll be sure and pass it along, so you can know senility has begun and try to lowball my stuff.

My listening... well, my favorite two classical works are Debussy's La Mer, and Bach's Harpsichord (Keyboard, Piano, Klavier...) Concerto in D Minor. Jazz... Miles, Gordon, RR Kirk, Bob James, Glenn Miller, the Duke, many more. Rock... tend to stay more towards the softer than the harder, metallic edge. Love country, too. Mostly between around 1960 to 1990, but exceptions past either end of the timeline. We polka some, usually with Jimmy Sturr. Like crooners like Sinatra, the Rat Pack, Tony B, Andy Wiliams and singers like Sarah V, Billie and Ella. Some blues of various places... the Delta, Chicago and St Louis. Some bluegrass. A touch of opera. And just plain ole syrup like 101 Strings. As I write, I'm listening to some old Fogelberg that I haven't heard in so many years that I'm finding it quite enjoyable.
 
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