LidRyanPaine

As with my physical library (which is stuffed with scribbled notes, dog-eared pages and messages of adoration and reprobation in the margins), I'm using LibraryThing to document and track my thoughts on books as I pursue a lifelong career in the study and appreciation of books.

At this stage I'm just adding the books I've read. Later I'll add every other book I own, and use that as a way of paring back my unread library - I've set a goal to have either read or discarded every book I own by April 2010, after which I will only read books I want to read (my current unread library is comprised of quite a few books I feel obliged to read, for various reasons, and I want to shitcan that habit).

I also plan to upload all the reviews I've written since I started writing them at university. The earlier ones are mere curiosities – seeing how much my style has changed is interesting for me at least - but the later ones might be useful to readers.

I lost my entire read library about five years ago when my then-girlfriend's car was stolen by a bunch of (presumably) illiterate hoons: we found the car in a ditch on the other side of town, with all but one box remaining, and that was filled with empty cans of Woodies. Two weeks later, my own car got stolen, with my unread library in the back. We found that car too, in a different ditch in a different part on the same side of town, but the books remained in their box in the boot.

Two things were reinforced by this experience: my belief in something like karma (I had been stealing books from Angus and Robertson for about two years prior, amounting to approximately thirty books in that time); my bibliophilia (I was more shattered by this loss than by the impending breakdown of my relationship with said then-girlfriend).

I've been hoarding, reading, reviewing and thinking about writing books ever since.