Primary Source Geeks Message Board

I'm not necessarily always a primary source geek, but I am (slowly) working on an amateur translation of a source that is 2000 years old (roughly), cryptic, and variously translated. (Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, represented in my library by the translations by Nancy McCagney and David Kalupahana.

Any theories on many of us having "The Demolished Man?"

I actually don't have all my primary sources catalogued yet, so there will probably be more matches later. I also seem to have a lot of eastern classics which aren't matching up to anyone.

I, too, have yet to get to many of my history shelves, which contain most of my primary sources. One assumes that The Demolished Man, etc, is so visible because our historical interests are so varied- therefore, the non-historical books become the most commonly shared. As for why The Demolished Man and A Fire Upon the Deep and not, say, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and The Da Vinci Code? Maybe Bester and Vinge fans just like primary material? One might assume that The Da Vinci Code fans do not. In any case, LibraryThing does tend to skew Sci-Fi in its literary manifest.

LT does skew sci-fi, but it's interesting to see which particular SF books pop up in which places. The Demolished Man is a very good book, but it's still a bit curious.

Doing a quick comparison of "books you share" on the profiles, I notice a lot of Douglas Adams and Umberto Eco, but presumably these are being excluded along the Harry Potter.

Maybe the scenario is this: primary source geeks have a moderate affinity for obscure sci-fi, and demolished man is a relatively popular work within the realm of obscure sci-fi, but not so popular that it's excluded by the weighting process.

BTW, I would like to salute thecardiffgiant for owning Charles Rockwell Lanman's Sanskrit Reader. As I like to say: Rock Well. Rock Very Well.

Maybe you're reading too much into the appearance of The Demolished Man. Since the list is weighted by the total number of people who own the book, it is bound to contain strange flukes when the group membership is small.

The Demolished Man was no longer on the list when I joined. But when I joined, the two unsurprising books The later Roman empire,AD 284-430 and
History of the Byzantine state fell off the list, and were replaced by Hobbes' Leviathan and Jack Vance's Wyst: Alastor 1716.

If you do want to theorize about it, you might find it interesting to speculate about why Wyst appears in the commonly-shared-books list on both of the groups of which I am a member.

But I think the only explanation is this: Both groups are small. Not many people happen to own that book. But I do own that book, and that gives it a biggish push onto the weighted list for any group I join, and when the group is small, the push is enough to get it onto the list.

Ha! The Vance appearing is even funnier than the Bester. But you're right; we're probably reading too much into it.

It seems that since I posted two days ago, three more people have joined the group. The "most commonly shared books" list has changed as follows:

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius moved up from position 9 to 4.

From the Gracchi to Nero is gone, replaced by
The annotated H.P. Lovecraft, which is now in position 3. (Don't read too much into it! Don't read too much into it! Please! YARRAGAGRGBLBLBLBBLBL)

In other news, Wyst is no longer on the shared books list at my other group.