view larger

Member: lycomayflower

Library1,021 books — see library

Reviews3 reviews — see reviews

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

Tags20th century (535), british (367), american (254), 19th century (119), 21st century (97), criticism (83), at home (73), illustrated (72), tolkien (65) — see all tags

Groups20-Something LibraryThingers, 50 Book Challenge, Anglophiles, Graduate Students, Tolkien Lovers

Favorite authorsJane Austen, Stephen Fry, G. W. Hawkes, Barbara Kingsolver, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jamie O'Neill, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. R. R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf (Shared favorites)

About me I have a BA in English and history and an MA in Creative Writing. I'm currently working on my PhD in Creative Writing.

My Thread at the 50-Book Challenge

About my library Finished, finally! It's all catalogued. With the exception of some books still at my parents' house and some composition rhetorics and readers buried in a box in my closet (which I can't quite conceive of ever being arsed to haul out and catalogue), everything I have is here. If it isn't here, chances are I don't have it.

You'll find a fairly wide smattering of books in my library, with a concentration on British modernism and on Tolkien. I also have a nice little collection of books on writing craft.

If I were stranded on a desert island, the ten books I would hope somehow got stranded with me are:

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Collected Works of William Shakespeare

The World of Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

A Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

Sharpe's Tiger, Bernard Cornwell

Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

I've decided to go ahead and try rating books, though I find the prospect sort of inherently distasteful. I think of my books in terms of the reading experience, not necessarily in terms of the quality of the thing itself. In other words, I might give Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire five stars because I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, while I might give Heart of Darkness three stars because I have had to force myself to keep going each time I've read it. Those ratings do not reflect any assessment on my part regarding the quality of the work. It doesn't, in other words, necessarily mean I hold Harry Potter above Heart of Darkness in terms of literary merit, writing quality, et cetera.

Here's how I'm using the rating system:

Zero Stars: I haven't read it yet. (Far too frequent an occurence!)

One Star: The reading experience was wretched. I wouldn't touch it again if you paid me.

Two Stars: The reading experience was poor. I probably won't look at it again.

Three Stars: The reading experience was fair. I may not have liked the book, but I either learned something from it or concede that it is an important work despite my dislike of it. I would also put under this rating books that I enjoyed while reading but of which I had little meaningful recollection afterwards.

Three and one half Stars: The only half-star rating I find myself using frequently. These are the books I enjoyed quite a bit, probably do remember well and fondly, but probably wouldn't read again.

Four Stars: The reading experience was good. I liked the book, and might read it again.

Five Stars: The reading experience was fabulous. I love the book, and likely wouldn't object to dipping into it at any point--or maybe even rereading it in its entirety several times.

NB: The system, obviously, works best for works of fiction and creative nonfiction. For reference works, think of the ratings in terms of usefulness. Five stars indicates a reference I find indispensable. One star indicates a completely worthless reference. Three stars indicates usefulness, but not to any special degree.

Real nameLaura

LocationTennessee

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/lycomayflower (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lycomayflower (library)

Member sinceDec 2, 2005