Bibliophilic Voyeurism: Take Off Your Dust Jacket

A friend of mine (we'll call him Oghrim, since that's the name he's using on this website) pointed out a website named Librarything to me months ago. As is my way, I replied with a cursory "Looks interesting" and then went back to whatever it is I do. However, since I promised a former student I'd write her a letter of recommendation this weekend, as it's now Sunday night I need something else to do other than fulfill my promise. And so I returned to Librarything to give it another look.

As it turns out, it's a pretty interesting site, so long as you (like me) feel that the quality, content, and quantity of the book spines you have facing out of your (hopefully plentiful) shelves is somehow a measure of your intelligence and all around cultural sophistication. It's basically a virtual library, one that you can construct to mirror your actual collection and then, if you're feeling particularly bold, share with like-minded people. By like-minded, I refer to those other anonymous souls who have identical, or at least similar, books on their virtual shelves. While I'm sure their hearts were in the right place, I shudder to think what kind of socially-inept, obsessive compulsives I'd be matched with. Why do I assume this? Because as I was entering the hundred books (literally) that I could come up with off the top of my head, I was getting frustrated that I wasn't actually in front of my books, because I didn't want the wrong editions of the right books in my virtual library. So, keeping in mind that this sort of minutiae bothers me during what should be a purely diversionary moment, why the hell would I want to get in contact with another person like moi?

I've added a widget (a delicious word all it's own, I might add, though I can't help but describe it as "short" or "gnomish") that randomly shows the covers of any twelve books in my collection. Quaint, yes, though I wonder how good a decision it was. First of all, some of the more obscure scholarly books I have don't seem to have covers in the system, so they're ruled out of the widget, thereby losing any chance of impressing my friends who are better read and more intelligent than I am (almost all of my friends, as it turns out). Secondly, I'll eventually get all of my books in there, which could potentially result in such jarring spectacles as Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice sitting alongside Everyone Poops. Alas, such is the cross we truly eclectic individuals must bear, we who are equally fascinated by the sociological implications of supposedly objectivist practice and the ubiquity of shitting.

Anyway, if you have a moment to kill, check it out here. If you make a library, and the site has friend lists (I didn't take the time to check), add me. I'm under Colonel_Gentleman. "Super awesome, dashingly handsome, staggeringly well read, humanitarian, nobel laureate, and all around humble guy" was already taken, surprisingly enough.