thanks to Eileen Tabios for taking notice. going public with my book list just seemed right. I think of Whitman telling of helping a runaway slave. maybe he did, but it doesn't matter. there's a courage and reality in just his saying so. likewise (sort of), which of any of these books I've read doesn't matter in at least the context of listing them. the list presents the boundaries I inhabit and perhaps the ones I am trying to break thru. I'd like to see it of any writer. Eileen's going to the trouble of including publication info, which I had ought to do but it's just too much more work right now. a friend of mine has a card (perhaps he's made a database by now) for every book he buys (even for his daughter), with all the usual info plus price, where bought and I think other obsessive-compulsive considerations. I suspect he started making cards when he began buying books. the prospect of iemizing 100s, 1000s, of books is daunting. I separated books by genre, sloppy boundaries to say the least. there will be almost no scifi or mystery, of which I've owned plenty, because I have or will get rid of them. which means my Literature category includes Fu Manchu (which I prize: swear to god!!!) and all sorts of books that only attain such a title in 2nd rate suburban bookstores. I stuck Thoreau's journals in my perplexing Philosophy category, not having at the time figured I would post my Nature type books, which I crowd with Science (thus my lone economic books is mixed with fields guides and such). my perplexing Criticism category has its own curious curveballs of in/exclusion. of course the Bramhall Decimal System is based on convenience not logic, mostly. I think I would as soon have Ron Silliman's New Sentence parked in poetry, because for me that is their usage. reasonably enough (to me) I initially placed the few Elizabethan playwrights into poetry, prior to establishing the Literature group, but that came to seem awkward as I was shovelling other play collections into Lit. and so the story goes. the whole thing, bottom line: it seems interesting to do this listing.