I've been seduced (by the lovely skellorg</lj>) into getting a LibraryThing subscription, which is proving to be a terrible time sink, but is so enjoyable that it's worth it. It's a free service up to 200 books, but then you have to pay to catalogue any more. 

I rationalised the expenditure of $25 for a lifetime membership would, erm, prevent me accidentally buying books that I already own, thus eventually paying for itself. Also that in the event of a fire or other disaster I'd have a handy catalogue to send to the insurers... Well, bollocks to all that, anyway, it's fucking brilliant! 

I'm about two-thirds of the way through cataloguing my owned books, having bribed Simon last night to help me bring all the books on my bedroom shelves downstairs to my office. I had told myself that I'd save all the graphic novels til last, but I couldn't resist last night and they're now all in there - and I have an irresistable urge to re-read them. ALL of them! 

What I intend to do after listing all my owned books, is to use the catalogue to keep a "reading list" of everything I borrow from the library. This will be quite simple since I'll just use the "tag" facility to add a "library" tag as well as genre tags. I'm always reading books from the library, thinking how great they were and that I must check out more from the author, and then completely forgetting the title. LibraryThing should be a great help with that. 

And obviously, the catalogue process means I can take the opportunity to alphabetisize the collection, or at least impose some sort of order upon it. It was lovely to come home from Mum's last year to find Pat had built me the bookcases, but he had rather just dumped everything on there. It's also become even more blindingly obvious that I simply don't have anything like enough shelf space. This is more problematic because it's a case of having to fit more furniture into the house. If I still had my office upstairs then this wouldn't be a problem. However, since Pat appropriated that space when James went back to So'ton, it's more resembled a bombsite than a bedroom! So I'm currently double- and triple-shelved in some areas, which doesn't help the whole organisation thing. 

Still, this doesn't take away from the fact that the entire enterprise is fun - well, it's fun to anal-retentives like me, who don't get out much, anyway. I haven't picked up some of these books in years; it's like meeting with old friends. LibraryThing also has a review feature, so I shall be re-reading some of those old friends soon to refresh my memory for that happy task. And I'll be re-evaluating my ownership of some - especially with shelf space at a premium - and listing them for sale on Amazon. 

God, I love books, I do.