3 ms·

About 4100 books, of which about 1250 are fiction. Reference and recreation. It may be relevant for context that by HN standards I am Old -- a little over 50 -

by gjm11 5y ago

About 4100 books, of which about 1250 are fiction. Reference and recreation. It may be relevant for context that by HN standards I am Old -- a little over 50 -- so I've had some time to accumulate (a) books and (b) enough money to afford a house with enough wall-space for those books to fit comfortably. :-)

notapenny 5y ago
That must be nice. An uncle of mine had a room filled with books (he was a teacher and an avid reader). The room had a real library smell to it, was really nice.
- gjm11 5y ago
  The room I'm in right now, which is also where I work, has two walls completely covered with books. (This is where all the sciencey nonfiction lives, and some other things like history and philosophy and economics.) It is, indeed, nice :-).
Freak_NL 5y ago
That's a lot of non-fiction! Any particular topics that make up the bulk?
- gjm11 5y ago
  In descending order (categories overlap, but I don't think there's _very_ much overlap between the ones listed here), roughly 430 mathematics, 260 philosophy, 260 science, 230 computing, 210 history, 110 "reference" (meaning things like dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.), 100 music, 100 puzzles, 100 language and languages.
  - IceMan0110 5y ago
    Just out of curiosity, what would your "top 10" books be?
    - gjm11 5y ago
      My brain is absolutely hopeless at top-10-like things. But here are a few gems from some of those categories. Mathematics: John Conway's "On Numbers and Games". (If you've run across the term "surreal numbers", this is the original source. Absolutely gorgeous, but heavy going if you aren't actually a mathematician.) David McKay's "Information theory, inference, and learning algorithms". (What it says on the tin. Don't expect this to be a practical guide to training neural networks or anything like that; it is a mathematics book.) Philosophy: Derek Parfit's "Reasons and Persons". (Contains some exceptionally clear thinking on thorny questions about personal identity and the like.) Gary Drescher's "Good and Real". (Drescher is primarily a computer-science-and-AI guy rather than a philosopher. He addresses a bunch of hairy philosophical questions from that perspective and I personally like it a lot. I confidently predict that some people will hate it.) Science: Gnaedig, Honyek & Riley's "200 puzzling physics problems". (Just what it says. Roughly undergraduate-physics level, some easier, some harder.) Steven Vogel's "Life in moving fluids". (Explores, e.g., the very considerable differences in what living in water means for a bacterium and for a whale on account of their different size. Fairly technical; he has other lighter books.) Computing: Donald Knuth's "TeX: the program". (A single volume of literate code, constituting the whole of his TeX typesetting system. The style is pretty old-fashioned but he's a genius.) Steven Skiena's "The algorithm design manual". (This would not be my recommendation if you want just one algorithms book; that should be Cormen, Rivest, Leiserson & Stein. But it's an excellent complement to a more standard sort of algorithms book.)
      - IceMan0110 5y ago
        Oh wow, thank you for this! I have been fascinated by Information Theory for quite some while now, so I hope David McKay's book is a good introduction to it. One of my personal favourite in Philosophy is "Finite and Infinite Games" by James P Carse. It had a profound impact on how I look at situations. I hope one of your suggestions does the same :)
        gjm11 5y ago
        Fair warning: I don't think either of the philosophy books I mentioned is likely to scratch the same sort of itch as Carse's book.
stonecharioteer 5y ago
Ooooh. I'd love to see photos of your shelves! Could you share them.
- gjm11 5y ago
  https://i.imgur.com/gKDvqRh.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/gKDvqRh.jpeg is one wall of the room I'm in now. Leftmost column is mathematics. Next column is mathematics shading into computing (the top shelf is numerical analysis and the like). Next column is mostly physics and physics-adjacent science, with some psychology/neuroscience at the bottom. Rightmost column is other science. There's another smaller wall with economics, business, finance, history, politics, social commentary, miscellaneous humanities, philosophy, religion[1], and reference books. [1] I'm not an adherent of any religion, but for many years I was and I have retained a little interest in theological matters despite now thinking that the religion in question is wrong about pretty much everything. Fiction is in the bedroom and on the landing. Other subjects are elsewhere (e.g., music is in the same room as the piano; language and books-about-literature are in the guest bedroom). Books with their spines facing up instead of out are ones I haven't read yet. I don't guarantee that I have read every page of every other book, though. The presence of a book on those shelves is not necessarily an endorsement. I have some books I don't think are very good but that I don't dislike enough to throw them away :-). (There isn't actually anything super-secret displayed on the monitor but I thought I should censor it as a matter of principle. The other thing that might look like an information leak is the front of a DVD box, but that happens to be a box with no actual DVD in it and I don't even remember why I have it. :-) )

by gjm11 5y ago

notapenny 5y ago

That must be nice. An uncle of mine had a room filled with books (he was a teacher and an avid reader). The room had a real library smell to it, was really nice.

gjm11 5y ago
The room I'm in right now, which is also where I work, has two walls completely covered with books. (This is where all the sciencey nonfiction lives, and some other things like history and philosophy and economics.) It is, indeed, nice :-).

Freak_NL 5y ago

That's a lot of non-fiction! Any particular topics that make up the bulk?

gjm11 5y ago
In descending order (categories overlap, but I don't think there's _very_ much overlap between the ones listed here), roughly 430 mathematics, 260 philosophy, 260 science, 230 computing, 210 history, 110 "reference" (meaning things like dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.), 100 music, 100 puzzles, 100 language and languages.
- IceMan0110 5y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what would your "top 10" books be?
  - gjm11 5y ago
    My brain is absolutely hopeless at top-10-like things. But here are a few gems from some of those categories. Mathematics: John Conway's "On Numbers and Games". (If you've run across the term "surreal numbers", this is the original source. Absolutely gorgeous, but heavy going if you aren't actually a mathematician.) David McKay's "Information theory, inference, and learning algorithms". (What it says on the tin. Don't expect this to be a practical guide to training neural networks or anything like that; it is a mathematics book.) Philosophy: Derek Parfit's "Reasons and Persons". (Contains some exceptionally clear thinking on thorny questions about personal identity and the like.) Gary Drescher's "Good and Real". (Drescher is primarily a computer-science-and-AI guy rather than a philosopher. He addresses a bunch of hairy philosophical questions from that perspective and I personally like it a lot. I confidently predict that some people will hate it.) Science: Gnaedig, Honyek & Riley's "200 puzzling physics problems". (Just what it says. Roughly undergraduate-physics level, some easier, some harder.) Steven Vogel's "Life in moving fluids". (Explores, e.g., the very considerable differences in what living in water means for a bacterium and for a whale on account of their different size. Fairly technical; he has other lighter books.) Computing: Donald Knuth's "TeX: the program". (A single volume of literate code, constituting the whole of his TeX typesetting system. The style is pretty old-fashioned but he's a genius.) Steven Skiena's "The algorithm design manual". (This would not be my recommendation if you want just one algorithms book; that should be Cormen, Rivest, Leiserson & Stein. But it's an excellent complement to a more standard sort of algorithms book.)
    - IceMan0110 5y ago
      Oh wow, thank you for this! I have been fascinated by Information Theory for quite some while now, so I hope David McKay's book is a good introduction to it. One of my personal favourite in Philosophy is "Finite and Infinite Games" by James P Carse. It had a profound impact on how I look at situations. I hope one of your suggestions does the same :)
      - gjm11 5y ago
        Fair warning: I don't think either of the philosophy books I mentioned is likely to scratch the same sort of itch as Carse's book.

stonecharioteer 5y ago

Ooooh. I'd love to see photos of your shelves! Could you share them.

gjm11 5y ago
https://i.imgur.com/gKDvqRh.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/gKDvqRh.jpeg is one wall of the room I'm in now. Leftmost column is mathematics. Next column is mathematics shading into computing (the top shelf is numerical analysis and the like). Next column is mostly physics and physics-adjacent science, with some psychology/neuroscience at the bottom. Rightmost column is other science. There's another smaller wall with economics, business, finance, history, politics, social commentary, miscellaneous humanities, philosophy, religion[1], and reference books. [1] I'm not an adherent of any religion, but for many years I was and I have retained a little interest in theological matters despite now thinking that the religion in question is wrong about pretty much everything. Fiction is in the bedroom and on the landing. Other subjects are elsewhere (e.g., music is in the same room as the piano; language and books-about-literature are in the guest bedroom). Books with their spines facing up instead of out are ones I haven't read yet. I don't guarantee that I have read every page of every other book, though. The presence of a book on those shelves is not necessarily an endorsement. I have some books I don't think are very good but that I don't dislike enough to throw them away :-). (There isn't actually anything super-secret displayed on the monitor but I thought I should censor it as a matter of principle. The other thing that might look like an information leak is the front of a DVD box, but that happens to be a box with no actual DVD in it and I don't even remember why I have it. :-) )