And Lynette, I, too, check out every book vaguely related to my topic, and then only read a very small selection of them.

Even though in theory I adore written fiction, and even though my favorite TV show ever is a documentary, right now I’m finding it extremely difficult to find good fiction or good documentaries. So I’m getting my “information” from reading and my vicarious experience from movies/TV. In practice this split works well, but I’m not sure I like it in theory.

Rowish, I think that’s a wise policy. In the past I’ve forced myself to finish too many books I simply wasn’t interested in.

Lynnette, I have the same problem with research (which is exactly where the 100+ library books came from to start with–at least for the most part). I keep getting library notices that I have books on hold and I don’t even remember putting the books on hold, let alone why. Accruing bigger and bigger stacks of “stuff” hardly seems like the most efficient way to research.

Norbert, I would be similarly tempted if I commanded such library power!

I feel free from the servitude of “must finish a book”.

At least I haven’t yet looked up a book in an online catalogue, noticed it was checked out, and then unknowingly recalled it from myself, because I forgot I was the patron who checked it out.

I must confess I’ve come very close to doing that, but fortunately caught myself in time.

I’m terrible when it comes to checking out excessive numbers of books. When I’m doing research, I don’t seem to have the patience to actually look at a book while I’m at the library and figure out if it’s actually applicable to what I’m working on–so I check out anything that looks vaguely related. Which is probably not the most effective strategy, especially since the books usually come home only to sit in piles on my floor.

When checking out books for fun, I find this interesting spiral in which the more you have, the easier it is to add to the pile. It might take me a long time to pick an initial book to check out. But once I have one, it’s easier to grab a second–and once I’m up to fifteen, I’m prone to just add random titles that caught my eye. Though I don’t have a car at the moment, and I live uphill from the library, which restrains me a little.

I remember once as a kid deciding to read all my library books at once, a chapter at a time. I put them in a pile and rotated through. But I think I only managed to do that for one chapter–then one of the books got so exciting that I cheated and finished the whole thing without going back to the other books.

I also find that I travel with too many books, because it’s hard to guess what I’ll be in the mood to read and I want to have options. (Then there’s the fact that I’m usually delusional about the amount of studying I’ll do on a trip.) Then when I find myself hauling ten books in a suitcase that I never bothered to look at, I wonder just what I was thinking when I packed!

LT is the only service that grabs data from sources besides Amazon. They take catalog records from the Library of Congress and hundreds of other libraries, so they have better coverage when it comes to older materials and non-English materials. Also, Shelfari has the unfortunate reputation of tricking its customers into spamming their entire address books with invites.