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Novels may be classified in this manner:
(a) Those that are best-sellers, (b) those that were assigned to you in school, (c) those that you feel you have already read even though you have not, (d) classics, (e) those that are not read as the author intended, (f) those that many intend to read “some day,” (g) fantasy trilogies, (h) those that are otherwise not flawed, (i) those that were written on manual typewriters, (j) those that can be judged by their covers, (k) those that were padded by their designers during production to appear longer than they are, (l) those that are only called ‘novel’ by courtesy, (m) those that have been condensed by Readers Digest, (n) those that look well upon the shelf.
(o) Those you have read so many times that you don't need to read them again to experience them.
(Am I really first?)
(p) those you hold in sch a way as to hide the title and cover art
(q) those that you don't read on the bus unless you're not embarrassed by snorting and guffawing in public
(r) those so bad you wish they would end so you could hurry up and start the next
A reader's whinge: How often do you pick up a book on an airport bookstall with a splash on the cover saying "Her New Worldwide Bestseller" or some such thing? Obviously 'bestseller' is the most important feature of a book for the publisher and the author, but I the potential reader, who the blurb is supposed to attract, don't care how well the book sells - I want to know whether it's a book that I want to read, and 'bestseller' doesn't tell me that, specially as every book seems to be one.
There should be a subcategory for "(g) fantasy trilogies":
(g.1) five-volume trilogies
and I'd like a subdivision of "those assigned to you in school":
(b.1) those that were assigned to you in school that turn out to be much more comprehensible and interesting once you have gained some life experience, and thus should really not be read by anyone under age 30.
For me, this included Jane Austen's works.
Where would you file "Those which were not edited, as the authour deems them perfect as written" ?
Where would you file "Those which were not edited, as the authour deems them perfect as written" ?
(s) those that were written as revenge for not being recognized as a genius by the people on whom the book's characters are based
(t) those that are read solely to make the reader appear more interesting than s/he is (for various values of interesting)
(u) Those that are part of a very long series and are so undeniably bad that you're only reading it because you've read the other 20+ books.
Those which appear (like me) to be saying the same thing repeatedly?
(epsilon) Those which are read in public solely to make other people think you are erudite. [possibly a subset of t]
(lamed) Those which, when being read in college, seem to explain the mysteries of the universe, but which when read after the age of 30 are revealed to be navel-gazing twaddle.
Tracey S. Rosenberg @ 15: oddly enough, my first choice of word was "erudite"; I only changed it to "interesting" because it was broader. GMTA, I guess!
Don't we forget the larger class? Those that were never written. Thank God they take so little space.
A subfield of Giancomo's 18:
Novels that were sent in "idea" format to Neil Gaiman, and are waiting for him to get around to writing them. Because, you know... he has to eventually! I mean, I sent that idea 4 years ago, all he has to do is flesh out the details! Seriously, it couldn't be easier.
And don't forget those that involve dinosaur sodomy.
'Those which were being planned in some detail around an imaginary Caucasian ministate recognised only by Russia, and were really coming together nicely around about 7 August 2008,' he said bitterly.
Those that were going well until an incident among the author's acquaintance made it impossible to finish on the grounds that no one would ever believe the novel was not based on the incident in question. (Actually in my case it was a stage play.)
(v) Novels that were adapted from popular movies or TV shows.
(w) Novels that are about me. (Or perhaps "Novels that are not about me.")
Pete@23 You beat me to it! I caught a smaller article on this last night, then this morning a friend in the UK posted a full article with the line about being published by AuthorHouse.
Clever, but deceitful PR.
C.1: Those you feel you have not already read, even though you have.
I'm having this experience with The Hollowing by Robert Holdstock. I picked it up thinking I'd never gotten around to reading it, but after a couple of chapters I started getting serious deja vu. Now that I'm halfway in I'm certain I read it when it came out. I'm not sure why I should have forgotten it.
Those you like so much, you lend them to someone (because "it's SO good, you HAVE to read this") and never get them back... so eventually you're forced to re-buy them.
(n) those that look well upon the shelf
What if they dislike the shelf and therefore look askance upon it? Is that a sub-category, or something entirely different?
And if they look poorly rather than well when they are upon the shelf, should we call in a book doctor?
(v) Those that upset readers who wish they hadn't sympathized with the main character.
Ken MacLeod @ 21
That's really bad luck; I'm sorry to hear that. Seems like the boundary between SF and alternate history keeps coming at us faster and faster all the tim.
#29 :
With a subcategory: (v.1) novels which make the reader sympathize despite herself with some very, very upsetting characters.
Thinking about C.J. Cherryh, here...
xeger wrote @ #8:
Where would you file "Those which were not edited, as the authour deems them perfect as written" ?
Left Behind?
(x) Those that from a long way off look like dinosaur sodomy ...
(y) those with first lines so bad you had to stop reading them immediately because you knew not a single editor bothered to touch them... an example, from Grisham's King of Torts. To wit:
The shots that fired the bullets that entered Pumpkin's head were heard by no less than eight people.
Yech! This, of course, is what I'd expect from a lawyer for whom the word "report" probably has only one meaning: legal brief.
And since when do "shots" fire bullets?!
Grisham, whose books have been recommended to me by any number of people, including friends who are studying to be lawyers, has caused me to formulate what I like to call THE GRISHAM PRINCIPLE, which was perfectly stated by Sloane decades ago:
Editors (. . .) know that (. . .) people who are really readers want to read. They hunger to read. They will forgive a vast number of clumsinesses and scamped work of every sort if the author will delight them just enough to keep them able to continue.
— William Sloane, from The Craft of Writing
"Those which were not edited, as the authour deems them perfect as written"
Those which were so imperfect, as written, that all the actual published prose is that of the editor, rather than that of the author.
Two more categories:
Those that are sold only in airports.
Those that are improved by translation.
z) Those that one reaches for in times of illness and despair. (All works of PG Wodehouse go here. Betty MacDonald, too.)
(aa) Those with swastikas on their covers.
(bb) Those that sound so interesting you mistakenly order them twice through Amazon.
(cc) Those that in another era would've been known as "comic books."
(dd) Those that you hurl across the room with great force.
(aleph-null) Those which you loved as a child and which you save or buy for your children, among which
(aleph-null+1) some stand the test of time and child, and are loved in the next generation. Fox in Socks and My Side of the Mountain
(aleph-null+2) some don't. Heidi
Lola #37: Those that are improved by translation.
I'm inclined to think that this category contains all books.
Sarah @38 - many people I know include Dorothy L. Sayers in that category.
James @39 - Dave Barry wrote something to the effect that airplane crashes are terrifying in part because so many passengers are reading such novels, so swastika-covered novels are hurling about the cabin.
(ee) those that exist only so the two main characters can have unbelievably wonderful intercourse.
(These are usually labelled as 'romance', although there isn't much actual romancing in them.)
(ff) those which have chapter titles.
(za prime) Those which cause the reader to throw up.
re #46: those in which the chapter titles are better than the actual novel.
Novels that few have read, but everybody knows their story (sort of) because of the movies made from them and/or inspired from them.
Novels written by friends.
Love, C.
James @ 41 and Fragano @ 47: my two favorite classifications. Especially if they are given as gifts by aunts and uncles who just KNOW you're going to love them.
(gg) those which were written by my enemy, and have since been remaindered, thus pleasing me greatly.
(alif) Novels with footnotes; among which:
(alif prime) Novels whose footnotes have footnotes. Among which:
(alif bis) Novels whose footnotes are having a chat.
(gg) Those placed upon a shelf labeled "Wanted on Voyage".
(/gg) Those books you feel you can do without for some period of time, to the point you box them up and they go somewhere, to be retrieved later.
Nicole #52:
Oops, labeling collision. I'll take "hh" and "/hh" instead unless somebody's just nicked them.
Surely also ii) novels not included in this classification.
(ii) Those that are included in one of the categories from the categorization (not dissimilar to the present one) from the first chapter of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler;
(/ii) Those that are begun but not ended in Calvino's novel (necessarily including the novel itself).
****
If anyone wants to read the classification, it's about halfway through this excerpt from the first chapter (describing the protagonist -- you (or You?) -- walking through a bookstore).
Sorry ajay; I wrote that while you were posting. So if you want, reclassify mine as (jj) and (/jj).
(ff) those that have no cover
[Along with its complement (j) this forms the set of all books.]
Damn. That'll teach me to read new posts when I preview. So that'll be (ll) then. :)
ff.1 Books with Chapter titles, and quotes at the beginning of each chapter
ff.1.a Books with Chapter titles, and quotes at the beginning of each chapter, where the quotes are more clever than any other writing in the book.
ff.1.b Books with Chapter titles, and quotes at the beginning of each chapter, where the quotes are more clever than any other writing in the book, even though the quotes are made up by the author, too.
Not to mention (with apologies to the ghost of Jorge Luis Borges):
(*) Those written with a fine paintbrush, (**) those belonging to the emperor and (***) those included in the present classification.
(gg) Those which you buy, or are given for Christmas, but never get around to reading until it's 10:30 at night, you've finished reading your last book, and you're not yet sleepy. The next thing you know it's the last page and the sun is coming up.
(ggsup1) Such books, often not sold as works of humor, which have a bit in the middle that you hit about 2:45am and laugh so loud you wake the house.
Irene Delse@63: Also, how about
**** Books not included in this classification.
There, that ought to throw a nice monkey wrench of logic into the works.
Mine is also mislabled, shall we say jj and JJ sub one, then?
Also, It says much about the truth of 44 and the state of my health, the weather, and so on that I am reading Gaudy Night.
JESR @66: I am wearing my University of Oxford sweatshirt in solidarity.
(Okay, mostly I'm wearing it because I was chilly this morning. But I still offer solidarity.)
mm) Those written by undeniably enthusiastic amateurs, leaving the reader wishing the editors had been a little more professionally demanding, and
mm-sub1) Those that do not remain in the house but are immediately boxed up and sent to friends with less discerning palates or at least younger friends with greater needs for books.
n0: the copy of the Da Vinci Code that you honestly cannot remember ever buying or reading;
n1: books purchased in order to improve one's standing as a Bookshelf Bingo player*;
n2: the copy of The Handmaid's Tale you bought, correctly surmising that you were in some sense deficient as a human being until you had read it.
*this is a subset of the well-known "books bought to make the owner seem more interesting/intelligent" category already cited. Bookshelf Bingo is my name for the game any literate person inevitably plays when in the home of an acquaintance for the first time and left alone for a minute; that of scanning the bookshelves and judging the owner on the contents. This is an important part of my mating ritual.
Just thought of another important category:
(oo) Those which are so well-written you have to buy more than one copy in case one book falls apart.
(pp) Those which are so well-written that one begins an exhaustive collection, running to several editions of a series.
James #41: Such as The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
(α) Books you have read while fighting off the flu, making your memories of the book seem fevered and hallucinatory.
(β) Books you are sure were written while the writer was fighting off the flu, making the prose seem fevered and hallucinatory.
(γ) Books that seem to have been copy-edited while the copy-editor was fighting off the flu, making the spelling seem fevered and hallucinatory.
Books of which you read a dozen even-numbered pages over your neighbour's shoulder on a coach and then had to buy to find out what happened next.
(hay) Books you have read only the reviews of, and know that you will never ever read the book or anything by that author, for that matter.
¹ Novels you loan to your younger sister in the hope to make a convert to your favorite author, and which she returns promply with scathing sisterial comments.
² Novels you loan to your younger sister in the hopes of making a convert, and consequently never get back.
³ Novels your mother think you will like (if only she remembered you're not 15 any more...)
{n+1} Quasi-technical books vaguely related to your professional field, with no actual professional value, gifted by well-meaning relatives.
{n+1sub1} Books of this type you nevertheless do not quietly dispose of because you know the relatives in question really are well-meaning.
Books that you put down, pick up and realize you have already read that sentence. realize you have already read that sentence.
qq: books bought on the recommendation of (1) personal friends or (2) Internet acquaintances ***cough-Fluorospherians-cough*** because they sounded too fascinating to pass up and which are now double-stacked on bookshelves or congregated in teetering piles on numerous flat surfaces, threatening the owner's immediate demise should s/he be nearby such a pile in an earthquake.
(Lucky for me my house is built along the lines of the Rock of Gibraltar...)
And the inverse of SeanH's n1:
o1: Trashy novels that you enjoy, but keep out of sight so visitors to your home do not learn of your fondness for vampire lesbians.
Those that belong to the Emperor;
embalmed ones;
those that are trained;
[those that are about] suckling pigs;
[those that are about] mermaids;
fabulous ones;
[those that are about] stray dogs;
those included in the present classification;
those that make one] tremble as if they were mad;
innumerable ones;
those [written] with a very fine camelhair brush;
others;
those that have just broken a flower vase;
those that from a long way off look like flies.
Novels that explain that they are A Novel in the title.
(vav) those that you read because your father said it was the worst book he ever read.
Jon Meltzer #33
(x) sounds like Dinah Shaw shows to me.
James D. McDonald #41:
(dd) Those that you hurl across the room with great force would surely be a sub-category of kk: Weapons-grade books (Nicole TWN #65), or should that be a new category?
(rr) The door stoppers that scream out, "Never mind the quality, feel the weight."
① Novels you read on a dare
Books that you loved as a child, forgot about, were reminded about, and have purchased as an adult, in order to have them on the bookshelf for random children who wander into your house.
(ch) Those that smell as a book should.
(beith) Those that do not possess all their pages.
(beith-prime) Those that are inexplicably missing a small number of crucial pages right at the end of the book, or at least after you have been thoroughly hooked.
(th) Those that have been annotated in pencil by an indignant yet erudite previous reader.
(ng) Those over which one has gained fast friendships.
(ng-sub-aleph) Those over which one has repudiated friendships or all acquaintance.
(ng-sub-alfred) Those over which one has fought battles.
SeanH @69:
I love the phrase of Bookshelf Bingo and have never heard it before.
But of course I play it (and so do all my friends), and my bookshelf drives them batty. So now I am very pleased to have a precise name for this type of social game.
I nominate the category of "books other people hide under their beds when company is coming over, but which I leave displayed on the bookshelf"
Without Googling for it, who can name the intersection between Debbie's alef-null and Fragano's za prime, famously reviewed with the phrase "Tonstant Weader fwowed up"?
Wesley @ 26: That would be deja lu.
Wesley @ 26: That would be deja lu.
#90: I expect everyone here knows: "Pooh Corner".
#84: Fast 'n' bulbous?
Way too many classifications of online fiction to fit on a sensible web page (read down the left hand column). And this covers somewhat less than a myriad novels; I haven't yet categorized all the fiction in my online collection, let alone what would be in a large library.
I'm planning eventually to make a more sensible bit-by-bit browse for big categories like "Fiction", but for now it can be fun to read down the whole list and try to think of what books might lie behind the categories. (Can you guess a novel that might be under "Foundlings -- Fiction"? How about "Feral dogs -- Fiction" or "Fugitives from justice -- Fiction"? And that's just from the F's...)
Jim's list sounds a lot like how I classify porn stars.
#94 puts me in mind of some beautifully absurd library catalog subject headings:
Convenience foods -- New Jersey -- Drama.
Exercise -- Equipment and supplies -- Drama.
(Clue: these are for the same drama.)
n+a) Those bought because you loved a different book by the same author but are really quite terrible.*
n+b) those which are magazines
n+c) those which have been poorly bound
n+delta) those which are about the military
n+expo) those which are about the military but were written by people with no military experience
*Inspired by the collected works of Alfred Bester
() Books that precious and are out of print, and therefore will never leave your bookshelf/reading place.
(()) Books that, when culling the herd, you realize that not only did you really not care particularly much for it and cound happily get it at the library should you want it, you catually have it in hardback and paperback.
(((three wine boxes of books were culled last night, and are on their way to the used book store/thrift store. we still do not have nearly enough bookshelves for the books that are still in boxes that we still really want )))
Counterpoint to eric @98:
Books which you have replaced several times over the years, because you have read them, maybe even a few times, and then decided they were not worth the space and given them away or sold them, only to suddenly be struck with a burning need to reread them.
Special subcategory of this class is books you have purchased several times over the years because you've been persuaded to loan them to someone who then keeps them.
+ books that you waited n years for reprinting, or for a copy to show up on the used-book market.
(*) those which are actually collections of short stories cunningly marketed as though they were novels, thus earning an asterisk (*) by their entry in the classification of novels
Those that are written "in the best-selling tradition of" some other author.
Those whose nominal nominal author contributed nothing but an "outline" that would (and did) fit neatly on a bar napkin.
Ken, #21, oh dear. I'm sorry.
G D Townshende, #35, I'm reading Storm Front, a Dresden File book, for bookgroup on Saturday. It's awful.
Books of which you have many paperbacks so you can give them to mundanes and convert them to SF. (Willis' Impossible Things)
Novels you'll never read again and are just taking up space, but are signed so you just don't think dropping them off at Goodwill is right.
Jon Meltzer @ 93
"Tight, also."
(1 + √2 i) Novels whose plots are circular, ending where they began.
{foo} Books by authors you no longer care for, but which were inscribed gifts from sorely-missed family members.
(One of Anne McCaffery's Talent novels, now recognized as drivel, but which was a gift from my mother when I was in junior high. I just re-discovered it whilst unpacking books this weekend...)
Marilee @104: I'm withholding my judgment on Storm Front until I've finished it. I'm currently a little more than half done.
_____
Oh, my! O.O I can't believe all that's been posted since I last popped in. So, I'll just add this...
A novel, written by a friend, given to you as a gift, which, after reading it, you realize is just plain bad, which is why your friend was published by a small press, and not a commercial (but at least it wasn't a vanity press). It is also a novel which helps you to realize why your friend complains about commercial publishing all the time... because none of them would publish your friend's book, GRISHAM'S PRINCIPLE notwithstanding.
+ Books which fill you with a burning urge to fix the plot by rewriting them yourself.
+1 Books which fill you with a burning urge to fix the plot by means of a daydream wherein your self-insert will be able to command the characters' attention long enough to lecture them on the value of common sense.
+2 Books which fill you with the burning urge to burn them because you can't think of a way to fix them even with the assistance of Mary Sue.
Another...
Novels you own which you had signed by Poul Anderson (or some other equally famous author) while at the WorldCon in San Francisco (or some other location) mumblety-mumble years ago, all the while thinking to yourself, "I wouldn't mind it if people brought me their copies of my books to sign."
{foo} Books by authors you no longer care for, but which were inscribed gifts from sorely-missed family members.
(One of Anne McCaffery's Talent novels, now recognized as drivel, but which was a gift from my mother when I was in junior high. I just re-discovered it whilst unpacking books this weekend...)
Jeff LeBlanc @ #102-103, sounds to me like you've run across latter-day Robert Ludlum and Alistair MacLean books.
{foo} Books by authors you no longer care for, but which were inscribed gifts from sorely-missed family members.
(One of Anne McCaffery's Talent novels, now recognized as drivel, but which was a gift from my mother when I was in junior high. I just re-discovered it whilst unpacking books this weekend...)
Crud, triple-post, spread out. Sorry, everyone.
The original Borges piece from which this is so beautifully adapted (http://www.multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html) gets quoted in computer science books as a perfect example of what a well considered object inheritance hierarchy isn't (or perhaps the quality of work one might expect to get from a freshly graduated programmer).
I recently found another nice example of literature in the service of computer science:
LISP (the computer language) is fiercely self referential and full of nested hierarchies which contain themselves and so on, and is prone to making peoples' minds go *POP* when they try to think too hard about it. I was reading a page on LISP the other day, and it quoted one of my favourite poems from the wonderful Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry (which, as I think I've said before, contains not so much "nonsense poetry" but "poetry which appeals to Steve").
---
Warning to Children
Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
[...]
Full poem at: http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/warning.html
Sam Kelly @87 -- (beith-prime) Those that are inexplicably missing a small number of crucial pages right at the end of the book, or at least after you have been thoroughly hooked.
(beith- sub-prime*) Those that are explicably missing a small number of crucial pages. It is reprehensible, but understandable, why someone ripped out THOSE poems in the anthology.
*no, not books about mortgages
e (the number not the letter): Those which you are glad to read while in hospital, because they take more than a day to finish, being a thousand pages long, but which you wouldn't give houseroom if there was anything else you could do.
#117:
(beith-sub-sub-prime) Books obviously written by con-men, hawking "debt cures" to people caught in mortgage crisis.
Related to eric @98 & JESR @99: Books you buy at a second-hand shop or library sale, even though you already have a copy (said copy is in a box in the attic, and it is easier to buy the book again on impulse to re-read it, than it would be to dig the first copy out of the attic).
In the spirit of the thread:
(xx) Those written by Making Light commentors . .
(yy) those written by Making Light lurkers
($_) Those books you try desperately to 'forget', but are continually returned to you by well meaning others.
(zz) Ths wrttn b Mkng Lght trlls
Those of which you buy another copy every time you find one at the thrift store because it's a book you like to lend people and you expect high attrition. (My personal example of this category: How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back.)
(yuzz) Those that are read in a sing-song voice to children.
(ichi) Those that were read so often as bedtime stories that one can recite them 25 years later.
(++x) Those containing knowledge of the non-euclidean depths wherein dwell the Great Old Ones; reading these books will drive you mad.
(1..n) This is just to say
I have categorized
the novels
that were on
your shelves
and which
you were probably
haven't read yet.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so disordered
and so numberless.
(ia) Those that are read in a sing-song voice to Great Old Ones.
(c++) Those that have polymorphism, abstraction, inheritance, and encapsulation.
(fthaghn) Books that must be chained up and kept in a proper Library.
(yan)Those which drive the reader mad metaphorically, with anger.
(tan) Those which drive the reader mad actually,
(tan-i)by means of their rugose covers and italics of no earthly shape;
(tan-ii)by means of prions in the paper;
(tan-iii)by means of the Langford Visual hack;
(tan-iv)other.
(tethera) Soothing books.
The Great Old Ones have come for four of us within twenty minutes... save yourselves... do not read the books...!
(fethera) Those which drive librarians mad. (As for example: Those that are a funny shape, apt to fall to bits, or exceedingly heavy; very expensive and have a new edition every two years, loopy but inexplicably popular, excellent but subject to frequent challenges by concerned parents...)
Σ: The New York and San Diego Necronomicons
α books which you don't actually need to own, because you basically have them memorized
β books which you are waiting until you forget enough of them to read with pleasure again
γ books which you are afraid to pick up again, because they can't possibly be as good as you remember
Venn diagram:
(Books by Tolkien [Books with maps on the frontispiece; books with family trees, lexicons, and pronunciation guides at the back) Books that are shameless rip-offs of Tolkien]
#134:
Why did Lovecraft find rugose things so horrifying, anyway? Tortoises are rugose (and also squamous). Tortoises are cute.
Further subcategories of Giacomo's 18:
() Books which were never written, but will be someday
(+) Books which were never written and never will be
(++) Books which were never written and both will and will not be written someday
(++)sub-1 Books which owe their future existence and nonexistence to a division in quantum universes
(++)sub-2 Books whose future existence and nonexistence causes a division in quantum universes
(++)sub-3 Books which simultanously will and will not exist in the same quantum universe, but only in an impossible one
(n+1) Books which were copied by someone who found the text and passed it off as his own work, but which, after publication, were then dropped into a time warp to be found by the original plagiarist, and thus exist solely as the result of a causality loop. (In honor of this year's Hugo winner for Best Dramatic Presentation (short form).)
(kav) Neat books that you read once and have never been able to find again.
(kav.1) Neat books that you read once and have never been able to find again - because they apparently never actually existed.
(♳) Books that you remember clearly, but have never read.
There's clearly overlap between 143 and 144
143 ⋂ 144 = Books you have both read and not read and remember clearly, though they don't exist.
143 ⋃ 144 = Books you have either read and not read, and may or may not remember clearly, which may or may not exist
42*pi: ones which you have outlined lovingly and in great detail but will never write.
Books you would like to have written
Books you like to think you would have written, if somebody hadn't done so first.
Books that, have never been written, yet *(make you) wish you had read them when you had the chance.
*(I first typed this one without "...make you...", which creates a whole new category of book...)
I see I am having trouble with basic grammar and punctuation today. :(
I hope what I meant is clear.
Giacomo@18:
Those that were never written. Thank God they take so little space.
Yeah, they keep those somewhere else.
Books that were read in hospital which were highly worthy of being finished once one was out of hospital, but which nonetheless never got finished because they kept reminding one of one's stay in hospital.
(Yes, I mean *you*, _Lord Valentine's Castle_.)
Related to Joann's @149: Books which you would have read/finished while recovering from surgery, had they been light enough to place on your lap without weighing uncomfortably on your surgical dressings. (I liked the chapter and a half that I read before I was hospitalized. The library wanted the book back, and I think I will let them retain all their copies of it.)
#82.a] Those whose titles suggest, without being too assertive about it, that they may be novels. Maybe. (Example the first: the Tem's The Man on the Ceiling)
#87.b] Those which are ARCs and may have lost the entirety of pages 85 through 130 into a leaf-consuming blob of black ink, but for which I would have finished reading Linnea Sinclair's Finders Keepers...
#125.c] Those of which you buy another copy every time you find one with cover art you hadn't seen before.
re: Wirelizard #108 and several following: I recently read McCaffery's novelette included in the Legends II anthology. It was a follow-up to the story of Moreta. It made me wince in deep, deep embarrassment for the author.
Books in your professional area which were written so long ago that they contain no (or almost no) information which isn't out of date, but which are beautifully written.
Books in your professional area which were written long ago and contain information which is still useful/accurate/informative.
Books that you wish to Ghod that you'd never written.
(wonder)* Books that when you start them they grab you and drag you into the story kicking and screaming and three hours later you finish it, realize you are panting, feel as if you'd helped the protagonist and are just as exhausted and a little bewildered at where the time went.
*I've had a frustrating couple of days. I'm not being patient enough to figure out the count.
Re. JESR @ 64
Books which contain one-liners which have you laughing out loud in public (and getting loooked at like you're nuts) but which you can't explain to any bystander without going into lots of detail about the whole book (or series).
@140 and 145:
Those that are in some sense true,
in some sense false,
in some sense meaningless,
in some sense true and false,
in some sense true and meaningless,
in some sense false and meaningless,
and in some sense true and false and meaningless.
And in some sense dinosaurian and sodomistic.
How could I forget?
jkr^ Books which your fifteen-year-old reads all in one great gulp, only to end up crying at the parental bedroom door, wailing "She killed him!
⊗ Victorian novels in which all the characters are dragons, thus making otherwise-implausible behaviour of the female characters a natural consequence of the biology of the species
⊕ Late-period Heinlein novels in which all the characters are robots, thus making otherwise-implausible behaviour of the female characters a natural consequence of the design of the species
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Books: Books which have minimal nutritional literary value, and which are not even good examples of their genre*, but which are none the less comforting to eat read.
Particularly applicable to books you have read so many times you know which parts you can skip because they are the author ranting/the author geeking about their favorite hobby/utter drivel/complete claptrap/boring/irrelevant.
*Yes, I use genre to describe food,
Comments on Classifying the Novel: