I’ve spent most of today re-cataloging my random scattering of books. It was getting to the state where piles of books were everywhere, waiting to be listed (to stop me buying duplicates because I can’t remember if I borrowed it or have it). Me being me, I’ve managed to lose the file that I made last time so I started again.

I use Tellico, which lets me type in ISBN/UPC and retrieve the rest of the detail from Amazon. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now and I think it’s fantastic. I didn’t get on with Alexandria (but I can’t remember why) and I couldn’t be bothered making my own, when Tellico (previously Bookcase) does such a good job.

I’m going to have to learn XSLT it seems, as I don’t like the reports that come out the other end, and they appear to be hackable, but not by mere mortals like me. Something for another day, perhaps. In the meantime, here is the new book list.

Looking again at Alexandria, its output is more along the lines of what I was looking for, plus it’s Ruby, which wins points automatically. I shall give it another try. But not right now. After a day spent hoiking books around, I’m all graunchy around the edges, so I shall now have a bath.

Rest easy, I am not temporally displaced, this is not an Easter reference. I merely found myself musing on the sudden insertion of both into my life and wished to comment thereon.

For the previous seven and twenty years of my life, I had remained blissfully unaware of the abundance of rabbits that grace almost every green place I visit. It is but a matter of months since I first became aware of such things, but now it is as if I have become strangely attuned to their presence, as I can detect them wherever I happen to cast my eye. I find also that it never fails to fill me with uncommon delight.

For the same length of time as I had been unaware of the rabbit population at large, I had also been largely ignorant of the pleasures to be experienced when immersing oneself in bonnets. In short, I am currently reading my way through the works of Jane Austen, with almost unalloyed delight.

I have so far, this past week, read Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. I have but recently begun Northanger Abbey, yet already I find myself vexed and unable to continue reading: it is endlessly apparent that the author is excessively sensible of her audience, and addresses them regularly and in a most familiar manner. I find that this distracts from the enjoyment I might otherwise be deriving from the work, and arouses great distaste that she is so forward in her speech to me; I much prefer not to be reminded with annoying frequency that I am reading a work of fiction.
The offence began almost at once, with an advertisement from the author in the opening pages. I detected a certain air of petulance about the complaints that the publishing of this work was so long awaited as to render the contents obsolete and quaint. I wonder what her thoughts would be on learning that her works are still admired some two hundred years later. Maybe this would have stilled her angry pen and therefore rendered me less irritated with her manner.