I have been off and on grabbing a stack of manga (and a few assorted trade paperback editions of other stuff) and entering them into a linux app called Alexandria. It's not perfect (in fact the current version seems to have a few stability issues -- however it only ever takes itself down, and seems to do so without taking out any records), but it has some nice features.

* I can do ISBN lookups, and if it finds the book it will enter in the details for me
* Including automatically snagging cover photos
* I can export the records in a variety of formats including on huge web page or a csv file.
* It will spot attempts to enter duplicate records
* Like most other such apps it has a book loan feature that will let you see when and to who you loaned a book
* You can give books an 0-5 star rating
* You can also record random notes for any particular book
* In theory I can enter a books information manually in a form, but that's one of the unstable parts right now
** However, the record for each book is stored as a YAML formatted text file. Which means that when I discovered that Runaways volume two in paperback does not exist according to the automated Amazon lookup, I was able to take care of the issue with a text editor, a single cut&paste from an existing file, and a few quick edits.

Here for example is what I saved to create the entry:

--- !ruby/object:Alexandria::Book
authors:
- Brian K Vaughan
- Adrian Alphona
- Jo Chen
edition: Paperback
isbn: 0785114157
notes: ""
publisher: Marvel Comics
saved_ident: 0785114157
title: "Runaways Vol. 2: Teenage Wasteland"

Yeah, the penciler and inker get recorded as authors. The program's original intent was for recording regular books not comic books (of whatever genre, style, or national origin).

The records being formatted plain text means a low barrier to playing around with the database. It also means that if I decide to switch to another program it shouldn't be too difficult to transfer the existing records. One of the other major linux book collection programs looks to be Tellico, which will happily slurp up Alexandria records. Or I could decide to roll my own php/mysql web app and without too much trouble pull over the records (including cover images).

But in the end just getting a decent list of what I have will be enough of an improvement. It's rather annoying to go into the bookstore and stare at the shelf thinking to myself, "Okay... Just what volume of Bleach did I leave off on anyway..."

I know some of you out there are keeping track of your books on your computers. May I ask what software you're using? I have a few hundred several hundred maybe a few thousand books that really need to get inventoried. I've spotted a few duplicates and in the last two months ended up buying at least one duplicate for certain and have another that may or may not be a duplicate.

Maybe if I can get them organized I can even in the process divert a few into a give-away or sell pile.

Everyone seems to be doing this, and I was curious enough to go look. I understand it's based on some books, may have to check them out...





So, anyone around here read the books and have an opinion?

The promo commercial for the Dresden Files television program on SciFi has been put on YouTube by some kind soul...

Dresden Files TV

Most nifty!

Gah! This is driving me crazy. Somewhere I ran across a book where a character had something declared "Tippy Top Secret." I seem to recall that it was a female character, who was exercising some newly received authority. My sister (who has a good memory for this kind of thing) thinks I read her the scene around Summer 1997.

Now that it's popped into my head I'm going bonkers not being able to track down this reference. Even using google hasn't helped (why Google, why fail me now!), nor has using Amazon's book search, so apparently they haven't scanned whatever book it happens in.