vun, two, three! three bats! ah ah ah

that was a real great game of quarters. was it quarters? i liked my rule too... although i can't remember what it was. something about saying matey at the beginning and end of each sentence? arrrr? methinks?

gabi was counting clothes in her post. now i want to count things in my room. there are some slight problems, in that it would take forever. especially the books, as books are stacked upon books that are in front of other books. let's start off with the easier to count items:

video game systems - i just set up the ps2 gamecube and xbox all today. i have my dreamcast, n64, super nintendo, and nintendo all under my bed. and i have a gba sp and a gameboy color. that makes 9.

televisions - 2. the little tv/vcr combo is sitting on top of my bookshelf.

bookshelves and media shelves (the ones that are dvd sized) - 2 of the big bookshelves, 3 smaller ones, and 4 media shelves. that makes 9.

it'll be easier if i divide my books up by category. i will also count omnibus editions as the appropriate number of books (e.g. a 3-book omnibus will count as 3). for some authors i may own more books than they have actually written because i buy the paperback first and then the hardcover when it's a bargain book.

books by:
orson scott card - 16
bernard cornwell - 14
philip k. dick - 5
david eddings - 19
terry goodkind - 10
nick hornby - 5
john irving - 9
brian jacques - 8
robert jordan - 12
stephen king - 19 (some extras from the dark tower, but a lot of bargain book crap too)
c.s. lewis - 26 (a lot of his books are small, narnia is 7, and i own 3 different editions of alice in wonderland + through the looking glass)
mickey zucker reichert - 7
j.k. rowling - 6 (extras of books 1 and 2)
r.a. salvatore - 16
j.r.r. tolkien - 9 (2 sets of the trilogy and a nice illustrated hardcover ROTK)
tad williams - 6

single series:
death's gate cycle - 7 (austin told me about this one)
a song of ice and fire - 4 (an extra copy of book 2)
his dark materials - 4 (an extra copy of book 1)
madeleine l'engle's wrinkle in time series - 4
prydain chronicles - 6 (an extra copy of the black cauldron)
the riverrun trilogy - 3
fred saberhagen's the book of swords - 7(these are pretty short individually)
diane duane's wizard series (not sure of the proper name) - 5 (an extra copy of book 1)
dragonriders of pern - 3
foundation - 3
dune - 6
anne rice's vampire stuff - 6

this is funny:
calvin and hobbes books - 10
copies of the indispensable calvin and hobbes - 3 (i don't know! i think i must buy it every time i see it on sale)

this is simply pathetic:
D&D rulebooks - 13
D&D campaign setting boxsets - 4 (dragonlance, 2 addons for dragonlance, and planescape)
books set in the dragonlance world - 89 (yeah. i had a boring childhood)
books set in the magic: the gathering world - 11
michael crichton - 9
john grisham (he and crichton are such trash) - 5

books that i can't or won't categorize. these could be:
real good books from real good authors that i don't feel like cataloguing. i'm sorry, good books.
from high school classes.
from ms. burns (english teacher) when she left the school and was giving away good stuff (1984! animal farm! shakespeares that i never read).
various gifts
books i bought off the NY sidewalk, in stores, or from the scifi book club that sounded interesting but weren't (shannara, recluse, thomas covenant the unbeliever, i'm looking at you).
stuff from the sci fi book club i forgot to reject (although this has worked out really well before, especially riverrun).
by my count, and i don't think i missed anything, and i definitely didn't overcount, there are 99 books in this non-category. and at the very bottom of one bookshelf, blocked off by another bookshelf creating an L with it, are a bunch of hardcovers from the scifi bookclub. i'd estimate 15-20 down there. i'd say i've read 1/3 to 1/2 of these.

i'm counting the calvin and hobbes books, but not any other comic books. i'm not counting the D&D campaign setting boxsets... wow i think i actually got everything. let's add it up.

187 in books by.
58 in single series.
10 in calvin and hobbes.
127 in pathetic.
~115 in other.
giving us 497 books total.

i haven't read some of the lewis, cuz i just got it from costco. and i haven't gone through k. dick's short story collections from front to back. but everything else not in the other category, i have read. since that's books owned and i have doubles, it's not quite the same as books read. but still, that's messed up.

i just spent one hour and ten minutes figuring this out. i can't believe i own 89 books from the dragonlance campaign setting.