A cadidate for a meme...

[fleetfootmike]

(after a conversation with Annie a while back, and a recap this weekend).

Choose three books from your personal library that as a set of three would allow most of your friends to guess with reasonable certainty that they came from your house, and explain why if necessary. The aim is to pick books if possible such that any two of the three don't necessarily uniquely define you.

Black's Veterinary Dictionary
Programming Perl
Mick Fleetwood "My Life And Times In Fleetwood Mac"

Then choose three more that people would be surprised to find on your shelves (Terminal damage to your street cred is optional).

Mick Foley: "Foley is Good" - volume 2 of the biography of the WWF/WWE wrestler
The SAS Survival Handbook
Writers and Artists Yearbook 1993

Comments

[djbp.livejournal.com]

interesting collection of titles...

[oreouk.livejournal.com]

This is a cool idea. I can imagine running a quiz at a filkcon based on peoples' entries in this meme, especially the first half. It would have the interesting side effect of confirming/denying peoples' belief as to what books would identify them :-) I might actually breach my usual anti-meme rule for this one.

[rickbooth.livejournal.com]

The first three definitely do it for me, I'd have picked chez Whitaker with no trouble at all. The first two picks in the second category did surprise me, but why's the writers and artists yearbook a surprise?

I might join in on this if I can think of any surprising books I own...

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I could lay my hands on items from both lists...

I suspect the point about the Writer's and Artist's Yearbook is that it is so old, and out of date.

Actually, I may be mistaken about the above -- I used to have an old W&A yearbook, maybe not 1993, but I may have actually thrown it out.

(Which suggests a more difficult quiz -- which three books do you regret getting rid of?)

[grey-lady.livejournal.com]

Interesting - and darned difficult if you tried it from fiction!
Our list came out as:
- Network Intrusion Detection: An Analyst's Handbook
- How to Speak Minnesotan
- AD&D Dungeonmaster's Guide

The three most surprising might be:
- The Big Book of Brewing
- Magic and Medicine of Plants
- The Koran