The magical Internet

I've waxed ecstatic to my knitting friends about ravelry.com, a phenomenal new Internet site. Its ingenious design will meet any and all organizational needs for knitting projects, stash and supplies, and more! You also get access to scads of patterns and insights from other knitters!! There's inspiration, solace and a supportive community -- whether you've hit a snag, or want to browse through patterns. And lots of fellow knitters who have posted their projects online, allowing you to see their choices of colors and yarns, check out their WIPs (works in progress) and completed work. The site has been a godsend for me -- I've been trying out different ways of organizing my knitting kingdom for years, without landing on a satisfactory working system. On Ravelry, it's like a skilled, smart, practical cadre of knitters caucused, mapped out all possible challenges and wish lists, and then came up with an easy to use, comprehensive system that adjusts to be as low-key or detailed as you want.

As someone who loves books even more than yarn, I've been yearning for a similar site to catalogue my library. The last version I used for my 1,000+ volumes was on a 1990's version of Filemaker and, while all the necessary fields were there, it just felt like a big ole list. Well, wouldn't you know, Ravelry handed me the solution to this dilemma as well. It's called LibraryThing and it is a work of art. And genius. It is the book database with pixie dust, anticipating your every need and displaying your book covers in beautiful, living color. Of course you can display them by spine -- but really, that's so 20th century. It's been fantastic and revelatory to be entering (gulp!) 30 years of books, and to find out what a touchstone they are. I've always been able to create a compelling reason to buy any book, anytime, anywhere -- and buy I did, all through my 20's and 30's. My frequent visits to Manhattan always included a tour of bookstores -- Upper East Side, the Village, midtown, Upper West Side, used bookstores near Columbia, the Strand outlet on the edge of Central Park -- and I have many, many volumes that accompanied me on the return trip to San Francisco. The two years I lived in Northampton, I scoured the town bookstores every weekend, and those purchases too, take up many shelves. After living in the Bay Area for decades, I've amassed loads of books -- bought in Marin, the City, Berkeley, Menlo Park and Palo Alto. All these have been in vertical stacks or on horizontal shelves, so I've known in a disconnected way that I owned them. But entering them -- and seeing their familiar, memory-laden covers -- now they've come to life. The novels and literary criticism I purchased in midtown NYC the summer before my senior year, to prepare for my honors thesis. The Iris Murdoch novel I bought one Thanksgiving in Nantucket, while hanging with Victoria and Jeff. Buying Night and Day, the one Virginia Woolf novel I didn't have, while lazing the day away in Berkeley, with the boyfriend Susie Q. dubbed "the cowboy."

Paging through these books, these dear, but forgotten friends, also reminds me of all the departed bookstores where I've shopped -- the iconic and beautiful Scribner's on Fifth Avenue; the Classic Bookshop on 48th and Avenue of the Americas, around the corner from my dad's office; Coliseum Books on Columbus Circle, one subway stop away from my dad's office on the local; the women's bookstores in San Francisco's Mission District and Manhattan's Upper West Side; the original Browser Books on upper Fillmore, where Becky and I lingered for hours in the upstairs used book section. I think I bought all my Barbara Pym novels there, and my Amanda Cross mysteries. The Rizzoli on Sutter Street, West Coast cousin to the still intact 57th St. store in Manhattan, which was where I bought Natalia Ginzburg for Betta. The musty bookshelves, chock full of finds, at the two used book stores in the Upper Haight. And A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in Opera Plaza, where I always bought my guidebooks before a vacation. Equally beloved are the London bookshops that yielded the prized Virago and Penguin editions I brought home in the 80's, when a Penguin paperback could be had for the ridiculous price of 95p. And the dollar was strong!!

Memories, all vivid, now. All these books I've surrounded myself with, over all these years, are a record of where I've been, what I've thought and valued. I'm not one who's big on taking photographs to record experiences. But Library Thing, with all its tricks and treats, has brought me back to my books in a way that is both vibrant and tangible.