Are You and Papa Hemingway a Match?

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!

Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 4/14/2008 9:43:00 AM

Now bibliophiles can compare their fave books to those of Ernest Hemingway—just the latest name to join the “I See Dead People[’s Books]” list, an online repository that attempts to catalog the complete libraries of history's more famous readers (see “Thomas Jefferson, Social Networker”).

Fans of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, George Amberg’s Art in Modern Ballet, and Ian Fleming’s From Russia, with Love may be interested to know that Hemingway shared their admiration for these tomes. But don’t think Pulitzer Prize-winning authors are what this catalog is all about.

Curious what Marie Antoinette perused while ignoring her subjects? Or what volumes rapper Tupac Shakur flipped through, perhaps as inspiration for “California Love”? Both their libraries are also available on the group’s main page on LibraryThing, an online book-cataloging site that launched in 2005 and claims to have more than 377,000 members, with more than 24 million books entered on the site.

Anyone can join LibraryThing—from individuals to school libraries—and catalog up to 200 books from their own library for free. Additional titles cost $10 a year, or a whopping $25 for a lifetime, according to the site.