Doug Goodman

My computer takes forever to boot.  I think it has something to do with a. being a PC and b. me not knowing how to set it up better.  The result of the situation is that I have some time to kill while waiting for various beeps and grunts to finish their electric gurgle from my hard drive.  So I was walking around the room and my books caught my eye. 

Man, have I got a weird collection.  Not eclectic or refined.  Just odd.  My top shelf has my college books and some other things.  They make me sound smart.  If I was still single, I would probably show this shelf off to try to impress girls.  The second shelf (from the top) is devoted to childhood awards and toys.  (Does anyone remember what a Battle Beast is?)  The third shelf is apparently where I keep a lot of books that I personally like.  The bottom two shelves are mostly tapes, CDs, assorted manuals, and collections (Tolkien, Sherlock Holmes).

But back to that top shelf.  A closer look reveals (right to left):

Tomas Rivera's ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (In English and Spanish!)

Candide (True story - in high school we had to make food based on Candide.  I don't remember what I made, but somebody baked a cake butt.  No bull.  It was a cake made to look like a gluttous maximous.  I think they did a very good job.)

Cliff's Notes for The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost (I swear I only used them as a resource.  I did actually read those books.  They are among my favorites.)

Canto Al Pueblo (No clue.  It was college.)

The DaVinci Code  (Interestingly, this book is right next to...)

Paradise Lost (err...John Milton's Complete Poems and Major Prose, copyright 1957)

ICS 300 and 400 Training Manuals (I guess in case incident command needs to be set up in my study)

Blood Meridian (Totally badass book)

Dorling Kinderslety Handbooks:  Dogs ("The most acessible recognition guides")

Barron's Australian Cattle Dogs

The History of Farting (There goes my chance of ever looking refined)  (And thanks, hon.  I love this book.  Hilarious!)

A Beautiful Mind

The Canterbury Tales

Jurassic Park

William Wadsworth (Guarded by General Grievous)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (another favorite)

Asimov's Robot Dreams

Spenser's The Faerie Queene (I.  did not.  read.  the Cliff's Notes!)

Chretien De Troyes' Arthurian Romances

Lawman's Brut

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner RULZ!)

The Best of HP Lovecraft:  Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (with highlights for "In the Vault," "The Silver Key," "The Colour Out of Space," and "The Thing on the Doorstep")

Hank the Cowdog (still the best detective books ever)

and

Dinosaurs of North America by Helen Roney Sattler, illustrated by Anthony Rao (One of my first great dinosaur books, and one that filled the greatest requirement of pre-teen boys:  jaw-droppingly insane illustrations)

So that's me.  Somewhere between A History of Farting, some embarrassing Cliff's Notes on Paradise Lost, and Dinosaurs of North America, you get this weird writer/cadaver dog handler.  I like it.