It wouldn't work for me any more. Too many of my books are audio books and ebooks these days.

Of course. But did you throw away your old favourites?

I'd just post a picture of my Kindle and one of my local library. *shrug*

whatevs man

see how I know colloquial american english? I'm so proud

Ill add it to the Photo Friday themes list for a future date. Thanks jouke.

Of all the colloquialisms, you couldn't go for dames and mooks, maybe something about a toolshed or barbeque?

We may need a thread for this.

Also, there is no way I could photograph and annotated all the books here in photos, as I've only put most of them away fairly recently and mostly had to double them up on the shelves.

How about, say, five books, or a stack?

My main source for learning English used to be 1930s british novels. So I sounded rather archaïc.
But I've read quite a bit of metafilter in the last years. I'm rather self conscious though about using those expressions. Since I don't know anybody who'd talk like that.
Having a consistent 'register' when using a foreign language is really quite difficult when you're not surrounded by people speaking it.

You don't need to annotate all your books.
Just thougt it'd be fun to point out some anecdotes about books in our book cases....

I haven't thrown any old favorites away . . . but I have donated and gifted quite a few.

Oh, Jouke, there's a colloquialism I beg you not to pick up: don't give in to the gifters. Keep giving, it's superior in every way.

I say we post video or audio of different expressions.

Most of the time, I don't care if someone gets the joke or the reference or terminology, etc. and usually don't have to because it seems for the most part that the delivery is enough to carry the necessary minimum information.
More often than not, I'll use something only a specific audience would fully recognize, as the read of reactions is by far the most entertaining aspect of the interaction.

This is all outside the fact that most of the time I do use very short simple words in a very specific order in random face to face interactions and often still have to repeat myself. I have found copping an accent will actually make things faster and easier than conforming.

I'd love to see everyone's bookcases. As much for the way they are arranged etc as for the books themselves.

Jouke were you taught English by British or American teachers?
When I learned Spanish, I wasn't taught vosotros ( familiar plural you) because it's only used in Spain.

Do you mean familiar we? Because I've been trying to make a point of knowing it. Hedging on the th/z though.

Geez, my teacher is Spanish and this hand out is a mess.

I don't blame her, so much as the enforced curriculum.
There's something heartbreaking in that look that says, "They are making me do this like this."

Ha, Hugh, I did notice the mefi grammar 'controversy' of to give vs to gift.

brujita, in high school our teachers taught British English. But of course a lot of movies and tv series that we saw were in American English. So I think most Dutch people speak a hodge podge of both.

I can see how Mexican Spanish vs Spanish Spanish is very much comparable to American English vs British English.

I must admit I'm usually more formal and refer to giving, not gifting. I like "regift," though, which is a great word with some ironic connotations. And in the context of my sentence, I liked the parallelism I used.

We are not judging bw.
Just raising our eyebrows to ostentatiously not say anything.

No debate on "gifting" compares to the gerund abuse of "journaling."
It's called writing, you plebes.

Thanks for being gracious about it, bearwife. I realize I was being critical but you took it well. I can be a noodge sometimes but it's usually just an excess of enthusiasm. Thanks again.

I think they use "vosotros" in Argentina, too. But that's hearsay and I'm no expert.

At the London meet up I attended fvw spoke
English with a British accent and atrazine spoke it with an American one. They are both Dutch; A was concerned that he not sound like Bush the Younger (he didn't).

They say vos in Argentina.

That's interesting: in José Rivera's "School of the Americas" there's a scene between Che Guevara and the Bolivian schoolteacher Julia in which he insists she's teaching grammar wrong after she left off "vosotros," to which she responds, "Normal people don't use vosotros." And he says, "They certainly do! They say it in Argentina," to which she counters that they aren't in Argentina. Maybe it's an archaism, or something ginned up for dramatics. It's also possible José is wrong about Argentine grammar; after all, he's Puerto Rican.

My friend and colleague from Spain (the one you met, HJ) who teaches high school Spanish in the Bronx argues all the time about "correct" Spanish grammar/vocabulary with students who are mostly Dominican or Puerto Rican. We're very good friends, but got into a bit of a dispute once about just what does it mean to be "correct" in this context and who gets to decide. The students, for instance, used a different Spanish word than she did for "garbage cans," of all things, and they were upset when she insisted they use her (presumably Spain's) version. She got mad at me when I suggested perhaps the students were right in this case, that language, as it travels (and as she knows, of course), and over time, changes, and those differences are not "incorrect," but a natural and legitimate variation. Needless to say, she didn't agree (I love her, and she's an incredibly intelligent and talented teacher, but she can be a bit rigid sometimes). I've had similar arguments with people about English, of course. Yes, you want to be able to write/edit using the accepted grammar/rules of the time, but I think there should be an acknowledgement that such rules/customs are a lot more flexible and changing than any fixed "correctness" can account for, IMHO. (Texting, I notice, also seems to be leading us back to an ancient biblical Hebraic elimination of vowels. :)

In terms of bookcases, we have five and a half very overflowing bookcases, and that's after thinning out about half our collection. Most, I must say, are Jon's. (For better or worse, I'm mostly eBooks these days.)

How about instead of making a formal Photo Friday thing with this, instead we just have a thread where we can post whatever we want about our books? Pics, texts, video, reviews, anything. If it gets enough interest time-wise, we can make it sticky in the sidebar, so everybody can find a spare moment.

I second Ardiril's idea! Is that a friendly amendment for you, jouke? (Also, you may lower your eyebrows and speak now . . . )

I still hope we post our shoe collection pictures sometime on a Friday, speaking of jouke-inspired photo themes.

I love this idea, and I don't have a Flickr account, but I'm so enamoured of my bookshelves that I would love to figure out how to post annotated photos of them. So I am voting in favor of any sort of yay-book thread.

I know nothing about Flickr. Is it possible to set up a group account?

ardiril, I don't know that much about flickr either. I only revived my account recently after the site received a big make over.
I checked; you can create groups. They can be public-invite only or private.

Btw for photo editing I discovered Darktable. It's an open source clone of Lightroom and works wonderfully. It's available for linux and os x.
So I run it within a virtualbox vm.

Ugh, you mean the big bookcases, the pile of books on the piano, the case of books that's used as a coffee table, the rack of books on the wall, or the bookshelves in the bedroom?

I have. A lot. Of Books.

Wait?! YOU HAVE A PIANO???!!!