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Welcome to my humble library! These pages are not for general use and only the person interested in the Art of Magic may find material of interest. As you may have noticed, a new table appeared at the left of the screen, with a list of categories. I divide my books in categories, about their major content. Some books are in categories which you may find "wrong" or not agree upon. That is totally your problem, as this is, at the end the day, my library. Please note that my library contains, at the moment, 1,398 magic books and these are all listed in the pages you can access in the menu. Every category has one or more listing pages (containing max. 25 books) and by clicking on the book's title in the list, a pop-up window will display, with further information about the book and MY PERSONAL NOTES on my copy. The list is mostly for my own use and it contains a thumbnail of the book's cover, the author's name (real name, not pseudonym), the title, the year it was published, the language of the text (I can read English, French and Italian, but I also have books in languages other than these), a sub-category and my personal "vote" on the book. Not every book has a thumbnail associated, just some of them. Books without a rating image have not yet been read. This may be due to many reasons: the book is of no interest to me (perhaps it was in an auction's lot where I was interested in something else), or I am waiting to find another title to do some work on the book, or I simply did not have time yet to sit and read it! The books are sorted by author's last name and title. The sub-category is mostly arbitrary and similar books may have different sub-categories. My "vote" reflect my impressions on the book. Another reader may find a book which I consider "mediocre" as worth his/her interest. We all have different opinions and we are at different places in the long magic way: my 25 years in magic and my exposition to thousands of books made me approach a book's value in a different way that - say - somebody just starting in magic. The value of the book refers only to the contents: this list does not show any information about monetary value of my books. Please note that, at the moment, no book from my library is for sale. I don't exclude the possibility to sell my books at some stage, so, if you are interested in one (or more) title, please let me know by sending an email to and I will record your interest, giving you first refusal if I will decide to sell my books. The "Notes" column (in the extended details page) may be controversial, as it reflects my personal comments on my copy. Perhaps this information is of interest to nobody else but me, and many times it is not a critical comment on the book, just a description of the condition of my copy. I'm thinking to remove the notes completely but as the generation and upload of this information is not a quick task, I will wait until the next major upload. I'm fully aware of many syntax and grammar error in the notes, but when you have to describe 200 books in a session it's no surprise you may hit the wrong keys. This list contains only BOOKS: my library has 300+ volumes of magic magazines which have not been catalogued yet. To catalog a magazine is a different task from cataloguing books, and it is something I haven't undertaken yet. You may find in the list, however, reprints of full volumes of some magazines (like "Apocalypse") to prove I am not so strict in my cataloguing routines. My books list is managed with BookCAT 8.00.01 a wonderful program to organise your library, developed by http://www.fnprg.com, which I wholeheartedly recommed to all book lovers and collectors. The HTML pages have been exported directly from the application using some XSL scripts I configured . The database stores for each book also other information, but I did not export it, as I don't want to make all my data freely available on the Internet. I intend to update these pages from time to time (when new books get added to my library), but this will not be at regular intervals. If you want to be informed when the list is updated, please send an email to and I will inform you when an update is available. This list has been generated on June, 11th 2006 and the number of books per category is as follow:
I hope you will enjoy browsing my library. Please note that all content is copyright © Marco Pusterla 2006 and cannot be reproduced without prior written consent. |
