I participate in LibraryThing’s Tuesday Thingers group–a weekly blogging exercise. This week’s question:

Last week I asked what was the most popular book in your library- this week I’m going to ask about the most unpopular books you own. Do you have any unique books in your library- books only you have on LT? How many? Did you find cataloging information on your unique books, or did you hand-enter them? Do they fall into a particular category or categories, or are they a mix of different things? Have you ever looked at the “You and none other” feature on your statistics page, which shows books owned by only you and one other user? Ever made an LT friend by seeing what you share with only one other user?

I have 26 books listed in LibraryThing that are listed by no one else.

These fall mostly into the following categories:

1. Local interest and local history books. Especially prevalent is my fairly complete collection of Raymond Hatton (Central/Eastern Oregon scholar) and Eugene Synder (Portland historian).
2. Technical and local-interest wine/viticulture books.
3. I happen to own a partial set of Loeb’s Classical Library that are not of the common series, apparently. They’re from the 1960s. Virgil, Cicero, etc.
4. Obscure books in Russian
5. Some local hiking and adventuring books.
6. My 1672 copy of the Life of St. Bertran, in Spanish. I bought it in Barcelona, hand-entered the details in LibraryThing, and would be astounded if anyone else had it.

The Raymond Hatton thing is curious. David and I both have a mini-obsession with his books because they are histories and geographies of the areas of the state for which we have passion. The places where very few people live or go, so interest in generally minimal. One day, David and I were cruising the Millican Valley, Ray Hatton book on Central Oregon in hand, looking for property. We found a very choice plot and high-tailed it back into Bend to find the relevant real estate office. We found the right agent and sat down and shot the shit with him for a while. At some point we mentioned the book we were using to explore the area.

“Who wrote it?”

“Ray Hatton,” answered David.

The real estate agent leaned forward and handed us a business card: PETER HATTON. “That’s my dad,” he said.

Like I said, not many people live in Eastern Oregon.