Reading my friend Michael A. Burstein’s post earlier today, “Thoughts: The Last Shuttle by Isaac Asimov” not only got my thinking about the end of the manned U.S. space program, but about Asimov and what he would think about the situation today. That in turn got me thinking about how much he’d written and how many books of his I’ve read and tried to collect. And so, I present below a bibliography in pictures of the Good Doctor. Or at least those books that I’ve managed to collect and cram onto my shelves. All images are high res and you can click on them and be able to read most of the titles. (Unless they are otherwise obscured.)
We start (above) with the first shelf. I used sort my books alphabetically by author and then chronologically within an author, but as you’ll see, I never got them sorted chronologically after the last move nearly two years ago. So the Asimov books are all together, but pretty random. Probably the most interesting book above is Familiar Poems: Annotated. I own all of Isaac Asimov’s annotations, except Paradise Lost.
Next (above) is the first full shelf of Asimov books. Way over on the left in his book Quick and Easy Math. Way over on the right are a couple of his How Did We Find Out About…? books. I own three editions to Asimov’s Guide to Science. The one above is the 1972 edition, given to me as a gift for my birthday a few years back (because I was born in 1972).
The third shelf (above) has a first edition of Life & Energy (near the middle) and right next to that is a pretty rare edition of The Search for the Elements. I remember reading that book and thinking, if this was how high school kids were introduced into general chemistry, they might get a lot more out of it.
On the fourth shelf (above) you can see right off the bat three more of Asimov’s annotations: Asimov’s Annotated Don Juan, Asimov’s Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan, and The Annotated Gulliver’s Travels. You’ll also see one of three copies of the second volume of his autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, that I own. The one pictured here is signed by Asimov. (Another is a first edition and the third is a book club edition.) A couple of other rare ones on this shelf: a signed hardcover edition of Murder at the ABA, and a first edition of The Wellsprings of Life. And barely visible laying across the top of the books on the right is a first edition of An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule, which taught me how to use the slide rule that Kelly got for me a few years ago. (Most of those other books piled on top are book and magazines by people I know or ones in which I have a story.)
On the fifth shelf (above) you can see several of Asimov’s histories that he wrote for Houghton Mifflin. I believe there were fourteen of these histories and I think I own all fourteen, although I might be missing one. In the dead center is a first edition of Words from the Map and just to the right of that is a first edition set of The New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. The very last book on that shelf (hard to make out) is Animals of the Bible.
On the sixth shelf (above) you can see the two other editions of In Joy Still Felt, plus the 1984 edition of Asimov’s Guide to Science. Also on the shelf is Asimov’s book on telescopes, Eyes On the Universe and his second book on humor, Asimov Laughs, Again.
The seventh shelf (above) starts off with another of Asimov’s forays into biblical lore, this time with his book The Story of Ruth. You can see a couple more of the Houghton Mifflin histories piled on top of books in the center of the shelf, and at the very right is his quirky, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (as by “Dr. A”).
The eighth shelf (above) contains most (but not all) of the paperbacks I own by Asimov. Many are duplicates of hard covers, but some are editions that I could only find in paperback. These are stacked in two rows, with another two stacks of books behind them. And behind the picture frame visible on the right is an old paperback edition of The Caves of Steel signed by Asimov.
And there you have it: my bibliography in pictures of the Isaac Asimov books that I own. I haven’t read all of them, but I have read most of them and the truth is, I never get tired of reading his stuff.
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