The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare, Unread Edition

When I was a high school student, I used to hang around in the school library. It's a smallish library with books that were mostly textbooks. Uninteresting. But there was a cabinet that contained great books that still looked so new with crisp pages including a collection of books titled The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I wanted to pick up those books and read them but the glass cabinet was padlocked, with a sign that read: For Teachers Use Only. I bet those books remained unread for a long, long time since I left that school. What a waste.

Filling Empty Book Shelves

If you have books lying around the house that you want to sell for cheap, please drop me a message kapanalig_sa_wala-at-yahoo.es (replace -at- with @). Please send me the titles and with the price and the conditions. I prefer books on history, Filipiniana, literature specially Philippine literature, philosophy, and art. No romance books please. I will be in Manila from time to time, I can contact you for a meet. No rush.

Books On Origins

The books currently in my small shelf. This section is where books on science and religion are lumped together. Due to lack of space (space is a premium in Tokyo!) and from time to time I ship my books to the Philippines such that they don't accumulate here. Shipping them over has its downside and upside. The downside is that I cannot just pick up a book if I like to. The upside is that I get to keep them even if they are so inconvenient for me. I'd rather ship it than give them to others here as what is customary once there is a space crunch at home.

I just got news that the first shelves in my home mini-library in Laguna are almost done. I hope they look good. My shelf here is one of the cheap assemble-yourself type so there's not much joy looking at the books since the shelf is so ugly. I may get the chance to come home yet this New Year's and I am excited with the book shelves. If it looks good, I'll take a picture and post it here.

The small purple book above is the Jefferson bible. A curious book the verses of which were based on the Christian bible and compiled by Thomas Jefferson, handpicking the non-supernatural portions of the four gospels and arranging them chronologically as he thought the events "happened". The huge book is Stephen Jay Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I still have to read it.

The Origins Library

The Origins Library. That's how I fancy the name of my future self-sufficient library that will house, hopefully, a comprehensive collection of great books on origins, most specially, human origins. I have started to collect the books by the greatest evolutionary biologists like Theodosius Dobzhansky, Sewall Wright, R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, Motoo Kimura, John Maynard Smith, Stephen Jay Gould, Ernst Mayer, George Gaylord Simpson, Richard Dawkins, and of course Charles Darwin. A lot of things have been discovered, new ideas introduced, and old ideas refuted since Darwin. Evolutionary theory has undergone many revisions in the course of the last hundred and fifty years that Darwin's ideas are not sufficient to understand evolution in its current incarnation. I would like to get as many books as possible that contributed immensely to the current understanding and/or consensus on evolution as well as the current issues and debates peripheral to the theory. Aside from evolutionary biologists, I would also like to include books by Frans De Waal and Jane Goodall of which I have a few already, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas. I will post the list of books in a website I would like to build in conjunction with it for purposes of "advertising" it to the community. I would like it to be accessible to college students taking up biology as well as to teachers of science. I am still thinking of how best to manage it since the books are not so cheap specially if preference is given to hardcover editions over paperbacks to make them last longer.

The Origins Library, founded 2007.

Freethought discussion group

I will be experimenting on organizing an informal group of freethinkers or with people interested in what freethought is about. When on vacation in the Philippines, I spend most of my time in my hometown in Laguna so I think it's better to have a local group there where it will be more convenient for me. So far, I have received no email. I will keep the thread alive in case somebody notices, or maybe it will take off one day. One day may be months and months ahead. I'll be waiting. Anyway, my library is still not setup. I would like to have a plan of the library to be built soon. I will be stuffing it with books on history, philosophy, science, and religion. I envision a cafe+library style venue where there are few coffee tables next to the bookshelves. I already shipped many books but they are languishing in the stockroom waiting to be re-discovered. I will make sure the library will be available by the end of this year.