Clara Raubertas // Freelance Web Design, Web Development, and Web Consulting // Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts clara raubertas design. development. consulting.

As a sort of self-portrait, I decided to stack up and photograph all the books I have in my house that I’ve read for the first time since moving here (in August 2006, so this is just about 3 years of reading).

Fiction

Nonfiction

All the books, stacked up evenly

Click to get huge versions, where you can zoom in and see the titles and authors clearly, or comment if you’re curious about any of them!

I realized I missed a few — like Hackers and In The Beginning Was The Command Line — and some, like Feminism is for Everybody, are loaned out — and though I can’t think of examples, there must be books I’ve read without owning — but this is the bulk of them. As I suspected, I’ve been reading a lot more nonfiction than fiction, even when you count Gravity’s Rainbow.

Some friends of ours who had originally planned to get married in San Francisco this fall changed their plans at the last minute to get married in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, so Jesse and I hopped a plane for a whirlwind vacation — well worth it! Neither of us had seen the Northwest before. We only had a day and a half in the city, but we made the most of it with whirlwind tourism; we walked and took buses to a couple of different neighborhoods, climbed a water tower in a park to get a great view of the city, drank delicious coffee, and kayaked on the sound. Seattle struck me as a very chill city; everyone there seemed to be doing their own thing and not really trying to be “cool”, but in a friendly way. (Several strangers struck up conversations with us during our short time there — you don’t get that in New England!) Oh, and the weather was gorgeous — apparently the famed Seattle rain is mostly a fall/winter/spring phenomenon.

The wedding itself was on a lake on an island off the coast — an extremely picturesque setting. Several of our college friends were there — I love that even though we live in places that are far away from each other, we still find ways to meet up and spend time together a couple of times a year. And the ceremony was beautiful and inspiring. Thanks, Laura and Jesse F.!

Then last weekend, we biked to Government Center (it’s always fun to bike downtown on a nice day), took the train to the Orient Heights T stop (on the blue line) for the first time and went to Constitution Beach. The beach was pretty full of a wide variety of people; we sat on the sand and read and watched planes take off and land (the beach is right across the water from the airport).