But what a strange compendium they are, now that I'm away from them.
Jonathan Clements, author of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis: Adventures in the Anime and Manga Trade, a compendium of insider writing about the industry, agrees that forays into broadcasting anime in the UK have been spotty.
This is where he began composing the book that would become known as Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) – a compendium of poems on satanism, lesbianism, sex, death and revolt which would eventually be prosecuted on grounds of blasphemy on publication in 1857 (six of the poems remained banned until 1949).
Ask Torontonians to name their favourite purchase from the Honest Ed's department store, and you rapidly compile a compendium of kitsch to fascinate any anthropologist from the future.
It's a compendium, in the mould of earlier works like Fox and James's The Complete Chess Addict or Hooper and Whyld's Oxford Companion to Chess; it's the sixth and last nomination for our book of the year award.
Rachel Jones is a teacher and author of Don't change the light bulbs: A compendium of expertise from the UKs most switched-on educators.
He shows how London is not one city, but a compendium of many little cities: "It have people living in London who don't know what happening in the room next to them, far more the street, or how other people living.
The World Bank the main source of economic data on developing countries—has thoroughly overhauled the presentation of its main statistical publications, to great effect".World Development Indicators", a compendium of developing countries' economies, has been radically redesigned.
What emerges in his book on "The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen" is a fascinating compendium of the ways in which both the idea and the reality of invisibility have resonated in human minds over the centuries.
That is the puzzle on display in "Education at a Glance", the annual research compendium published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based think-tank for the industrialised world.
The Northern League, to take the extreme case, seeks to separate the dynamic, capitalist Italian north from what it regards as the sluggish, dependent south.As a compendium of useful information on the new wave of populist politics, "The New Politics of the Right" is invaluable.
