What do your bookshelves look like?

[Agnes]

What kind of books have got their place in your house? And which ones are most dear to you?


Since I had to pick only 25% of my books to put on a shelf due to lack of space, my bookshelves really have become 'me in a nutshell' :) Lots of poetry, books on herbs, minerals and recipes, fantasy, sci-fi, a bit of 19th century literature, loads of scientific stuff (philosophy, psychology, theology), and some Allende, García Márquez and Shakespeare (as well as a few Dutch ones).

A lot of books have special meaning to me, but very dear to me are a book written by a friend and two volumes of poems. I've been involved in the writing process of the book on body images and am so proud of the wonderful way my friend has expressed herself! Every time I see that book, I smile :) The first volume of poetry is written by Wyslawa Szymborska and is called 'The moment' (original title: Chwila), the other is written by a Dutch poet, Hans Bouma, and is - roughly translated - called 'Love for life'. Both poets are masters in saying many things in very few words and paint situations and emotions like they were words in the first place. Beautiful!

So, how about your books?!

[NinasSpaceChild]

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b159/Dylansimone/books.jpg

Those are some of my favourites which I keep next to my bed.

Other than those there is a real mish-mash of all kinds of books from cookery books, music collections, biographies, poetry anthologies, classics, history books, encyclopedias. In all there are 5 differens sets of bookshelves upstairs which I need to orgainse into some kind of order someday.

[Margay]

There are way too many and they are way too crowded.
They are filled with:

*The usual classics
*Virginia Woolf
*Martial Arts
*Antiquity
*(Lesbian) detectives
*Feminist textbooks
*Disability studies textbooks
*Poetry
*Dictionaries
*Philosophy
*History
*Archaeology
*Play-related books
*My childhood Enid Blyton-collection
*French, English, Greek, Latin and some Dutch literature

I had to draw a line somewhere, so lately I try to only buy books written by women.

[RedjackRyan]

Sheesh.. what isn't on my bookshelves might be easier..

Mostly Sci-fi and fantasy between the two of us. My wife trends towards lighter feel good fantasy and Trek books, my stuff tends towards the darker sword and sorcery, Horror, and geek sci-fi..

Heinlein
Asimov
Lovecraft
Clive Barker
Stephen King
Robert Silverberg

we also have an extensive Egyptian book collection ranging from travelouge style books to the complete translations of the Book of the Dead.

Too many cookbooks to name.. Encyclopedias, Dictionaries.. General Reference books.. Scottish History, an extensive collection of books on the Carribean 15th thru 17th centuries. (Pirates dontchaknow!) How-To books on home repair.. all my leftover AD&D books and other gaming stuff.

Hundreds of little figurines and models are tucked into the nooks and crannies.

[Dar]

Well let's see.....the two built in floor to ceiling bookshelves in our front room are filled with my collection of Oz Books, my Anne McCaffery Dragonriders series, mine and Peggy's Tolkein and Chronicles of Narnia collections, and many other hardcovers of authors who we particularly love enough to collect, including but not limited to Rita Mae Brown, Ellen Hart, Sarah Waters, Nicola Griffith, Vonda McIntyre, Helen Humpreys, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series, Rob Sawyer, Heinlein, Fannie Flagg and Jean Auel. Plus children's books I collect, mostly ones I loved as a kid and snatch up if I find them in used book stores and new ones my friend who owns a bookstore and used to work for Scholastic Books steers me to.

The two bookshelves in the guest room are filled with various assortments of scifi fantasy, our books of cartoons by our favorite cartoonists, like Patrick McDonnell, Lynn Johnston and the late great Charles Schulz, and other fiction and nonfiction that we like too much to have stashed away in the storage bins in the garage (yet).

In our bedroom we have two long low shelves beneath our windows, two high and about six feet wide which hold our lesbian fiction collection, another four foot high, five shelf job that holds our favorite paperback scifi fantasy women writers series, like all things Mercedes Lackey, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover collection, Anne Mccaffery's other series, and some others who I'm blanking on. Then of course there are the several stacks on MY side of the bedroom that I have not yet read and which I don't have shelf space for.

The office has a tall shelf filled with travel books, language books, instructional books, including a couple how to play guitar books, and many text books.

Oh and the TV room has a book case with cook books and books that have been loaned to us.

There are at least a half dozen boxes of books in our garage destined to be carried off to the used bookstores or the local library when I get around to it, and several plastic bins filled with books we can't bear to let out of our lives, even if we never read them again. I think we're due for another big purge sometime soon. Peggy has this wacky idea that she'd like to put a CAR in our garage by the time my folks come to visit in August.


Love this thread, thanks Agnes!!

[Eva]

First of all: my bookshelves are messy. Every once in a 5 year I dust them and try to arrange the books. But usually it doesn't work for long. Within a week my books are everywhrere again: next to my bed, on the tables, on the couch, etc. Very messy, very me.

The contents: there are Dutch, English & Hungarian books up there. Science fiction, fantasy, lesbian SM porn (you asked!), books about lesbian and SM history and their place in society, dictionaries in Dutch, English, Hungarian, German & French, literature, books full of recipes, Star Trek books, old studybooks that I kept. Things like that.

Eva

[MadMusician]

Even though I have always been a reader - I have been reading between 1-4 books a week for the past few months. I feel like I want to read everything!!!

Stephen King resides in the place of honor, conspicuously occupying almost 3 shelves - along with Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, John Saul, & Anne Rice - completing the HORROR section.

WAR & REMEMBERANCE section (mostly WWII related – Europe.)

On the NUMBERS shelf is math, probability, statistics, accounting, calculus books.

OPRAH book club has its own shelf. I kept them because I would read again or loan/give away.

If they wrote it I want to read it – FAVORITE AUTHORS – James Michener, John Irving, Amy Tan, Herman Wouk, Isabel Allende

REFERENCE – dictionary, bible, thesaurus, etiquette, Gray’s Anatomy…

A little section of COOKBOOKS, healthy eating and those stray 3x5 recipes cards.

2 shelves of books that I MUST READ are waiting patiently – from Sophie Kinsella to Toni Morrison to Douglas Adams.

PAPERBACKS I want to keep – Tolkien, Catcher in the Rye, transcript from the movie "Billy Jack".

The top has some BIG books

The bottom shelves are filled with ALBUMS.
69

Books-in-process on end table in process of being read… The Sun Also Rises (I just can't get thru this book!!!!), The Bluest Eye (One of favorites - my sister is reading and I am keeping pace with her), Outlander (just starting).

Books on sewing machine that need to be returned to the library – The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini), My Antonia (Willa Cather), A Sudden Fearful Death (Anne Perry) and Sam Harris' The End Of Faith - Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason.

I have a bed with a bookcase headboard but that's where I keep my Dr Who videotapes.

I have a bookcase next to the piano with sheet music books (and a box of "old" sheet music next to it). In the piano bench. I have a signed (by composer) of "AT SEVENTEEN". :D

And I just grabbed The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri) out of another box of ‘books to be read’.

[GodSistah]

http://godsistah.com/StudioChevereWall3.JPG

~Andrea~

[hoops]

Not having lived in my own place in more than two years, and moving around a lot even then, from ny to utah to ny to cali, to ny to florida to colorado to ny to texas to ny to florida and back to ny again, i've had to slim down my collection a bit, as a matter of fact i don't even know what books i actually own anymore tho there are some. i used to have bookshelves like all of you once upon a time in a life i lost years ago. but i did not just discard my books, i gave some to libraries, i gave others to people who I knew would love them and still others are being traded around the coutnry from friend to friend and so on. I have a friend in utah who is a librarian and she and i trade books a lot. I also can't read the way i used to, my concentration can be the pits from my illness and my meds. everything from medical journals to dr seuss have graced my life and my book shelves and the gift of them remains within me even if i've forgotten the names and a few of the words. someday i may have book shelves again, but i'm not sure. I know i'll buy books, but i;ve learned to let them go to wherever they are called. I forgot to add, the one type of book that i do not own ,never have an i hope never will is a cook book. i'm sorry my rudie friends, it's not that i don't love food, i just don't wanna read about it and i've always had a problem with following directions to get soemthing to taste the way i want it to.
peace
hoops

[Pesky]

I have almost every book I've ever bought, going back to the first book I learned to read, "One Fish, Two Fish". I have books on virtually every subject, but my favorites are:

Presidential biographies
Upton Sinclair collection
1st edition "For Who the Bell Tolls"
"The Power of Womanhood" pub 1896
Kennedy assasination

I value books above almost everything else, yet this is the first time I've been asked to describe my bookshelves.

I love this board!
Pesky

[Amy in Vermont]

...not me. Actually, I love to read, I just don't often have the time... but in the last week, I have read 2 books, and have one more for the trip east.

About 10 years and 5 moves ago, I cleaned out alot of stuff I knew I would never read again.

My book collection includes:

Text books in chemistry, math, statistics, anatomy and physiology, folklore and psychology.

Computer reference books.

The entire works of Dick Francis; most of Patricia Cornwell; a variety of other mystery writers.

All of my mother's cookbooks and art books.

The Book of Lists, I, II and III (I went to school with one of the authors.)

A wide variety of books on horses and riding.

But then, I work in a library, so really, I have 10's of thousands of books at my fingertips!

A

[Agnes]

Cool, guys! :D I knew Dar and I couldn't be the only readers on this board ;) :D

Damn, Ben, that's quite a variety...

[moe75]

Our bookshelves are in storage at the present moment and all of our books are in boxes here & there. But we have among them:

Dickens (about 6 to 7 titles)
Mark Twain (anthologies plus the usual)
Cormac McCarthy
Jack Hodgkins (one of our more underrated authors)
Mordecai Richler (was the best satirist in the world, we miss him terribly)
David Adam Richards (Maritime gothic)
Annie Proulx
Hemingway

Anne Tyler
Ian Mclewin
Alice Munro (every published work)
Jane Austen
George Eliot
Thomas Hardy
Solzhenitzen
Charlotte Bronte
Poetry volumes by various

Non fiction
Biography of Teddy Roosevelt
Collected letters of Edith Wharton
Collected letters of Browning and Barrett-Browning
Bright and Shining Lie
Price of Power - Kissinger

I really should be cleaning up more. I envy your initiative Amy in cleaning up. I just can't get seem to get around to it :)