Whenever I’m in a person’s home or office, I like to get an opportunity to check out the contents of their bookshelves. I think you can tell a lot about a person based on the books they keep on hand.
When I was young, my idea of utter affluence was a private library. I wasn’t sure I’d ever have one and even if I did I knew it was going to take a long time, but that was no reason to wait. I started collecting the books for my library in my teens. For years, I kept pretty much every book I ever got my hands on. Whenever I moved, my boxes of books far outnumbered my boxes of other possessions. I was always in need of more shelf space. I often used stacks of books as makeshift bookends.
Eventually I did begin to judiciously comb through my collection from time to time, and cart off those books that really didn’t mean much to me. Still, I retained hundreds of them. I just couldn’t seem to let go.
So what would you learn about me by browsing my bookshelves?
I’m afraid that the first and lasting impression is clear: nerd. Yes, I’m a nerd. I have my college textbooks. I have my high school annuals. I have collections of crossword puzzles, reference books, anthologies and sets bound in matching covers. I have the complete works of William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Carlos Castaneda and Ray Bradbury. I have three massive volumes of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I have art books, picture books, how-to books and humor books. I have a large number of hardbacks, but also lots and lots of paperbacks.
Some books are gathered in groups by author, like Stephen King and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Some are grouped loosely by form or genre: true crime, poetry, short story, science fiction. Mostly, though, they are a jumble of haphazard placement and careless combinations. The Satanic Verses sit beside We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Goode’s World Atlas is banked by Our Bodies, Ourselves and a Patricia Cornwell novel. In one stack is The Crying of Lot 49, Leaf Storm, The Lexicon of Stupidity and The Greening of America. Take from that what you will.
In one bookshelf I’ve gathered an eclectic collection of the books that mean the most to me, books that I’ve read again and again, and would never part with under any circumstances. But as for the rest, I’m trying once more to thin out the collection. I’m pulling books to donate and books to resell. No matter how many boxes of books I cart away, however, I’m pretty sure I’ll still have plenty left behind. And the ones that remain will still offer a fairly accurate picture of what I am: dusty, nerdy, wildly varied and oddly put together. But I hope they also give the impression that there’s an interesting story in there somewhere.