A wonderful essay about the importance of how you arrange your books. Only obsessives need apply. (Thanks to Iain, for the link!!)
An excerpt:
It’s bad enough having huge gaps in your reading, even worse in your interests, without declaring it in your bookshelves. I imagine the volumes being given the once-over by one of the more waspish professors at UCL who once took me to task, rather randomly, for not being Scottish. I see their contents being analysed scathingly by a brilliant Oxford don who objected to a bunch of flowers I gave her one Christmas because she liked her flowers growing in the earth.
The absences, of course, are as shaming as the small areas of speciality. Why the nine biographies of Judy Garland? Why every book by Henry James but not a word of Hemingway? Why four annotated Tennysons? Why no Virginia Woolf? If only I could argue that the books I have simply represent me; but in that case how to explain the glut of Dryden? And where are all the embarrassing titles? Surely when none of those are on view something in the household must be seriously amiss.
Ha ha!! I love that! I feel the same way about my library – although my library is something I am, indeed, obsessively proud of. Hmmmm … only one Faulkner book on the shelf. How did THAT happen? And then I have 7 books about Cary Grant … hmmmm. Interesting. The books reveal my interests. My personality. My passions. I have three shelves of biographies of Founding Fathers, and books about the American Revolution. I have three shelves of biographies of various entertainers. I have probably 10 books on Iran alone. I have every collection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. hahaha It kind of says it all, doesn’t it?
I know that the first thing I do when I go into someone’s home … or, no, not the first thing … but one of the things I love to do when going into someone’s house for the first time is to peruse their bookshelves. The books people buy, the books people choose to have on display, tell you a lot about who they are. And I admit it: if there are no books, I notice immediately. To quote Miss Clavel: “Something is not right!” The lack of books comes across as a silent scream.
Here’s the breakdown of my library (in my small small apartment). Come to think of it – that post already needs to be updated. I have since acquired another bookshelf which is in the kitchen (bringing the total # of bookshelves in my kitchen to three!) – and I have filled that bookshelf with all of my books on writing, my compilation books – best essays of 2004, 2005, etc. – all my essay books – Orwell, Didion, EB White … And then, randomly, the bottom shelf holds all of my Cary Grant videos. You know, a city girl’s gotta store shit where she can!!
I notice what a person puts on their bookshelves too. Another interesting aspect to that is to what degree that person has actually read what they are displaying. I’ve met people who have large libraries and they freely admit they haven’t read everything there but you can tell by talking to them that the books are more than just show.
On the other hand, there have been times where, in casual discussion, it was pretty clear that their books were really just props. Some people are honest about that and some aren’t.
There have been some books I have bought and tried to read, but it ended up being incomprehesible. Prime example of this is a book I bought called The Right to be King – which I bought in that period of time when I was snatching up every history book on 18th century England that I could find – thinking it woud help put me in the minds of a people ruled by a monarch, rather than a president.
No such luck.
As for gaps…mine would be Grand Canyon in scale but for the hardcover books that I have on display. I own a lot of paperbacks though and dont really keep those in sight. I have a LOT of books on ancient Egypt (including Budge’s translation of the Book of the Dead, complete with hieroglyphs), every volume of Patrick O’Brian, several of the newer books by the various punditry, a SIGNED book by Barbara Olsen (may she rest in peace, Sept 11, 2001), a few of the classics like The Odyssey, a very large tome on the Benedictine Rule of Life (plus lots of supplementary books on the subject) and a mishmash of other passing interests, not to mention the Timothy Zahn Star Wars Continuing Universe trilogy.
Dearest: Michael Kimmelman has an essay in his new book which tells of a friend of his who lived in a studio apt. on upper east side, who turned his book case into a statement on his life–when a new book was added, an old one needed to be withdrawn. To be added the new book must have added some new dimension to his psyche.This fellow died young, and Kimmelman noticed that the man’s father displays the bookcase, books and all, as a memento mori. love, dad