I love love love this article about snooping through other people’s bookshelves. I so do that – it’s the first thing I notice when I go into a new house – and the books are always what I gravitate towards. Standing, scanning someone else’s books … so so revealing. Sometimes you can tell more about a person from his book collection than from conversation with him. The books reveal what you value.
From that article:
What interests me about other people’s books is the nature of their collection. A personal library is an X-ray of the owner’s soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.
An X-ray indeed. It’s kind of a naked experience – you are totally exposed when someone looks over your shelves. Funny – I brought up some random book on one of my many shelves during a conversation with Michael (it was relevant to the conversation, I was backing up one of my claims) – so I said:- “Yeah – so in this book I have called The Third Terrorist –” Michael interrupted, “Yeah, I saw that on your shelf.” Hahaha A little snooping was done obviously. If you’re a book person – you will know the pleasure.
Anyway – great piece.
On a similar note, I get nervous when I’m in someone’s house and there are NO books on display ANYWHERE. Makes me wonder if the people read. Yeah, I know – they could just be super-frugal and use the library. But I like seeing books in a person’s house, and it does give a hint at their souls.
I’ve even been known to scrutinize pictures in decorating books/magazines or on people’s blogs where there’s a bookshelf in the background, just to see what books are there. It’s funny – when I see the same edition of a particular book that I have (like the big old Heritage Press illustrated editions of classics), I almost feel like I’ve found a bit of a kindred spirit.
ricki –
I loved the bit in that article about Graham Greene who had almost no books because he was the kind of guy who just wanted to pick up and go (and he was the kind of guy who DID pick up and go) and didn’t want to be burdened by books.
But yeah – I definitely notice it when there are no books.
I’ve even been known to scrutinize pictures in decorating books/magazines or on people’s blogs where there’s a bookshelf in the background, just to see what books are there.
I do that too. One of the funniest moments was when I was watching the Monty Python “Spanish Inquisition” sketch for the bazillionth time. Terry Gilliam was carrying a book and I finally noticed it was The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, which I had once bought a used book store for a class I was taking. That made me love the sketch even more.
You don’t want to look at mine.
(I have a limited amount of space — and a raging case of OCD — so I only keep books that are “special” or that I know I’ll read again. Most of what I read comes from the library, which I consider my OTHER bookshelf.)
One shelf is 90% true crime books and books about the struggles in NI. My husband prays we’re never searched by the FBI; they’ll think I’m a terrorist or a serial killer.
The other shelves are murder mysteries mixed in with some parenting books. And the Harry Potter series.
Lisa – hahahahahahaha It is funny, isn’t it, to imagine what someone who completely does not know us, would think of our book collections – and the conclusions they would draw?
Mine would be:
So. This person is really into … movie stars … and … er … Saudi Arabia … also Charles Manson … and … teenage romance novels …
Uhm … what??
I totally judge people by the books on their shelves!
That’s why my embarrassing books are kept in the bedroom bookshelves.
I guess I’m just disappointed when I go to someone’s home and they have no shelves of books. I think, “oh. well, there are our limits.” because it tells me that there is a limit to how much I can connect with that person. Which is sad.
My significant other and I are planning to buy a home. One thing we absolutely want is a place that has the whole “den and a living room” because one of those rooms is going to be a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. No more stacks of books overflowing onto the floor because they don’t fit on the 5… no, 6 sets of shelves we have now. I will be able to walk into a room and be surrounded by my beloved books. I’m VERY excited.
…and if a stanger looked at my shelves they would think I had mutiple personalities. The range from old weathered classics (with notes and things slipped in amongst the pages – which I love, I always leave them in when I buy a used book) to art books to victorian novels to science fiction to non-fiction women’s studies to beat poetry… everything is in there. I’d be locked away if my psyche were judged on the coherence of my collection.
I think people would conclude I was a total escapist.
Else, why the full shelf of books JUST on the South Pacific, particularly books written by late 19th century types who went there as “beachcombers” or writers? (As opposed to late 20th century types who just went to find themselves, which somehow is less romantic).
And I have more Trollope (Anthony, not Johanna) than anyone I’ve ever met.
and I have just about every ‘chapter book’ I had as a child.
Or, they might conclude I was a highly ambitious sort (or a total intellectual poseur): I have lots of biographies, including one of Bach that seemed like a wonderful idea at the time, but it’s something like 827 pages of tiny type, and I’m realistically NEVER going to read it unless the end of the world comes and we all survive by hiding in our houses and eating up our canned food. I also have a copy of Tristram Shandy, which I’ve tried to read multiple times and bogged down. And I have a bunch of Heritage Press or Folio Press “classics” because, you know, you really SHOULD read them.
and those books sit there and silently reproach me while I’m watching “Dirty Jobs” or somesuch on the television that’s right next to the bookshelves. I probably should move that television so my books can’t see me cheating on them with it.
When we looked at houseplans for the house we wanted to build in our subdivision, the one plan that won out over all had a study WITH BUILT IN BOOKSHELVES.
Well, it also had an AWESOME kitchen, so you know where my OTHER priorities are…but the option to have this study made into a fourth bedroom was not even a question. We wanted that study. And my husband and I have STUFFED it full of books and knickknacks that are special to us.
On one shelf I have all the books I have ever collected on ancient Egypt (literature, a beaten up copy of Budge’s translation of The Book of the Dead, mythology and gods, language and heiroglyphs…am I ever gonna learn them? probably not!)…and several books on the Kabbalah (the real religious studies of it, not the watered down New Agey stuff that Madonna follows), books on sacred geometry and labyrinths.
I have a second shelf TOTALLY dedicated to Tolkien and all the Anything Books I have collected over the years, with all their scribblings and notes and ideas and stories that I jotted down, with a couple of diaries thrown in for good measure.
The shelf above that is All About Patrick O’Brian – I have been endeavoring to collect the hardcover books of the Aubreiad – thats how I indicate how much I love the writer/stories : I buy the hardcopy! Plus all the books related to them.
The shelf above that has all my political/current events/history books that Ive collected…Ive run out of room for those, however, and have had to sequester some of them in a cabinet that is part of the bookshelf.
And the shelf above THAT has my fav hardcovers of the SW books and other odds and ends of sci-fi and fantasy that really didnt go anywhere else.
And all of these sprinkled with a porcelain fairy doll with red hair and little wings, a stuffed bat (I love bats!) an Ashanti doll my husband gave me as a gift before we were married, the trophy I won for Best Actress at the community theatre for a part in To Kill a Mockingbird, a candleholder, stickes of incense, and a painted plaster figure of dragon laying on his back reading a book.
Whew! Sorry this was so long, but talking about this has only made me wish I had more bookshelves!!!!!
Heheheh, sometimes it’s not random AND not a matter of importance, but simply what books fit where. Tall books have to go on the larger shelves.
Oh I should add that on my desk, the books there are “Wellsprings of Faith” (three books by Thomas a Kempis, St. John of the Cross and St.Theresa of Avila), The Spirit of Seventy Six, which contains all relevant articles, letters and documents written before during and after the American Revolution, my battered copy of my Lab manual for Human Osteology (written by Dr. William Bass of the University of Tennessee) a copy of The Well Trained Mind, and The World of Jack Aubrey.
Ill stop now.
I love books and find myself doing the same thing in other peoples houses, only Ive never been that observant about whether or not they had books…but now that I think about it, the houses I felt the most uncomfortable in were the ones where books were not in obvious use. Somehow the connection becomes like that white snow on television. Just not there anymore…whereas with books, you can see where their passions lie and how curious they are about life.
I move that we all go over to Sharon’s house and poke about in her study. ;) … and I LOVE that Ricki still has those “chapter” books.
I still have worn out copies of “The Cricket in Time Square” and two copies of “The Secret Garden”, The Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Ende’s “The Neverending Story”, a collection of fairy tales put out by folio books, the first five Nancy Drews and a few Judy Blumes… Oh! and I recently re-aquired “the Hounds of The Morrigan” which I loved as a child. I think it’s good to hold onto childhood books – they remind us of how we first fell in love with books and I don’t think anything is ever as magical as those first books one disappeared into.
Y’all come on down!!!
We spent more than 18 months looking for a house in the area. Visited — no exaggeration — at least 100. (We have some special needs that builders old and new don’t address: no kids so no teeny bedrooms, one or two elderly relatives so handicapped-accessible a must, a real sense of how ridiculous a vaulted great room ceiling actually is, that sort of thing. We’re building, now.)
Of course, in 100 houses, we saw a lot of books, in a lot of offices, bedrooms and basement “decluttering” piles. Near the end of our search, there was one bookshelf in particular that caught my eye: it was exactly like my office shelf: same titles, same editions, same pattern of wear and tear. I frowned a bit, and pointed this out to my wife, and then we wandered back to the kitchen and the seller’s agent’s stack of fliers on the property, and deed/disclosure form.
Turned out we were in the house of a professor I had been hoping to work with in grad school. He didn’t get tenure, though, and had to sell the house off cheap. That was how I found out….
Pity, in several ways. But a very, very strange sensation.
Bill – holy crap – what an amazing story. Gave me a little bit of goosebumps.