{"id":3960,"date":"2005-11-26T23:05:48","date_gmt":"2005-11-27T04:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3960"},"modified":"2022-10-09T21:04:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T01:04:15","slug":"arranging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3960","title":{"rendered":"Arranging Your Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

A wonderful essay about the importance of how you arrange your books<\/a>. Only obsessives need apply. (Thanks to Iain<\/a>, for the link!!)<\/p>\n

An excerpt:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Here’s the breakdown of my library <\/a>(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!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[644],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3960"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178825,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions\/178825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}