Personal libraries

[pegkerr]

Jay Parini says here:

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.

My library says that I like SF and Fantasy, with a particular interest in Tolkien. I also enjoy 19th century British literature. I think, however, that it doesn't quite represent my most current tastes, simply because I ran out of room a number of years ago for adding new volumes.

We arrange our books in several different collections: autographed books are in the dining room (and this represents a battle lost: when we moved into our house, I told Rob I really didn't want books in the dining room. We now have four floor-to-ceiling bookcases in that room. Three are autographed books, both hardback and paper, and one is non-autographed general fiction paperbacks.) My office has my personal SF and Fantasy collection, as well as my 19th century multi-volume edition of the collected works of William Shakespeare, inherited from my great-grandfather. Rob's office has general fiction hardbacks. The living room has two collections: oversized and mysteries. Non-fiction has been banished the basement for lack of room. Our bedroom has Rob's SF and Fantasy, all paperbacks. The girls room has children and YA books. All collections are autographed, except for the girls' and nonfiction in the basement.

Then there is another tottering stack in a corner of the dining room, reaching almost to the ceiling, of books of every possible type which represent a catch-all pile of "books we cannot jam into the bookcases."

What does your library reveal about you?

Comments

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

What does your library reveal about you?

That I'm too lazy/disorganized to get my books out of the 40+ boxes they currently occupy and put them on bookcase shelves...

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Oh, lordy, this is the truth! Add all the stuff in storage, and you get a lazy disorganized packrat as my portrait.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

That I cannot say no?

Hmm. Embroidery/costume books mostly in the living room. Social history and poison books by the bed. Everything else all over hell and gone.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

That I like SF/F, followed by myths and legends, followed by histories. This is all on the four bookcases in the upstairs office that are 'mine'. Additionally, it shows that I prefer MMPB to any other size of book (I do).

Mike's bookcase in the office is full of textbooks, running books, bicycle maintenance books, and the odd book about sports.

Downstairs, the kitchen shelves hold all the cookbooks, including a LaRousse Gastronomique. Sadly, we have no red plaid cookbook as of yet. They also hold some paperback overflow SF/F and the Harry Potter series.

The barrister's bookcase in the dining room holds all our herbal, bonsai, and 'personal value' books, like the book about the local post on Rattlesnake Island (Mike's grandmother was the first postmistress), and the Latin grammar with Mad Anthony Wayne's signature in the inside cover.

Robin has his own bookcase at the foot of the stairs, crammed full of books of all kinds. This is his 'library', and he is allowed to swap books freely between that and his nightstand upstairs.

I don't know where Lillian's library will be when she is born. She'll probably need her own bookcase, too.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

That 114 cartons of my life - almost 4000 books (counted by the kind friend who put them into the locker) have been in storage for four years.

That I'm very organized - there's a database of the books (newer acquisitions are being put into Library Thing). The cartons are even marked by genre, then first initial of author's last name.

(over half SF&F, another big chunk for mysteries, then there's fiction, misc., including a bunch of Trollope; non-fiction, including the Durant set; 70 cookbooks, which I'm jonesing for very very badly...)

I've just moved into a one-bedroom apartment; this means that, within the next month or two, some of the books will be coming out of storage. The difficult question is how to decide which books, five bookcases instead of the 16 or 17 I had...

--g, pre-coffee rambling

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

Mine, I think says:
Enjoys or has studied Southern and African American 20th century fiction, with particular interest in Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner.
Enjoys fantasy, not so much sci-fi.
Someone keeps giving me chick lit for Christmas (not much of this, and it's not related to each other at all)
Interested in the medieval period, including fiction and non-fiction
Library science student--lots of textbooks on my desk.
Has entered the period of life where one acquires hardbacks and not so much paper-backs.

What it doesn't say is that I love cookbooks, because I don't buy them, and that I started getting all my Civil War stuff from the library system, and that I have absolutely no room left in my house for more media, right now. :/

Bookshelves

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Bookshelves show that I love the old pulp magazines -- Thrilling Wonder Stories, Planet Stories, Startling Stories, Dynamic Science Fiction, Astonishing Stories (no, I'm not typoing "Astounding"), Science Fiction Quarterly. The shelves also show that I'm a bit too disorganized (so far) to put things in chronological order; the paperback books aren't even in alphabetical order, though there are a few clumps (the Poul Anderson books are with each other, and the Sturgeon books are with each other). The fact that I have a good number of true crime books can show some things about me that are true, but some that might not be obvious; I love reading about the justice system in this country, but the true crime books I retain (as opposed to reading once and putting in a box to sell to BookSmart) are the ones where there is something more going on than the violent crime and the cops, courts and witnesses dealing with it. (For instance, *Too Beautiful a Day to Die* by Joyce Eggleston, about a woman who tried to be a mass murderer in Winnetka, Illinois, is among other things a very, very good story about Winnetka, Illinois.) It can also be noted that I am completely comfortable owning books that aren't in very good condition, with just a hint that I might be hard on books myself.

The fact that there are several feet of *The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction*, all in excellent condition, might indicate that there is another reader in the house whose relationship to her books is not quite the same as mine. This would be correct. Louie is a very thorough reader of F&SF; her taste in literature is not the same as mine, though we're definitely both fans, and she is very, very good to the books and magazines she owns. Some of the books that are definitely Louie's, not "mine" or "both of ours" include the C. J. Cherryh, the R. A. Lafferty, and at this point Alan Dean Foster has become mutual, but most of the Foster on our shelves was bought by Louie, and is consequently in pretty good shape.

Nate B.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

My library says that I like fantasy. A lot. It also says that for the last two summers, I've been picking up books fairly indiscriminately at garage sales. And lastly, it says that I need more bookshelves. Lots more bookshelves.

[aome.livejournal.com]

Your library tells me that, as a writer, you have a lot of connections. :) WOW, that's a LOT of autographed books! I have a whopping three autographed books, well, sort of. One autographed by you, one autographed bookplate by you (thus indirectly autographed), and the "Chocolate Pot" you so kindly arranged to be signed for me. *treasures all of them*

Our books are mostly in our downstairs not-quite-basement 'family room' (where we don't actually spend much time unless we are playing Brio trains with the girls). They are alphabetized by author, paperbacks all together, and hardbacks all together further on. Because I was the one who shelved them, my collections/series are in chronological order, but I am not familiar with most of Will's collections, so they are just assembled by author. I've kept old Parenting magazines on those shelves, and Will has kept old Nat'l Geographics, but I'm thinking eventually both should go. There is a separate low bookshelf (same room) for comedy-related books (Calvin & Hobbes, Seinfeld, joke books, etc), and various nonfiction. Cookbooks are on a little cart (the sort you'd put your microwave on) upstairs in our dining room; I've got them loosely grouped by topic (baking, slow-cooker, general) but eventually that gets messed up). Parenting-related books seem to have ended up on the bookcase next to Will's side of the bed. We both have several books stacked by our bedsides, either things we've read and never put away, or stuff we intend to eventually get to.

Old college/grad school textbooks are in boxes in our attic-y storage space.

So, um, I guess it says we love to read (sf/f mostly, with some light mystery, general fiction and humor thrown in), and are semi-organized, but not obsessive, we hang onto things, and we're running out of room.

[aome.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Will's got a GIGANTIC collection of computer textbooks/reference manuals for various programming languages and such. Most are on a large bookcase in our basement, with a small wall-installed shelf above our desktop computer for more commonly-used items. Both are full, of course. :P

[barbarakitten-t.livejournal.com]

i like science fiction, self help and spirituality (with a bit of feminitist theory and gay-focused lit thrown in), i am disorganized but most of my books are on shelves.

who is jay parini ans where did you find that quote?????

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I included the link to the article I took the quote from; here it is again. I found the essay through Arts and Letters Daily.

[althea_valara]

I think my collection says that I like to have fun, that I enjoy an active imagination, and that--most importantly--I strongly believe in the care and feeding of the soul.

My most prominent collection, currently, is my manga collection. It's kept on a multimedia rack (the kind meant for videos and DVDs) in my living room, where it is in easy reach. This rack used to hold videos & DVDs, along with other books such as the Stephanie Plum and Artemis Fowl series, but I've been buying so much manga lately I'm running out of room. So now it's pretty much just the manga/anime rack.

Also in the living room is a small half-bookcase that holds what I think of as "important" books. These are the books that have become old friends. A Song of Ice and Fire is here, as well as the Harry Potter books. The bottom shelf rotates depending on my mood. It currently has some of The Year's Best Science Fiction series, but I'm thinking of putting those away and putting some of my favorite paperbacks out there. This bookshelf is also the place where I normally keep my Bible and the Big Book.

I also have a small bookcase in my bedroom. That's usually the place for my Orson Scott Card collection and other favorites. My bedroom's being used as more of a storage room at the moment, though, so those books are scattered throughout the house.

The majority of my books are in the library. I have a cheap metal shelving unit that holds computer stuff, as well as writing books and script books (I loooooooooove reading scripts!). I have three tall bookcases behind the closet doors in the library. They are overflowing. Lots of science fiction, fantasy, self-help books, romance, children's books, and non-fiction (mostly science, mathematics, and the previously-mentioned self-help). I try to keep them organised in categories, but eventually it becomes very disorganised as I just cram books in whereever they can fit. Most books are now piled on the shelves in stacks, rather than standing spine-out. There's just not enough room to display them properly.

Some day I will have the time and money to do a top-to-bottom cleaning of my entire condo. I'll reorganise all my books at that time, and will probably catalog them in Library Thing.

The books I'm most drawn to these days are fun, crazy, and comforting, but also have strength in them. I adore the Stephanie Plum series because it's soooo over the top that it makes me laugh, and yet I also admire her continued courage to face life-or-death situations. Artemis Fowl is non-stop edge-of-your-seat adventurous fun with a lead who believes in his own abilities (something I sorely lack at times). And manga, my beloved manga... it's self-growth and self-discovery hidden behind stories of soul reapers and teenagers cursed as animals from the zodiac. It makes sense that I'd be drawn to these stories, since I'm a flaming INFP, and we're all about personality and self-growth.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I believe my library says much about my soul. It says I like to read. It says I have (no doubt) too many books. It says I like poetry, history, science fiction, fantasy, reference works and things written in Latin and Esperanto, not to mention old-fashioned children's books. It points out my tendency to excess when it comes to certain authors (Dunnett and Tolkien primarily) and to comic books. It betrays a passion for history, especially medieval and ancient history.

By bookshelves might even indicate a certain laziness when it comes to dusting. It would imply a tendency to be carefully organized - which is utterly untrue - I'm not organized in anything but my bookshelves. And only some of those.

It would show that I tend to buy second-hand, and that I occasionally cut paperbacks apart with scissors.

The presence of several Bibles in several languages might imply an interest in religion that doesn't exist; my multiple-language copies of Winnie the Pooh and Asterix the Gaul would confirm that.

I don't think my soul has much to do with any of this. I certainly hope St. Peter isn't carefully judging by it at those legendary pearly gates.

[snippy]

Among other things, it says: I like to be organized, but don't always achieve it (I have separate bookcases for fiction-not-SF, SF/F, non-fiction/children's, and "frequently-read or referenced favorites from all categories", and they're mostly in author order, but I'm not careful about putting things away properly). (Oh yeah, and a shelf in the kitchen for cook books, and the gaming books are with the games in a separate bookcase.)

I reread a lot. I mostly read women authors. I prefer to buy hardbacks, but will buy paperbacks and used when I can't get new hardbacks. I'm impatient to read new books by my favorite authors. I'm a mild completist.

I don't share well, i.e., my husband and I keep separate libraries, down to buying duplicates of some-but not all-new books.

Books are important to me: there's only one room in the house without a bookshelf.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Our library is a combined one (since moorewr and I had overlapping interests and therefore overlapping libraries), and over the years, we've had to prune. But at the moment, this is what we have:

Living room: history from various eras, military history (his)
Sunroom: Biographies, mainstream fiction, mystery fiction, "I Was an English Lit Major" collection of anthologies and so forth (special focus in Medieval, Renaissance, 19th C). Languages/dictionaries. More history.
Meg's room: Children's books, YA books (on upper shelves she can't get to yet, but at some point they'll have to move...)
My office: Books on editing and writing, dictionaries, style guides, as well as whatever specific references I'm consulting at the moment (right now: classical Greek history and mythology, Victorian spinster travelers). Also, our F/SF collection is in there.

You can, um, kind of tell that a history major and an English major, who are both fantasy fans, married each other.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I put my foot down on no books in our bedroom, because I have asthma and the dust is an issue.

(We have books in the dining room, too, but they are at least cookbooks.)

[aeditimi.livejournal.com]

I am a bookaholic. But there are two problems:

1. Because I have a toddler, my books are not where I would have wanted them.

2. Because I am an itinerating pastor, my house is not my own, and is subject to change, on average, every 5-7 years. Therefore, I am constantly forced to trim down my collection.

For these reasons, I own mostly paperbacks, and only those books that I *really* love. Photo albums, health/wellness, bible/hymnal and a few current reads are in the dining room, on the bookshelves that double as toy storage, tablewear storage, diapering storage and baby clothes dresser. That's more than doubling, I know. These two bookcases used to have every shelf filled. In my basement, there are two boxes of non-essential books unrealted to ministry (I have another library in my church office, but that tells you a lot more about my job than about me). The stored books are things like yearbooks that I can't give up yet, books I plan to read, or books I've read once but not a second time. Some are reference in nature. All of my husband's books are in the basement; they're not that important to him.

In a bookcase in the closet of the nursery are all the children's books we have (minus the board books). These are collected favorites from our childhoods, that we want LittleOne to read as soon as bedtime reading graduated from _Goodnight Moon_ to something a little more grown up. Favorites include _Moonflute_ (mine) and _Amelia Bedelia_ (husband's), and the new favorite _And Tango Makes Three._

In my bedroom, two shelves hold the mid-essential but non-storage books. Grown-up fiction/short story, mostly. Here is _Gone With the Wind,_ for example, and _Close Range_ and some non fiction like _Reviving Ophelia_.

The center of my library is in the computer room, the only room completely baby-free. Here, a mere two wall-mounted shelves hold my favorite books of all time (and a couple of misfits). With one or two exceptions, I've read them all more than once, and some more times than I can count. That's how a book earns a spot on this shelf! This is almost entirely YA fiction and fantasy. So of course there's the full collection of Harry Potter (in paperback), and LOTR (ditto), and every book written by Lynn Flewelling, my favorite author (two of which are autographed). There's Lois Lowry's _The Giver_ and its sequels, and the _Wrinkle in Time_ series. That's one shelf. The other is a hodgepodge of books, including but not limited to some poetry (some autographed by the poet), the "Incarnations" series by Piers Anthony, which has its flaws but is worth it overall, the "Earth Children" series by Auel (ditto), Daniel Quinn's life-shaking _Ishmael_, and a whole bunch of YA fiction new and old. Favorites include _On Fortune's Wheel_ by Voight, _Westing Game_ by Raskin, and more recently _Stargirl_ by Spinelli (There's one of yours there too).

Everytime I walk past these two little shelves full of friends, I smile.

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

My library (which is at LibraryThing, here) says two main things about me: wide-ranging reading tastes -- I'm all over the map in fiction (about the only genre I won't read is horror) and non-fiction (though the biggest part of this is history) -- and slight case of bibliomania. I was up to 427 unread books at the beginning of this year and have gotten down to 329 now, by virtue of restricting book buying, library books, and rereading.

We have bookshelves in every room of the house, except the laundry room and the bathrooms. (And two of the bathrooms have board books in them for Liam, and there are bath books in his bathtub.) Everything is categorized and with its genre or subject fellows, though I do have the mass market SFF separate from the trade and hardcovers, because the reading room has a specially built set of shelves for MMPBs. I occasionally get laughed at for having the books shelved by category, which I've been doing for at least fifteen years, but how else would we find anything?

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Well, hell's bells, I know of no reader whose books don't far outstrip his or her bookshelf space. There ought to be some kind of a literary law a la Murphy's about that.

What does my library reveal about me? That I have far more books than I have time to read (another ought-to-be literary law). That I love ancient books crumbling to pieces and exuding that amazing old-book smell, which I'd wear as a cologne if they only made it. That I like fiction of almost any description-- not romances-- but most of all by authors who turn out to share my sensibilities, who I firmly believe I'd get along well with if we ever met.

By the way, you have better icons than anyone else I know.

[woodrunner.livejournal.com]

My books tell people that I am not finished acquiring information, that I acquire it from many various sources, and that this information is on a wildly broad range of seemingly unrelated topics.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

We did have enough shelves, and a good system. Unfortunately, we no longer have a "we".

One may deduce from the size of the A-K paperback collection that many more are coming, but are waiting on the arrival of another bookcase or some shelving or both. One may deduce from the fact that the paperbacks aren't unpacked into the two tall wooden bookcases, that there is a collection of hardcovers and non-fiction that hasn't arrived here yet. One can see accessible an old book on how to make curtains, Jo Walton's Farthing, a well-worn paperback of Nancy Thayer's My Dearest Friend , some library books, another friend's self published novel barely started, and a new copy of No Plot! No Problem the guide to doing NaNoWriMo, and one may conclude what I'm interested in right now.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

My library, I suppose, says that I have good intentions . . . I have a vast amount of 'classics', in at least two different languages (who else owns the complete works of Corneille in the original French without having used it as a textbook?), on various shelves and in various bookcases. Then there's the vast amounts of YA fiction, mostly purchased when I was a YA, but I did just buy a copy of Troubling a Star (Madeleine L'Engle) less than a month ago. And then we come to the f/sf, which my mother claims I'll never read again. Admittedly, I've tried to recycle the stuff I know I won't read again, but I keep swearing to her that the good stuff really IS good. Several rungs down from that are the romance novels, which I never buy for full price (unless I'm dog-sitting, in which case I deserve a paperback). The largest part, however, is still the classics, which range from Plato to Margaret Atwood. The section with the lowest proportion of books I've read, however . . . also the classics. Alas.

[elfundeb.livejournal.com]

My library reveals that we are cheap because . . .

1. On careful perusal, one would discover that many of the hardcovers were purchased at used book sales.

2. Although we have books in every room (except the bathrooms, which are too damp), there is a limit of 1-2 bookcases per room. We could buy more books, but we have little room for them, and we are loath to part with any of our favorites. So we only buy books we feel we could not live without.

3. There is a pile of library books in the family room. If we are truly entranced by a library book, we will buy a copy to keep.

Oh, and you might also discover that we recycle. We have no books we dislike. If we receive a book as a gift, and it doesn't meet our standards, you'll be able to find it at the next Goodwill book sale.

[longstrider.livejournal.com]

That we are preparing to move. Most of our books are in boxes in the garage. We only have around 300 left in the house, which makes it feel empty.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

1. That I'm disorganized.

2. That I don't have enough room in my house.

Um, anyway.

I've got a bunch of SF/Fantasy, mostly alphebatized, except for the stuff on the floor. (Of which there is some.) Three bookcases worth, though often double stacked.

A bunch of religious books, sectioned off by sub-category, but not, generally, alphebatized within subcategory, except for the Unitarian Universalist books, which are. (My denomination, I take a little extra effort.)

A bunch of political/historical books, mostly on the floor. (Watergate, English history, Russian history, feminist history.) A bunch of psych textbooks and psych-focused non-textbooks, ditto. Bunch of feminist stuff from the 60s and 70s (and some more modern), ditto. Bunch of humor books, in their own bookcase. (Lot of Doonesbury, Bloom County, For Better or For Worse, Dykes to Watch Out For, Peg Bracken, Erma Bombeck, James Thurber, Cornelia Otis Skinner, other older stuff from the 50s and 40s.) Some graphic novels, in the humor case, top shelf. (With others in storage in Dedham.)

Bunch of kids books, over near the altar. (Two shelves worth plus a floor contingent.)

Some full boxes, since I got tired of TOO many floor books.