The Books in your Living Room
So Portland is the most book buying city in the US. Or maybe we’re the most literate city in the US. Or was it that we’re the greenest book recycling city in the US? No, I think it was that we’re the most gourmet, bicycling while having a tiny paperback poking from our messenger bags city in the US. I think that’s what The New York Times said anyway.
And not like I need to make this leap for this post to be relevant to Portland, but I choose to because it’s leap day and I want everyone to be happy that I’m posting about Portland. Can it be leap day all the time so I can post about things that are interesting to me in the hopes that they’re interesting to about two of you out there, Portland or not? I guess not.
Focusing.
I was reading Bookslut today and there was a great link to this article about the books on your shelf. One guy says the books on the living room shelves ought to be all books you’ve read. (I think he’s being ironic in his column, but there’s no fun in talking about books unless we’re all going to be extremely serious and check our senses of humor at the door.) One guy says, pishaw! Bookshelves are to display the books that we haven’t read in the hopes that the people reading the spines will think we are the type of people to read these tomes.
I was a bookseller for five years. My partner was a bookseller for twelve years. We have a lot of books. Have we read them all? God only knows. All I know about the books on my shelves is that they’re a lot like bunnies — they reproduce whenever I turn my back and they are dirty, dirty, mind-warping things. That’s like bunnies, right?
As for the books on that shelf, I haven’t read four of them. A few I have read, one of them is by a former teacher, three are by favorite authors, one I read in an afternoon, one is by Kelly Link who I wished I loved and I try to love but I just don’t, and two books are by me, while the others are collections in which you’ll find my short stories.
So, what’s on your shelf?