While testing out my mobile phone today I took a photo of my bookshelf, I then thought it might be interesting to see what books people have as pride of place on their bookshelves.
I have two libraries in my house. A “library” means a room with walls lined with books and aisles of bookcases down the center.
But there are no bookcases on the first floor. In our starter house, the walls of the dining were lined floor to ceiling and my wife made me promise when we moved not to have any books in the living sections.
So pride of place? Beats me. What section of a library has pride of place? All books are equal. I mean, they’re books. That’s special enough.
Books in the bedroom; books in the kids’ bedroom; books in the grandson’s bedrooms; the living room is lined with book-filled shelves; books in Madame Pepperwinkle’s studio; books in storage in the garage; books in the kitchen; books in the bathrooms. And everbody has Kindles or Nooks as well, except for the grandson, and he’s getting one next month for his birthday.
I keep telling myself I will put them in order again like they were in my last apartment, but for now, they’re mostly just placed randomly and in piles in there.
[not really, but it’s such a cool idea I had to share it. I really wonder what that part of the house looks like from the outside. I don’t think I’d intentionally build a library into my home office this way unless I were forced to by the limitations of the structure.]
My library is in a closet. This is the main bookshelf, which also serves as overflow towel storage. We built it ourselves, despite not knowing how. (First lesson for novice furniture makers: don’t buy warped planks). The books on top are my library books, bookended with the bronzed baby shoes of my husband and his brother.
Here’s a clearer picture: bookshelf3 | vamdpa42 | Flickr
This bookcase is dedicated to my Stephen King books, shelved in order of publication. This is not a “nice” collection, just what I picked up along the way. (I particularly remember the joy of scoring The Dead Zone for two bucks at a flea market, and getting Misery as a gift on my seventeenth birthday). I have most of his books, though not that recent one about the Red Sox. This bookcase is nearly full…can he publish enough to finish it up?
For her birthday, I bought my wife a custom painting at Ideal Bookshelf. The 10 books in her painting are:
The Journey of Man, by Spencer Wells
The Holy Bible (with Apocrypha)
Albion’s Seed, by David Fischer
Strange Brains and Geniuses, by Clifford Pickover
Henry V, by William Shakespeare
How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob A. Riis
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius
Luck: The Brilliant Randomness of Life, by Nicholas Rescher
Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius