# What's on your bookshelves? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 25, 2006, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783 "2006-11-25T21:32:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/1 "2006-11-25T21:32:08Z")
Look away from the computer monitor for a second, towards the nearest bookshelf. What’s on it? If it is a multi-shelf unit, pick a shelf at random. To my left, there is a bookcase. On the top shelf is: Little Bighorn Remembered The High Kings The Great Famine 1845-51 Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America Voyagers To The West Migrations and Cultures The Vision of the Anointed Conquests and Cultures The Famine Ships Not Out Of Africa Her Little Majesty Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes In A Free Society The Steel Bonnets The Candlemass Road Mr. American Black Ajax Parthian Shot ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/2 "2006-11-25T21:33:45Z")
Oh, and one booklight, a toy tractor, and a mini-Dodger batting helmet that once held ice cream at Dodger Stadium. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/3 "2006-11-25T21:37:13Z")
Xenakis - Formalised Music (been trying to get my head around it for about six years) The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600 Eco - Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, and The Search for the Perfect Language (an Amazon twofer I’ve not yet looked at!) The Far Side Gallery 4 The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain Lloyds Register of Shipping 1760-1960 (no fecking idea where I picked that up!) Simon Singh - The Code Book (a recommended read for SDMB types) And a huge pile of sheet music ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/4 "2006-11-25T21:39:44Z")
The first shelf I see has a double row of 60-70 science fiction paperbacks. I’ll spare y’all, except that it runs from Adams to Farmer. ---
**Author:** ![Cowgirl\_Jules](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@Cowgirl\_Jules](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cowgirl_Jules)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/5 "2006-11-25T21:48:32Z")
In this room, a couple of hundred science fiction and a few assorted other paperbacks, some trade texts and references, and six or seven books on writing and editing. Looking behind me, I have to wonder why I have four copies of the ninth edition of the USC Cross Connection Manual? Does anyone need one? It’s the current issue. The other rooms contain more, but that list gets _long_. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/6 "2006-11-25T22:03:13Z")
David Copperfield, Les Miserables, War and Peace, The Aenid, The Odyssey, The Illiad, Oliver Twist, Bleak House. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/7 "2006-11-25T22:22:06Z")
The Sandman collections and my Terry Pratchett books. One Furby (minus its batteries, my husband can’t stand to hear it talk), two glass owl coin banks (can’t really call them piggy banks, can I?), two owl figurines, two owl shaped jars (one full of marbles)(I haven’t lost my marbles, I know right where they are), a crystal skull, a couple of Playstation 2 games, and a couple of jigsaw puzzles in their boxes. The lowest shelves in our house are traditionally kept bare, as the cats seem to regard them as THEIR shelves, and will clear off anything that’s put on the shelves. This is especially disturbing in the middle of the night. So, my bottom shelf is bare, except for a grey cat who is Supervising my activities. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/8 "2006-11-25T22:29:03Z")
The two shelves at eye level on my right are jammed with French dictionaries and French books, and books on Africa and by African authors. There’s simply too much to enumerate. I think at last inventory eight years ago, we had something like 1500 books. It’s grown significantly since then. ---
**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/9 "2006-11-25T22:37:06Z")
My top milkcrate contains: David Allen’s _Getting Things Done_ _1,000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games_ (which contains several that aren’t condoned by the actual rules) _The Wit and Wisdom of Archie Bunker_ _Trout Fishing in America_ Christopher Moore’s _Practical Demonkeeping_ Chuck Palahniuk’s _Invisible Monsters_ _Lies My Teacher Told Me_ Garrison Keillor’s _Wobegon Boy_ An outdated University directory A grammar/style manual several textbooks (_The Free and the Unfree_, _America: A Concise History_ (which isn’t that concise), and two books of source material on Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970s and Black Protests of the Civil Rights Movement) _The Ultimate College Survival Guide_ Orson Scott Card’s _Shadow Puppets_ and a collection of short stories put together by a creative writing teaching assistant quite a while back. The bottom one has: _The Straight Dope_ Thomas Harris’ _Red Dragon_, _Silence of the Lambs_, and _Hannibal_ Garrison Keillor’s _Lake Wobegon Summer 1956_ and _Lake Wobegon Days_ Chuck Palahniuk’s _Choke_ A collection of humorous short stories Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity An American Government textbook Edward Bellamy’s _Looking Backward_ _Modern American Humor_, a compilation by Bennett Cerf and another compilation, _A Treasury of American Folk Humor_ ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/10 "2006-11-25T22:41:36Z")
Far too many fucking books. And I bought another half-dozen yesterday and today; I can’t keep away from used bookshops and sidewalk vendors. There’s my whole Arkham House collection, mylar-wrapped and double-shelved. One full shelf of James Branch Cabell, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, Nelson Algren, James Thurber, and Henry Miller. THERE’S a dinner party guestlist for you. Next down has jazz reference books, an annotated _Man Who Was Thursday_, Donald Barthelme, and some histories (World War I, the 1916 Easter Rising, the guillotine, pornography publishing in Paris). Over one for three full double-shelves of poetry – Ginsberg, Pessoa, Robinson, Hopkins, Frost, O’Hara, Baudelaire, Yeats, Pound, Tu Fu, Swinburne, Basho, Moore, Williams, Jeffers, Thomas, Sexton, Neruda, Browning, Stevens, Ammons, Sappho, Brautigan, Plath, St. John of the Cross, Sterling, Benet, St. Vincent Millay, Tsvetaeva, Lowell (Amy and Robert), Garcia Lorca, Eliot, Poe, Rexroth, Byron, Dickinson, Apollinaire, Ashbery, Rimbaud, Snyder, Auden, Corso, Nemerov, Larkin, Tennyson, Bukowski. A shelf-ful of Mervyn Peake, shared with my graveyard reference books. Some art histories sharing a shelf with the complete run of Carcosa Press titles, also mylared like the Arkhams. _Moby-Dick, The Brothers Karamazov, Petersburg, Don Quixote, Riddley Walker_, the complete Jorkens Tales of Lord Dunsany, Chesterton’s _Everlasting Man_, the complete short works of Saki, Jack London, and Noel Coward, the complete Shakespeare, the complete works of Charles Fort. I should really come up with some sort of filing system. ---
**Author:** ![psycat90](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@psycat90](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psycat90)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/11 "2006-11-25T22:48:15Z")
We used to have so many books on a bookshelf down here, but recently sold just about all of them and only kept the ones we really, really wanted or needed. So this is somewhat embarrassing (some are school books, most are not): Vodka Cocktails Pass Out - 80 cocktails to paint the town red Mirror, Mirror The Herbal Companion Winetaster’s Secrets Wine Lover’s Companion Food Lover’s Companion The Wine Log Red, White, and Drunk All Over The Good Life Guide to Enjoying Wine The Wine Bible On Wine The Science of Wine From Vine to Glass The Williams-Sonoma Wine Guide Wine for Dummies The World Atlas of Wine The Oxford Companion to Wine The New Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia 2 binders mostly filled with tasting notes and class handouts The South Beach Diet There are more upstairs, that’s just what’s on the bookshelf right next to me down here. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/12 "2006-11-25T22:52:45Z")
[QUOTE=Ukulele Ike] One full shelf of James Branch Cabell, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, Nelson Algren, James Thurber, and Henry Miller. THERE’S a dinner party guestlist for you. Next down has jazz reference books, an annotated _Man Who Was Thursday_, Donald Barthelme, and some histories (World War I, the 1916 Easter Rising, the guillotine, pornography publishing in Paris). [/QUOTE] And the latter sentence is what the dinner party can discuss. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/13 "2006-11-25T23:37:09Z")
It’s across the room, so I’ll summarize: Top shelf: board games. Second shelf: Needlepoint and design books. Third shelf: Books about games (incl. Scrabble, bridge, _Jeopardy_ Fourth shelf: Books specifically about crosswords plus books useful to constructing them Fifth and sixth shelves: Misc. books about language, incl. slang dicitionaries, and dictionaries of proper names, literary allusions, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Lilairen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lilairen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lilairen)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/14 "2006-11-25T23:44:10Z")
About a dozen hardcover science fiction novels. We just moved in and most of the books are still crated up in the basement. 😉 (I’m trying to be _organised_ about putting things back together so that things are roughly grouped by subject and the like and not scattered haphazardly all over the house like they were in the place we moved out of, so the books will be coming out slowly.) ---
**Author:** ![Jayn\_Newell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/15 "2006-11-25T23:56:38Z")
Most of my books are at home, and the few I have with me are mostly in boxes. So instead my bookshelf holds: Top: A bowl, a towel, some random papers and three DVDs that I can’t fit on… Top shelf: Most of my DVD collection, only one of which isn’t anime, one anime VHS, and my WoW install discs. Middle shelf: Munchkin Fu, a graphic novel (look, book!), some mini-Oreos, two binders, Guild Wars: Factions and Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Bottom shelf: Plates, glasses, one bowl and a half-empty CD wallet. ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/16 "2006-11-25T23:59:08Z")
Most of my books are upstairs in the den and bedroom, but at the moment the laptop and I are downstairs in the living room. Many of the books down here are coffee-table and etymology books, and include: A 1944 _Bluejackets’ Manual_ (it was my grandfather’s) _Slang! Great Thoughts & Funny Sayings Remarkable Words with Astonishing Origins The Complete Illustrated Stories of Hans Christian Andersen American Indian Myths & Legends Wicked Words Blue Streak Stories Behind Everyday Things I Hear America Talking The New Harvard Dictionary of Music A Civil Tongue The Beatles Anthology The Allure of Men Beatles Gear Imagine M.C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work The Complete Beatles Chronicle The Beatles: Recording Sessions Postcards From The Boys A Hard Day’s Write It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic British English A to Zed Love Signs Beatlesongs The Lives of John Lennon Rolling Stone: The Photographs_ Those shelves also hold some photos of family/friends, and two boxed CD collections: _American Musical Theater_ and _The Music of Disney: A Legacy in Song_. Oh, and my [Atari Classic 10-in-1](http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=firebox&action=product&pid=482). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2006, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/17 "2006-11-26T00:01:06Z")
[QUOTE=Ukulele Ike] Far too many fucking books. And I bought another half-dozen yesterday and today; I can’t keep away from used bookshops and sidewalk vendors [/QUOTE] I have the same problem with EBay… Shelf above my bed (back home in my parents) is home to a few assorted trinkets and a Gandalf the Grey figure, and the rest my SF books, in alphabetical order according to author. Goes from Clarke to Dick to Heinlein and ends with Wells. ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2006, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/18 "2006-11-26T00:37:43Z")
Closest to me, on the right, are my music reference books, and other large books. I’ll just pick one shelf: The Beatles Anthology The Long And Winding Road The Unseen Beatles The Beatles Unseen Archives The Beatles Album The Beatles: A Celebration The Complete Beatles Chronicle The Beatles The Beatles Files The Beatles Forever The Beatles…about their breakup Paul McCartney & Wings A Hard Day’s Write Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now The Beatles On Record The Beatles: All Together Now Black Market Beatles The Beatles: Not For Sale The Beatles: Drugs, Divorce And A Slipping Image Eight Arms To Hold You: The Solo Beatles Compendium The Beatles Recording Sessions Shout! Get Back A Day In The Life The Love You Make The Longest Cocktail Party Lennon Remembers The 910’s Guide To The Beatles’ Outtakes The CHUM Chart Book Collectible Rock Records Hot Wacks Book XI The Last Wacks Hot Wacks Book Supplement 4 The Life And Times Of Little Richard Chuck Berry: The Autobiography The Book Of Rock Lists The Rolling Stone Album Guide Billboard Top 40 Hits, 6th edition Billboard Top Pop Singles 1955-2002 Bubbling Under The Hot 100 Rock Record 1000 Album Covers Heart Of Gold The Far Side Gallery …and like that. The rest of the shelves on all four walls contain more reference books, but mainly records and CDs, floor to ceiling. The living room and bedroom are full of books. My wife is a collector. ---
**Author:** ![SkeptiJess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@SkeptiJess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkeptiJess)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2006, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/19 "2006-11-26T01:06:16Z")
My fiction book shelves are closest to the computer – right behind me, in fact. I’d say that the ‘nearest one’ is the one at eye level when I’m sitting. So: Merrill Markoe’s three adult novels – I also have her non-fiction books, and her children’s book. But those are placed on other shelves. Christy by Catherine Marshall 9 Anne McCaffrey Pern novels. Two of them are omnibus (the Harper Hall novels in one volume; the first three Pern novels in the other). Bimbos & Zombies by Sharyn McCrumb. Another omnibus with both Bimbos of the Death Sun and Zombies of the Gene Pool. I also own all of McCrumb’s Appalachian books; plus her volume of short stories; plus her latest one about Dale Earnhardt. But I lent them to my dad and haven’t gotten them back yet 7 By Barbara Michaels. I also own a bunch by the same author , but under the name Elizabeth Peters. But those are on the next shelf down. Gone With The Wind Margaret in Hollywood by Darcy O’Brian ---
**Author:** ![According\_to\_Pliny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783/20 "2006-11-26T01:27:55Z")
Nothing! I have no bookshelves. I’m not illiterate, I just gave up on shelves. And keeping books. I once lined the walls of my family room and office with books, books, and more books. Then, after moving them a couple of times in career changes, and after a divorce, I gave up on keeping and displaying books entirely. All of them went to the local Friends of The Library sale, and Goodwill, to be sold for pennies on the dollar. But better discounted than collecting dust. Now all my books are at the library, on line, or bought only to be read and given away. I am free of those many, many bookcases, and these years later I don’t miss them at all. I do have a dusty atlas from my childhood, one with large red areas showing the British Empire intact, etc. It’s no longer a book, however, but a nostalgic souvenir, and stays in the far back of the closet with my old teddy bear. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-on-your-bookshelves/381783.md?page=2)