Bookshelf

I talk a lot about video games, movies, and TV shows on this blog, and I worry sometimes that people might think I'm not as bookish as I really I. Because I really am.

These are the bookshelves in my room. As you can see, they're nicely decorated with knick-knacks that I've collected over the years - the majority of those kick-knacks being books. For some reason, I prefer to own the books that I read rather than borrow them, so if I get in the mood to read something, I almost always go out and buy it instead of checking to see if it's at the library, or if a friend owns it. I do occasionally get rid of books, but currently the number of fictional or otherwise narrative novels (or anthologies) on my wall is 232 (given a 1% margin of error).

The primary section on my wall is made up of narrative books that I have read. At the moment, the first one one my shelf is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and the last one is How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu. All of these books are in alphabetical order by their author's last name (like how they'd do it at the library or a bookstore). I decided to do this long ago not just as practice for navigating a bookstore, but to help me remember the names of the authors who wrote my favorite stories. As a would-be novelist myself, I felt like I owed it to the creators of those novels to at least remember their names.

The next section on my shelf is Harry Potter books. I kid you not - there are six of them (I'm missing the second for some reason, and the only version of the first that survived is this British version my mom bought me when she visited the isles a few years back), and most of them are relatively thick. If they were more stout, like the Redwall books or the Series of Unfortunate Events, the Harry Potter books might have earned a place on the main shelves. As they are, however, the Harry Potter series gets to be hidden in the corner behind the dresser.

After that, the next portion of my bookshelf is dedicated to DVDs , with a couple PC games. This is separated from the Harry Potter section by a larger VHS version of the first Pokemon movie. On the other side of these DVDs are my religious books - scriptures, for one, along with other writings and essays and so forth. I have a few foreign-language copies of scripture, which segues nicely into my foreign language section of my shelf. I've got a few dictionaries and pronunciation guides, then some English-language stuff (dictionaries, a book of quotes, and a "how to read literature like a professor").

My second-favorite section on the shelf is my 'To-Read' section. These are all the books that I've bought that I plan to read one day but haven't yet gotten around to. Currently, there are eleven, not including a few other books on my shelf that I haven't read, but that I don't actually plan on reading. These are all unknown stories, friends waiting to be made; like the presents under the Christmas tree. I can see their spines and look forward to when I'll eventually get around to reading them.


When I do finish a book that was once on my 'To-Read' shelf, I get the fun experience of trying to figure out where it belongs on my normal shelf. This usually take no more than a minute of searching through my alphabetized set to see where this new name belongs, and then shoving books to the side to make the new ones fit.

Lately, however, I've noticed some odd coincidences in the placement of some of my books. I may be reading too much into it, but I found it odd when I placed World War Z, a modern sci-fi Zombie story, right next to Wolf Hunt, a medieval period werewolf tale. It was also strangely appropriate when The Road ended up right next to I Am Legend, and humorously ironic when I ended up placing Lolita next to A Beautiful Mind.

I looked at some of the other books on my shelf to see if there were any previously unnoticed coincidences. A book called The Color of My Words ended up right next to The Phantom Tollbooth, a fun narrative based on wordplay. Nearby is my Redwall series, which is right next to my Warrior Cats series. Further down the shelf is a novel based on the Dragon Age video game, which happens to be right next to the Cornelia Funke book Dragon Rider. The four Tolkien books I have are right in-between two other books, one a nonfiction titled The Forest People and the other an old, strange sci-fi called The Lost Traveler. I also have a book titled Looking for Alaska right next to a book that happens to take place in Alaska.

I'm sure that I'm reading too much into this, but seeing how my books seem to interact with each other is pretty interesting. It's almost New Age, as if there's a message for me somehow in the very placement of the books on my shelf, which I could read if only I was some sort of Book Shaman or Oracle.