I'm a bit embarrassed to show off my shelves.
You can see vague little gestures to organization here and there, but they're
pretty much chaos. To answer the inevitable question, "How do you find
anything?" I don't. I spend a lot of time distracted and reading things I
never intended to pick up in the first place.
I chose to photograph the corner of my
office where I read through pages when I'm revising. The chair and ottoman belonged
to my grandfather.
Bottom Shelf
Here is my little collection of books on
poisons and toxicology. Not sure why they're huddled up against military
history, Shakespeare, and my high school art history textbook. These things
happen. I found the iPod matryoshka at a craft fair.
Lower Mid Shelf
On the right: These are the books on Russian
history and culture that I reference most frequently. Some of the US history
got mixed in with them while I was researching book 2 of the Grisha Trilogy.
I've had the D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths since I was very young and always
like to keep it close. At left, I seem to have been starting a shelf on
entertainment books. Not sure why. Fun fact: that matryoshka is full of honey.
It was given to me as a gift and I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do
with it.
Upper Mid Shelf
This just seems to be a mess of fun things.
Definitely a fantasy thrust-- A couple of books from ASoIaF, Fables, His Dark
Materials, Mists of Avalon. Then some genre blurrers: Middlesex, Carter Beats
the Devil, Cloud Atlas. I challenge you to explain why Neal Stephenson's
Anathem is next to A History of Food. On the right, a muddle of fashion and
costuming guides, graphic novels, and children's picture books. Happy to see
that Catwitch made it in there. It's out of print now, but it was one of my
favorites as a kid.
Top Shelf
Okay, there's at least some semblance of
order here, maybe because I can't reach these so easily? A clump of poetry
classics on the right, books on Los Angeles to the left. The monster belonged
to my dad. The crown is made of recycled tin.
Another view of the corner. I spy Twilight
and Atonement on the same shelf. There's probably a very specific punishment
for that. The postcard near center says, "If you can bake a cake, you can
build a bomb."
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