Sunday Salon: What the shelves say

What do your book shelves say about you? Carin sent me a link to The Subconscious Shelf done by the New Yorker. They take a look at a person's shelf and extrapolate about personality. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? And yet I wonder which set of shelves I should take a picture of to send to have myself analyzed. Do I send the obsessively alphabetized (and separated by binding type) to be read shelves or the shelves of the books I've decided to keep, at least for now. Do I send the picture of the under the bed(s) guilty pleasures? Do I send the cluttered shelves of the kid books ostensibly bought for my kids but really bought for myself? Do I send the shelves that contain the coffee table books or the one of the leaning stacks on my desk? Do I send the picture of the set of shelves where I have pulled all the books I intend to read for this year's challenges as well as all my review copies? So you see why there's no hope indeed of me actually doing this. Sending pictures of all my shelves, which I'd need to do to get a full and complete analysis, would crash their server.

But that's okay, because between us, Carin and I have already analyzed what my shelves say about me. I already know that my bookshelves say I have a serious addiction and need an intervention. They also say I read without regard to quality since I run the gamut from highbrow to scraping the gutters. Oh, and I suspect that they also say I have spurts of anal retentiveness (hence the alphabetical thing and the separation by read/unread and hardback/trade/mass market but that the cattywampous stacks not neatly shelved rat me out as not as terminally organized as I'd like to be. Carin added "that the sagging of certain shelves say that books are more important to you than the imminent avalanche that could in fact pinion you to the floor, perhaps badly injured," an then went on to suggest that I might not be opposed to being in the hospital in traction because, well, more reading time. Take a gander at your own shelves. What do they tell bookshelf snoopers like me about you?

This past week I spent a lot of time dipping into books and then setting them aside almost as if I wanted to make sure all of my bookmarks got equal use. But my book journeys took me to some wondrous places. I visited an Indo-Pakistani journalist who learned through tragedy that your family is always a part of yourself no matter how far from their path you roam. I solved a 40 year old crime in Sweden. I learned about the past and present of Sri Lanka through the eyes of a university teacher. I made the acquaintance of a charming little girl who came into her own in the early 20th century. And bookmarks continue along in too many books to recount here. Where did your page travels take you this week?