Share Your Shelf

Today: My Unedited Bookshelf | distraction no. 99

This is what happens when you run out of bookshelves: You find anywhere and everywhere to stack your books. The bookshelves we have can’t contain all of our books, so I had to expand. Here are the stacks I made on the fireplace mantel in the bedroom.

Those stacks are as high as I can make them without the books toppling down. They’re also disorganized in that some of E’s film-school books are in there (you may be able to find which books are his)—and some of my own grad-school course books are there, too.

Not photographed: Three bookshelves and multiple other book stacks elsewhere in the apartment.

Of note in these fireplace stacks:

The book that made me want to become a writer when I first read it at 12 years old (Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood)

The book from which I performed a dramatic monologue in acting class during junior high (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte)

The book that still has my angsty doodles and meaningful underlines during my teenage years (The Collected Works of Anne Sexton)

The book that blew my mind when I was 18 (Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker)

The YA novel that blew my mind when I was aspiring to write YA (Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers)

The novel that led me to give up writing fiction for adults and turn to YA (Feathered by Laura Kasischke)

The book I borrowed from a friend and just realized I forgot to give back (Birds of America by Lorrie Moore)

My favorite book during my twenties (Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys)

One of my favorite YA novels of 2012 (Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield)

The book I bought in the airport and still haven’t read (The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson)

The book I should have read years ago because once I did I felt like it was written just for me (We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson)

The classic novel I hate (On the Road by Jack Kerouac)

The random movie that shouldn’t be on this shelf (The Lorax)