A Peek at my Bookshelves

What a wonderful post by Soulemama's husband yesterday. He talked about his own reading life and that of his family. The post was accompanied by photos of the books scattered around the house. As I usually do with these kind of photos, I enlarged them and tried to scan the titles on the bookshelves. I love seeing what books people have on their shelves. Toward that end, I'm sharing my shelves with you. I hope you do the same.

I'll start with my kids' shelves. My 15 year old has a nice big bookshelf that has lots of the kids' favorites. My daughter mostly reads these now. My son reads a lot of books that he gets from school, and he reads fantasy, science fiction or historical fiction on his Kindle.


But his shelves contain hints of the child he was. We waited for the new release of many of the Harry Potter novels. I read the first few to him, but he read later ones himself. My daughter waited for fewer of them. How odd that kids who will read them in the future won't have to wait. They'll get to read to the end without waiting years for the culmination. Another series we loved was: The Series of Unfortunate Events. We loved the word play, the humorous warnings, the resourceful children, and wicked Count Olaf.

Up on his desk are some favorites and reference for schoolwork. This is the second copy of The Way Things Work in our house. The first one fell apart even after having the spine well reinforced by duct tape.


My daughter has a much smaller bookshelf. Some of her favorites are there. She's read a lot of things many times, The Little Princess, the books of Roald Dahl, the poetry of Shel Silverstein, the original Peter Pan and Dave Barry's interpretations.


The size of her bookshelf is characteristic of the lack of storage space in our house. We had to get rid of many books before we moved. Now the library is our giant bookshelf. Here's my daughter' current stack.


And my library stack which by coincidence had Amanda and Stephen Soule's latest book on the top when I saw his wonderful post. We're going to watch Andy Serkis in Planet of the Apes tonight.


Onto my favorite books and collections: Jonathan Safran Foer, Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Jumpa Lahiri. I read most books from the library but treasure my favorites.

Not only do I love books with devastatingly beautiful prose. I've got a nice collection of books with inspiring art: Sark, Brian Selznic, Maira Kalman, and political art: Umberto Eco, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi.


Please notice the little Shirley Hughes collection to the right. That thick anthology was purchased on a trip to London. I love this British children's author and sought out her work while I was there. It is a treasure. I treasure many children's books especially those with the theme of peace or justice. When my kids were little, I loved buying picture books for them, but as they've grown older, I realize a lot of them were for me... and I continue to purchase ones that touch my heart.

If you like this post, please try one like and post a link. I love to explore people's bookshelves and libraries.