Counterbalance

Our Bookshelves, Ourselves

I won't belabor the point. My books, for reasons mostly having to do with laziness when I moved into our loft six years ago and then a construction project four years later, have been shelved according to the color of their spines. I've outlined the challenges such a system of organization presents.

It was time for a change. As in: it was time for me to find the freaking books I was looking for the moment I was looking for them, not three weeks later.

This change led to the inevitable un-shelving, piling and re-shelving of many, many books this weekend.

Certain things come to light when your books are finally sorted by author after six years of color-coded chaos. Things like: I have three copies of Murkami's Kafka on the Shore, two copies of Aira's Ghosts, where is my original copy of House of Leaves with all my notes, wither my once-complete collection of Dostoevsky, damn I like Stephen Dixon and Nicholson Baker and John Banville and Joan Didion and Donald Barthelme, where have all my Bolano's gone, I need more space for W's, I have four copies of Jane. You get the idea.

Most disturbing thing that came to light: I have thirty-six books on writing.

Books In, Books Out

The Festival of Books and writerly parties are sure to do at least one thing to someone like me: inspire rabid book-buying. In the span of 72 hours, I've acquired the following books:

• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (a recommendation from Jim Ruland)
• Ablutions: Notes for a Novel by Patrick deWitt (same)
• The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich (it's about time, frankly)
• The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
• Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
• Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
• After Dark by Haruki Murakami
• Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
• Senselessness by Horacio Catellanos Moya
• Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser

Yeah. Bit of a binge, I'd say. Certain themes clearly emerge. Certain re-reads are on the table in light of 1Q84's release this fall.

The thing is, I got over-zealous when I cleared my bookshelves last month and gave over 400 books to libraries and friends and Goodwill. Turns out I gave away some books I really love so am now re-buying. Good for publishing, no? :)

I'm not currently reading any of these just-purchased books, but they remind me of a lovely and lively conversation last night about what our books say about us and what we lose in perceived or actual status in the eyes of friends and visitors to our brick and mortar or digital bookshelves. We recalled Edan's post at The Millions, The Great Book Purge of 2010, fondly and remarked that though people don't want to admit it, our books do define us...or at least can define a part of us. Or at the very least shine a light on how we want others to define us. Same with our Twitter feeds. Our blog posts. Our conversations at bookish parties. At some level, we are cultivating a narrative. Deciding how we want to be perceived or no. There's much more here, of course. And to acknowledge this perhaps draws a critical eye upon my own sharing of books purchased. Fair enough.

This brings me full circle to my still-in-my-brain-but-not-for-long post about the narrative arcs of our twitter streams. For another day, certainly. But soon.

Did the Festival of Books or any other literary happening (online or off) encourage a book buying binge for you this weekend? Say I'm not alone.

Rentership: The Lending of Digital Books

In this month's issue of WIRED, Chris Suellentrop has a fantastic piece on Rentership and the inevitable benefits afforded to renters during times of great financial contraction and phenomenal technological expansion. As I read his article, I thought immediately of eBooks and the many #bib10 discussions we've recently had about the sharing of digital books. I also recalled many discussions about the future of our favorite independent bookstores and that selling books can't, in any successful long-term future, be the sole source of their revenue.

So it was rather delicious to read Suellentrop's final summation:

"For the rest of us, we’ll always own some things. There’s stuff we use all the time, like furniture and clothing, and objects with sentimental value (take your stinking paws off my Yoda figure with plastic snake). But the Internet is creating markets that enable us to own much less. The winner of the ebook sweepstakes will be the bookseller who becomes a bookrenter. I don’t want to own hundreds of books on a Kindle at $10 a pop. I want to Netflix them — pay for access to every book ever published. I’d rather be a renter in Borges’ library than the owner of my own."

I read this at 1am a few nights ago. Damned if I didn't dance a little jig while the rest of the house slept. I'm not crazy after all. Or if I am, at least I'm in very good company.

Color-Coded Madness, Minus the Mad

So. I believe I've mentioned my predilection for organization my books by color - if only because I have so many and because putting the books away (usually such a fun thing) happened on move day 57 in which I had no mental ability to think about a proper organization system. The weight of the task got the best of me and I thought slapping the books up by color would be faster. I was right. It was faster.

Here's what's not faster: finding a book among the color-coded madness. 

While it is true that I possess a photographic memory, it seems I have only memorized the covers of my hundreds of books. Knowing what a cover looks like does you no good when all that mocks you from your color-coded shelves are...spines. I spent a Sunday afternoon looking and looking and looking for a book. I'm still looking.

And yet: I've grown accustomed to the compliments I receive on my color-coded books (rarely by bookish folks, mind you...but the design folks dig it) and I've gotten used to how nice they look, all organized by vibrancy and hue and tone.  I've become so attached to the look that I've become one of those people I used to mock: books as decor, not simply as gateways to other worlds.  I'm not comfortable with this state of affairs, but I haven't found a solution.

Until now: behold.

Only one question remains: how to adapt and implement immediately?
 

Lit Bits & A Bit About Bookshelves

A few lit bits for an almost-over week:

• Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires, has a wonderful essay on weight and body image in the April issue of Vogue. I had tears in my eyes reading it for several reasons: One, I could relate. Two, I kept thinking "this is so honest, so raw...wow."  It is that ability to cut to the truth that makes her an excellent fiction writer...it is the line through all her work.  (As with Harper's, the April features aren't online yet.)
• Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth, is also featured in April's Vogue. She says, "It's the first book I've written since becoming a parent, with the full consciousness of what it means to bring a life into the world and be responsible for that life. I can see both ends of the spectrum now."  She also says this was the "hardest" book she's written to date.
• Felicia Sullivan, chef extraordinaire and author of The Sky Isn't Visible From Here (whom I'll be interviewing in the coming weeks), just recommended a book that's not been on my radar: Kelly McMaster's Welcome to Shirley. Consider it officially on the list.
• Nathan Ihara at LA Weekly has the goods on Richard Price and his latest novel, Lush Life.
• I've been staring at the above photo of a phenomenal bookshelf project featured on Apartment Therapy for awhile now...and it seemed wrong to drool and not share. So, there. Also, I should note that I've been in such an odd state that I was looking at this picture all wrong - not from the aerial view (which this is, actually, if one were standing at the top of the staircase looking down) but from some bizarre literal view in which I wondered aloud how strong those books were that people could actually step on them going up and down the staircase. Of course, that view would mean that the door downtstairs was on the ceiling and that should have been my first clue that I had the wrong perspective on it. Ah! Isn't that often the case!
• In other bookshelf news, Design*Sponge just happens to be featuring an extensive book storage roundup today.  Gorgeous empty bookshelves are a slippery slope into full-on book porn.

Up & Down, Might as Well Sit Down & Read a Book

It's been an up and down kind of day - in so many, many ways - and while I consider the big questions of to blog or not to blog, to write or not to write, to throw in the towel and relegate myself to the world of work and only work or find a way to still do it all and not worry incessantly (see? i told you it was big!), I stumbled upon this and my mood somehow got lighter. Brighter:

If you can sit in this kind of chair, if this kind of chair exists in this kind of world that has me so turned around and upside down that I don't even know where I'm currently located, well, then, this world can't be all that bad.  Right? Because, that, my friends, is a chair I could sit in. And read in. And, perhaps, that is the kind of chair that would give me just enough room to breathe, just enough room to smile (how could you not smile sitting in that thing?) and just enough room figure it all out and not - as is my wont these last gray days - take it all so seriously.

Holiday Reading

Everyone is busy chatting about the bookshelf that you can put presents in (vs. under), but I say: why not put books in it?

Nature books. Holiday books. Books with only green covers. Design books. A book is the best present I can think of anyway.

(Via. Via.)

A New Twist on What Your Books Say About You

Hari Kunzru's piece for The Guardian made us laugh and then...run over to our own shelves, scramble to our messy desk(s) to check our own novel-notes.  Samina Malik's recent conviction for possession of "records likely to be used for terrorism" has Kunzru wondering about his own fate, if his books and notes for his forthcoming novel My Revolution were discovered:

"When the story leaks, it will look bad. A loner, obsessed by political violence, who had filled dozens of notebooks with his semi-indecipherable scrawl. In one, a "list of possible targets" including army barracks, power stations and Conservative party offices. In another, the chilling phrase, "should I kill him? A bullet to the head ..." Perhaps at this point an astute detective will realise that the vast bulk of suspicious material relates to a period before 1975, and that what he has in front of him is a collection of research material for my last novel, set in the terrorist underground of the early 70s."

A quick scan of my own stuff shows that I've got a bent towards death, funerals in particular. What people wear at funerals and the kinds of food they serve pre and post. And real estate...I've got a lot of new housing development maps floating about my desk these days.  Hardly something that would raise concern with the authorities.

What does your "stuff" say?

Holiday Bookshelf?

Despite all negative (sneering, rude, mean, crummy) comments received (both online/offline) when I mentioned that I temporarily organized my bookshelves by color, I feel that I must present this as evidence of: oh come on, you have to admit it looks good!

Doesn't it? Doesn't it? I say if you have a hankering for books and less of a hankering for holiday decorating, this could be your out. Really.

(Via ninahale. Via apartment therapy LA.)

(For Google Reader *sucks* proof, this was posted at 2:31pm PST.)

In Which There is No Love for the Rainbow Books

Who knew there'd be such passion (and downright disdain) for my color-schemed bookshelves. Several emailers wanted to let me know they've lost respect for me as a reader and a writer because I've arranged my books in such a way. Really? Here is where I must cry "too serious."  Are people truly that upset about this to send in less-than-nice emails? I find this very surprising. And silly.

It was a funny thing I did - to save myself time a few months ago when the task of re-shelving all my drywall-covered books seemed daunting and I had to get them off the floor before the construction crew could move on to other projects.  I'm now sharing the not-so-stellar results. 

Alas, it seems, I'm not the only one who has done so: there is an entire "Rainbow of Books" Flickr pool dedicated to the cause.  You get even more results by searching on rainbow + bookshelf.  I might feature some of this rainbow book porn throughout the week.  I. Just. Might.

Now - I hear you.  I, too, have felt that people who use books as props in their home (cretans!) and those who use books as decor (charlatans!) without ever really cracking one open are not to be taken seriously...or even considered.  If you have read this blog for any length of time (or even, I would venture, for a week or so), it should be dead-obvious that I not only love books, but read them in healthy doses. Enough said. I think. We'll see what kind of emails come in today.

If the flack from my arrangement decision simply becomes too much, I can always blame Bud Parr who gave me the idea in the first place. Notice my comment from a year ago. I, too, thought it seemed insane.

Rainbow books by chodta via Flickr (which makes my shelves look like child's play)