Books Acquired, Manners Lost

We were at McKay’s in Gainesville, Virginia, enjoying the atmosphere among the stacks of secondhand books with a swirl of all sorts of people devouring a common passion. Ava and d headed toward the kid’s section where they hit a motherlode of ‘Junie B. Jones’ which has totally enamored our daughter. Me, being in an essay and memoir frame of mind, I bought Roger Ebert’s Life Itself, E.L. Doctorow’s Creationists, Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number, and Facing Unpleasant Facts by George Orwell. I read so many fictional books as a freelancer that I find myself more and more in the non-fiction section for entertainment.

Small observation: it used to be when someone passed in front of you in an aisle there would be a polite, “Excuse me.” That was the norm … or at least it’s how I seem to remember it. Look, I’m not someone who longs for the good old days. I know people are people and remain largely unchanged, but I don’t believe I’m mistaken that common courtesies in libraries and bookstores were the standard and only occasionally would someone fail to live up to it. Agree? Disagree?

TSA Checking Books

Why Airport Security Might Inspect Your Books Before Your Next Flight

A Book List

I’ve been asked to recommend a list of books. Tall order. This list could change next week or even later today. But these fifteen have had a lasting impression. Disclosure: I published three and two others are written by good friends.

The Adventures of Augie March (1953)/Saul Bellow

Herzog (1964)/Saul Bellow

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)/Joan Didion

I Shall Not Be Moved (1991)/Maya Angelou

Despair (1965, English translation)/Vladimir Nabokov

The Posthumous Man (2012)/Jake Hinkson

The Age of Reason/Thomas Paine (published in three parts: 1794, 1795, and 1807)

Monte Walsh (1963)/Jack Schaefer

Donnybrook (2013)/Frank Bill

American Gods (2001)/Neil Gaiman

The Little Boy Inside and Other Stories (2013)/Glenn Gray

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)/Patricia Highsmith

The Girls of Bunker Pines (2014) /Garnett Elliott

The Haunting of Hill House (1959)/Shirley Jackson

All Those Hungry Mouths (2015)/Keith Rawson

Tom Pluck's Steelcase

You are looking at a Steelcase business grade shelf stacked 3 deep.

My own books and signed editions by authors I respect line the top shelf. Some are blocked out by the Escher Metamorphosis cards that I respond to letters with.

So there is a benefit to snail mail...

I cycle the books back and forth to force me to read the ones I've neglected. My TBR pile is so big I may never finish it. It just keeps getting larger as more and more fine stories by great writers are published. And then there's the e-books.

The shelf threatens to plummet through the floor on occasion, and I go on a reading binge to put it on a diet, but then someone goes and writes another damn good book and it's overweight again.

If only that were life's biggest complaint, having so many great stories waiting for me to read.

Now That's a Bookshelf, Bill Crider!

This is just one of many shelves in my office.  A mere drop in the ocean of books around there.  The top shelf holds most of the Ace Double crime novels, though the most famous one is a couple of shelves down in the middle.  Most of the rest is a sort of hodge-podge. I know what's there, even though it's all double-shelved.

Bonus: Bill performing with The Fabulous G-Strings.

Heath Lowrance's Bookshelf

It's hard to figure out where to put the oversize books, so they wind up on top of the short shelf in front of the window, along with Hulk, Linda Darnell, Tiki Clock, and um, a rubber brain. Those "Crimes and Punishment" volumes were partly responsible for warping my very young brain; they're full of purple prose and lurid death-scene photographs, and when I was ten or so I found a few my mom had hidden away. About three years ago, I stumbled across the entire set at a library book sale and snatched them up.

Heath Lowrance regularly blogs at Psycho Noir.

Ron Scheer's Bookshelves

You’re looking at one wall of the room I use for an office. The books across the bottom shelf on the left (plus three on top and three on the floor) are references for blogging and the book project I’m working on. The book itself in its present form is in the stacks of paper on the floor.

The rest of the books are mostly western fiction and some history. The stack between the cases is the to-read-next pile, and it hardly ever seems to sink below where it is now. About a third of that bunch are original editions of 100-year-old novels. There are more on the middle shelf of the bookcase on the right.

The framed photo on the far right is my attractive wife and copyeditor. The bears and koala are part of a collection that has followed me over the years. Charles Gramlich will recognize the framed cover of his KILLING TRAIL peeking out atop the left bookcase.