I was talking to Mike Meginnis the other day on Twitter and he made a most excellent point:
@mikemeginnis: Books are fun to show off because they’re relatively cheap — owning a bunch is much more a question of taste + time than money.
It’s no secret I’m loathe to take selfies, but shelfies, on the other hand, are a completely separate ballgame! In no particular order, here are some of my favorite shelves from my home library:
Mike’s book, front and center here; I figured I’d post this picture of my basement mantle first since Mike gave me the idea! He’s [temporarily, at least] near J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun and Chandler’s The Big Sleep, a few books by Roger Zelazny, and some spy novels by John Le Carre, book-ended by Peter F. Hamilton, Monica Drake, and Zadie Smith (a dual-language copy of Rilke’s Dueno Elegies is in there, too. It’s very slim!)!
This is the other shelf with Ballard. Empire of the Sun is a shorter paperback, so it looks funny on this shelf near these taller hardcovers like Alissa Nutting, The Rumpus Women, Joe Hill, Lev Grossman, and a few Gonzo Journalism books!
Pretty much just David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon here….
Some Neal Stephenson (I own much more Alastair Reynolds and Larry Niven, but those are in eBook format, soooo….
Jack Vance, Péter Nádas, and Margaret Atwood sleep here, as well as JoAnna Russ and Doris Lessing!
Some sci-fi from Dan Simmons, John Scalzi, Walter Miller Jr. and more here…
You’ll find some Jeff VanderMeer here as well as all of the Malazan Empire/Books of the fallen on this shelf (right above most of Iain M. Banks’s bibliography). I have a separate picture of the Banks shelf (he’s a HUGE personal fav!), but I can’t seem to locate it to save my life…
Hello Gene Wolfe and China Miéville!
William T. Vollmann, Jonathan Lethem, Sam Lipsyte, George Saunders, Denis Johnson, and Haruki Murakami all snugly occupy this shelf:
Ray Bradbury (I LOVE that copy of The Martian Chronicles!), Stephen R. Donaldson, Vernor Vinge, and Raymond Feist reside here….
Isaac Asimov, Patrick Rothfuss, and Glen Cook can be found above the works of Jane Smiley, Norman Mailer, Hermann Hesse, and T.C. Boyle. Can you spot Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic and/or my first ever Folio Society edition here? (n.b. I’ve no idea whatsoever why this photo looks so washed out…):
Philip Roth shares shelf space with Junot Diaz and Peter Watts on shelf 1; shelf 2 is home to M. John Harrison, Joe Abercrombie, and some Icelandic Sagas!
Lots of classic and modern sci-fi here, especially Neil Gaiman, George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, and David Anthony Durham (not to mention books by Cathrynne M. Valente, Lindsay Hunter, and Julie Orringer). Shelf 2 features Mark Z. Danielewski, Don Delillo, William Gaddis, Jack Kerouac, and Michael Chabon….
These shelves are quite colorful! Nicole Krauss, Z.Z. Packer, John Barth, David Mitchell, Henry Miller, and Umberto Eco on top. Jonathan Franzen, Hunter S. Thompson, Monica Ali, Dave Eggers, and Jeffry Eugenides on bottom.
More shelfies from upstairs to come later!
