The Bookcase Meme

I was tagged by Carrie to provide a detailed commentary about my bookshelves and their contents: “give us a general breakdown of your bookshelf, by number of authors, genre, series, anything you want.”

Ha. Okay. Thing one about my bookshelves is that I need more of them. We have these huge floor to ceiling Ikea jobs, but I need another one. At least. Possibly two more. I have about three cardboard boxes of books still packed. I dream of the day when I get a Beauty-and-the-Beast style library, complete with one of those rolling ladders. Ooh. Ahhh.

Thing two about my bookshelves is that organization eludes me. Originally, I had a romance shelf, and a YA shelf, and a non-fiction shelf, and a TBR shelf, but that bubble has long since been popped. Now I have books. Lots of them. Most shelves, as you can see, have several rows, stacked sideways so I can fit more books onto them. When I get my library with the rolling ladders (or at least another few bookshelves) I’ll reorganize.

Okay, first bookshelf. This is the “small” one, since it is both narrower and shorter than the other two. However, it’s where I put my oversized books, since it has a “tall” shelf. As you can see, the top shelf is devoted to lot of my trade erotic romances, including the ones with me on the cover. However, I apparently have a Stanislaw Lem (Fiasco), a Guy Gavriel Kay (The Lions of Something-or-other-Moorish that I haven’t read), and a Stephen Baxter (Timelike Infinity) shelved in next to all the Secrets and Bravas. The second shelf is devoted to my oversized coffee table books, and four huge stacks of Mass market paperbacks, mostly romances, with the Stephen King doorstopper IT, a “Best American Short Stories”, the Hugo-winning Spin, and a herbalist gide thrown in there for good measure.

The shelf beneath is all literary criticism, except for the Donna Tartt on the far right side, and the stack in front, which is a mix of cookbooks, Westerfeld’s The Last Days, and an Annotated Bible, which I was using during the copyedits of Under the Rose and never properly reshelved. Also, candles.

The next shelf. Obviously the top tier is given over to Sailor Boy’s law school books, study packets, and… what’s this? Why, it’s an avenging unicorn impaling a besuited lawyer! Watch, out, SB!

Second shelf is a mish mash of fantasy, lit fic, and hardcover non fiction, with front stacks that are so disorganized, you’ve got everything from an ARC of Gena Showalter’s Enslave me Sweetly to a college text book of Hume and and Italian-language guide to symbolism in Renaissance art.

Wow, is this embarrassing.

Third shelf you’ve got my hardcover Austen collection, Little Women, The Complete Aristotle, the annotated Inferno, two gift copies of Dipped in Chocolate (one of which I’m giving away on my blog this week!), The Book Thief (I could clearly use one of those right about now!), my personally autographed hardcover of Valiant, and another ARC. (I got a lot of ARCs at BEA last year.)

The bottom of this bookshelf (told you the IKEA jobbies were huge) has a bunch of Very Important Literary Novels, philosophy, and lit crit books completely overwhelmed by stacks of popular fiction, which I think indeed says a lot about me. Glimpsed between the stacks of romance novels, urban fantasy, and chick lit, you can see some Nabokov, a Latin primer, a Locke, and The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.

Down one shelf, you’ve got more important literary type books, including The Tale of Genji, Maus I and II, the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, which someone gave me in honor of his namesake in SSG, a Golden Bough (which also makes an appearance in Under the Rose), Godel, Escher, Bach, which belongs to SB and he says it’s good, The Lord of the Rings copy we lugged through Australia and New Zealand, *another* Aristotle, because we both took Philosophy in school, and now readers of SSG know where the chapter three joke comes from, more lit crit, a Pelican Shakespeare volume of SB’s, and my Betty Crocker. Below that, reference books on everything from the GRE, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a gag gift from SB) to travel guides.

The next shelf was supposed to be for science in the original incarnation, which can still be glimpsed by all my old Geology textbooks in the mix. But somehow, Dan Brown got shelved next to The Holocene, and Clarissa found her way in there as well. The horizontal middle stack is a mish mash of women’s fiction, urban fantasy, YA and at the bottom there, a textbook on cloud formations. Yay, meterology.

One shelf down we have my original “childrens” shelf, with Heidi, Wizard of Oz, complete Grimms, Harry Potter, etc., and, then things break down with stacks of books shoved in where they fit and, most clearly, four copies of SSG.

These final shelves are where you really start to see my organizational structure break down. Here I’m just trying to cram as many books on shelves as possible, with little notice for genre or author. A bunch of ARCs from Harlequin I got at BEA (they do that color wash thing) next to The Far Pavillions, YA novels, an “upperback” that won’t fit ANYWHERE with ease, extra copies of Hit Reply (love that book!), more and more genre fiction, my Penguin Classics Monte Cristo, which I always keep in the front in case the house catches on fire and I want to make sure I have an entertaining read at my fingertips…

Down a shelf I have more college textbooks on the left warring for stack space against my last few copies of SSG’s ARC on the right, and then the shelf below that is my category romance “keeper” shelf, which is at the moment more than half-full of TBRs.

Now I feel bad for going to the bookstore earlier today. Clearly I have more than enough books to last me a lifetime. But I had to buy Night Rising and Scent of Shadows. Oh, dear. I have a problem.

My name is Diana, and I’m a bookaholic.

I tag the first three people to volunteer in the comments.