book shelf series – Page 2

Book Shelves #32, 8.05.2012

August 5, 2012July 29, 2012 Biblioklept2 Comments

Book shelves series #31, thirty-first Sunday of 2012

I had forgotten about this Norman Rockwell book, which I promptly took out and put on the coffee table:

It’s funny to think how corny I used to think the guy was . . .

. . . which I guess he is, corny, I mean, but he’s also a master painter, with cartoonish sensibility.

And if at times he’s goofy, well, he also exhibited a social conscience in his art that was, well, human-centered.

A harmonica book:

And a guitar book:

Talking Heads are my favorite band. An old girlfriend found this tabloidy book at a thriftstore and gave it to me for my birthday. This was like 16 years ago. I’d forgotten where the book was:

There’s a few copies of Far Side stuff on this shelf:

And Frank Miller’s Wolverine graphic novel, which was my favorite thing in the world when I was 11.

Sad Wolverine:

One of at least three Magritte books in the house is on this shelf. A drawing from said volume:

A Gustav Klimt coloring book:

Book Shelves #31, 7.29.2012

July 29, 2012July 29, 2012 Biblioklept2 Comments

Book shelves series #31, thirty-first Sunday of 2012

When I started this project I thought it would be a fun way to keep stock of the books that I have, and also a way to perhaps question why I hold on to the books that I hold on to.

I mean, why keep a book after you’ve read it?

Anyway, at times throughout this series I’ve gotten bored, or rushed; other times I’ve thought the idea was stupid, or narcissistic, or something even worse (although I don’t know what).

I like the shelves above the pedestrian, utilitarian jobber that I’ll feature this Sunday and the next: lots of aesthetically pleasing stuff there.

Not so this one, which holds photos and cookbooks and art books and old notebooks and sketchbooks and every kind of etcetera:

At least that’s what I thought until I started digging into the cramped top shelf, dutifully bound to this project.

I wound up really enjoying myself, pausing over volumes that I haven’t looked at in ages, like this beauty:

I’m not sure if the aesthetic joy of this postcard collection comes across in these lousy iPhone photo shots.

I got this on a trip to London when I was 11. It was just my mom and my brother and I. First we went to Singapore. We were coming back to the States for Christmas, and also to live, eventually. My brother broke his leg in Singapore jumping down some stairs and we didn’t realize it was broken until we got back to Florida.

I used to draw and paint all the time, especially as a kid. Mostly animals.

There are at least a dozen skinny books like this on the shelf:

I must have done hundreds of these as a kid:

The shelf is also full of old comic strip collections that you probably recognize, like these guys:

And this guy (and yes, I have the 7″ record from this collection)

I also spent half an hour revising Rublowsky’s 1965 volume Pop Art, which is kind of fascinating in its contemporary proximity to its subject.

The cover’s not interesting, but Ken Heyman’s photos are; they show the artists in process. This one is kinda famous:

And here’s Roy Lichtenstein:

Book Shelves #29, 7.15.2012

July 15, 2012July 15, 2012 Biblioklept6 Comments

Book shelves series #29, twenty-ninth Sunday of 2012

Lots of hardbacks on this long, long shelf. The Vonneguts above were particularly important to me when I was young. They were my father’s. I read them surreptitiously for years and then outright appropriated them at some point. The matching Dodd, Mead hardbacks were rescued from a school I worked at for years. My wife made the vase that serves as a bookend. The copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that doesn’t quite fit in the frame remains unread.

The BFG: a classic. I reviewed Wabi Sabi. Next to the Crumb:

I found Holidays in a box of free books in a library lobby. Love it. Here’s this week’s schedule of holidays:

One of my favorite books ever is Mitsou, a book that Balthus did when he was like 10 or 12 or something:

It’s about a young boy who gets a cat and loves the cat and then loses the cat. It’s heartbreaking. Image:

And next to this one:

Shelf’s end:

Book Shelves #28, 7.08.2012

July 8, 2012July 8, 2012 Biblioklept9 Comments

Book shelves series #28, twenty-eighth Sunday of 2012

Last month, or maybe the month before last, I forget, an anonymous reader accused me of not putting as much into these posts as I used to, which may or may not be true.

But I’m exhausted today—I’ve been out of town for the past week, enjoying a beach vacation with family and friends &c., and yeah, I’m fragged. Got home late late last night, had to clean up, mow the lawn, all that snazz. (The blog has been on autopilot but I’ll try to write up some original content for next week—maybe a review of Moonrise Kingdom. We’ll see).

Anyway, this Sunday finds us in a new room, the converted garage of my 1956 ranch-style home, a room we use as a family room. I’ll look at each shelf pictured above individually and remark on a few books (there’s some good stuff in there), but I’m just too tired. Sorry the pic is so blurry. Feel free to send me a newer iPhone.

There are two book cases below these shelves, and on top of one of these, under a large framed picture of my children that obscures them, are these ratty volumes:

The Barth books are a throwback to my early college days, when I simply bought the cheapest volume; I don’t buy mass market paperbacks anymore (okay, maybe rarely). The Shakespeare books are too tall to fit on a shelf full of Shakespeare stuff, although there are a few shelves of Shakespeare stuff in the room. Actually, I’m not really sure why these books are here at all. It’s likely that I hid them behind the aforementioned large framed picture one day while cleaning up and never reshelved. Not a pretty shelf.

Book Shelves #27, 7.01.2012

July 1, 2012July 1, 2012 Biblioklept2 Comments

Book shelves series #27, twenty-seventh Sunday of 2012

There are 27 Sundays in 2012, so today’s post is the half way mark for this series, I guess.

This is an obscure little shelf on the side of a piece of furniture that holds the TV in our den. These are travel books, phrase books, etc., which I’m not sure if people still buy—I mean, I don’t buy them anymore, at least not if I’m going to go somewhere. I use the internet, or iPhone apps. Maybe I need to go to some place without 3G or wireless coverage.

There are some other relics here, too, on the shelf above this one—CDs and DVDs.

Book Shelves #26, 6.24.2012

June 24, 2012June 24, 2012 Biblioklept2 Comments

Book shelves series #26, twenty-sixth Sunday of 2012: Some old art books.

This little shelf sits next to a solitary couch in a den/fireplace room that abuts the eat-in kitchen. The shelf is mostly to hold the occasional drink if feet are propped on the coffee table. There are old art books in here, dating back to high school and college, when my wife and I (separately, of course, in those days) still bought lots and lots of art books, before the internet made accessibility to images so ubiquitous. As such, the shelf holds books that reflected our tastes of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years ago: Lots of Pre-Raphaelite and Romantic stuff (hers) and lots of surrealist/modernist/cubist stuff (mine). Anyway. These rarely get dug out these days. If I want to check out Burne-Jones I usually visit an online gallery.

The portrait of Joan Miro and his daughter in the upper right corner is by the painter who called himself Balthus. I love the painting. It’s deeply creepy but also tender.

Book Shelves #20, 5.13.2012

May 13, 2012May 12, 2012 BibliokleptLeave a comment

1.4. Things which aren’t books but are often met with in libraries

Photographs in gilded brass frames, small engravings, pen and ink drawings, dried flowers in stemmed glasses, matchbox-holders containing, or not, chemical matches (dangerous), lead soldiers, a photograph of Ernest Renan in his study at the College de France, postcards, dolls’ eyes, tins, packets of salt, pepper and mustard from Lufthansa, letter-scales, picture hooks, marbles, pipe-cleaners, scale models of vintage cars, multicoloured pebbles and gravel, ex-votos, springs.

—From Georges Perec’s essay “The Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books”

Book shelves series #20, twentieth Sunday of 2012: In Which I Try to Prove I Am Not Just Phoning It In

Last week I was accused of “going through the motions” with this project, which accusation may or may not be true. I was out of town on vacation, and last week’s post was composed a few days ahead of time in a harried rush of end-of-the-semester grading + summer semester planning + packing + bad bad writer’s block.

The shelf featured last week is the top shelf in the shot above.

Here is a detail of the shelf below, which clearly features things which are not books:

My wife and I—not actually married at the time, kids really—bought these kokeshi dolls when we were living in Japan. We lived in Tokyo, but I’m almost positive we bought these on a vacation in Kyoto. (Or maybe it was in Kamakura. Or I suppose it could have been in Tokyo).

The screen in the background was a gift from a student, as was the screen in the shot below, a shelf that twins this one (if anyone cares at all, the shelf would be sequenced between shelves 10 and 11).

Book Shelves #19, 5.06.2012

May 6, 2012May 2, 2012 Biblioklept5 Comments

Book shelves series #19, nineteenth Sunday of 2012.

When I started this project, this shelf was all Tolkien and Joyce; now it’s mostly Gaddis and Joyce.

I have dupes of most of the Joyce books here; there’s also Joyce criticism/guides on the shelf.

Another angle. Glare is horrible. iPhone is not a good camera; lots of glare; shelf is much taller than me, etc.:

Here’s a tight shot of the Brownie Six-16 that serves as bookend:

Something from Finnegans Wake :

Book Shelves #16, 4.15.2012

April 15, 2012April 15, 2012 Biblioklept1 Comment

Book shelves series #16, sixteenth Sunday of 2012.

It’s hard to photograph books, and using an iPhone 3gs probably doesn’t help. Lots of glare. Anyway: This shelf houses mostly Melville, with some Hawthorne, Poe, and Whitman, as well as some critical works on the American Renaissance movement. (Henry James and F.O. Matthiessen). I have other versions of a lot of these books, including a fraternal twin in my office, a bit bulkier (Emerson, Dickinson, Thoreau, etc.), although these days I’m apt to go to the Kindle for American Renaissance stuff. Here’s a better angle, perhaps:

The version of Typee is bizarre: no colophon, no publisher info, just text. I love these midcentury Rinehart Editions of Hathorne and Melville stuff:

Book Shelves #14, April 1, 2012

April 1, 2012April 1, 2012 Biblioklept1 Comment

Book shelves series #14, fourteenth Sunday of 2012.

This is a strange shelf: it’s the bottom shelf of the ladder book shelf I’ve been photographing over the past few weeks, and it’s probably the least organized so far. There’s also a higher ratio of unread books on this shelf than in previous shelves. Anyway, left to right:

I was far more enthusiastic about Jonathan Lethem just a few years ago. I still think The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn hold up (they do in my memory, anyway), but Chronic City was awful (then why is it still on my shelf) and You Don’t Love Me Yet is one of the most pointless, silly, and gross books I’ve ever read.

I had good intentions to read John Crowley’s Little, Big and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco and John Wray’s Lowboy and Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love: I’m actually pretty sure I got all these novels around the same time. They must have been in a stack that eventually got shelved here during a reshelving.

I’ve read at least five or six more Margaret Atwood novels than the ones here, but have no idea where they are (likely a combination of cheap mass markets that I gave to friends or lost).

Chris Bachelder’s U.S.! is an underread gem. Chris Adrian: Again, I was more enthusiastic about his work a few years ago, but I think it holds up. Also, would the person who borrowed my first edition hardback of The Children’s Hospital please return it? Padgett Powell’s slim novel is not bad.

Will Self’s Great Apes holds the distinction of being the ickiest novel I’ve ever read. Horrifying stuff. I bought it at an airport—in Bangkok? LA? Houston? I really can’t remember—I was returning to the US from Thailand and had bought the cheapest possible plane ticket—one that would basically keep me en route for three days, sleeping on planes and in airports. Anyway, Self’s nightmare book is bound up in that experience: it’s a riff on Kafka; dude wakes up to find that he’s become a chimp. It’s just so gross on so many levels. (Maybe I should add that I find seeing chimps dressed as humans to be the acme of perversion).

The Wells Tower collection is gold.

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is gold, but I never got past the first 20 pages of number9dream, which seemed to really bite from William Gibson. I loved both the Tom McCarthy books, particularly C. Eco’s The Name of the Rose is a bit overrated and Baudolino’s first half is not bad, but it just goes on and on and on . . . but it’s funny.

Book Shelves #6, 2.05.2012

February 5, 2012February 5, 2012 Biblioklept9 Comments

Book shelves series #6, sixth Sunday of 2012: In which we dig into the comix inside the book shelf we looked at last week.

When I was 13, I sold a fairly large collection of superhero comic books and earned enough money to buy an electric guitar—a weird mutant by Fender called the Bullet—and a small practice amp. It was the early nineties, and Marvel was about to burst the comic book bubble big time by flooding the market with gimmicky covers, hologram cards, and other nonsense.

I continued to buy comics (or comix, if you prefer) over the years, although eventually economic concerns led me to just wait for graphic novel editions. Anyway, the book shelf above now contains most of the “underground” comix that I own. A few samples:

Most of the comix in this unit though are issues of Dave Sim’s epic (and insane) series Cerebus. I bought issues of Cerebus intermittently for years at a time, usually getting frustrated and then waiting for the “phone book” graphic novel editions of the series. Sim, along with background artist Gerhard, produced 300 issues of Cerebus over 25 years. The issues from the early ’80s to the early ’90s are brilliant; eventually Sim cracked though and went on an insane, reactionary (and arguably deeply misogynistic) bent. He created his own religion, a mix of hardline Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and the later books in the series suffered greatly, as the book detoured to chronicle projects that seemed far outside its original scope (including strange, long satires of Hemingway and Fitzgerald). Anyway, some issues:

Cerebus Jam, a one-off collaboration with a cover by one of my favorite artists Bill Sienkiewicz (I still have his entire run on Marvel’s The New Mutants in a box somewhere):

A panel from the issue’s collaboration with comic book legend Will Eisner, featuring his seminal character The Spirit:

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