Sunday of 2012 – Biblioklept

Book Shelves #30, 7.21.2012

July 22, 2012July 21, 2012 Biblioklept2 Comments

Book shelves series #30, thirtieth Sunday of 2012

See a full length shot of this book shelf (or don’t).

Lots of publication series editions here, including this batch of Melville House Art of the Contemporary Novella:

I reviewed most of these and they’re all very good—especially Sandokan.

Some ratty ratty Penguin Classics that I procured from various institutions I won’t name here. The Mallory was a particular obsession for a few years:

The Rousseau Coloring Book was a gift from a friend to our daughter, but I stole it and put it up here.

I reviewed all of Picador’s BIG IDEAS // small books series; I actually got a new one, Privacy, in the mail the other day. Violence and Humiliation are particularly good.

Next to those: various World of Art series books, most of them my wife’s. (Bonus points if you guess mine correctly):

I have no idea why these books are grouped here like this; I’m guessing they were all in the same box when we moved. I know we have multiple copies of several of these:

There’s a basket with a Klee book and some mini umbrellas and other stuff, not pictured, and then this lot on the end, including to “Introducing” books that are remainders from my freshman year of college; they are terrible and I should get rid of them. I stole this edition of The Stranger from my high school in the 10th or 11th grade. The Chronicles of Narnia box set was a gift from my aunt when I was like seven or eight:

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 #22, 5.27.2012

May 27, 2012May 27, 2012 Biblioklept1 Comment

Book shelves series #22, twenty-second Sunday of 2012: Tolkien, Faulkner, McCarthy

As always, sorry for the glare. Shooting this case head on is almost impossible because of the windows on the other side of the room. Anyway.

I’ve read everything by Cormac McCarthy with the exception of his screenplay for The Gardener’s Son, which I found a week or two and picked it up. I don’t own a copy of No Country for Old Men because I haven’t found one that isn’t a movie tie-in.

This copy of The Lord of the Rings—my first—was a kind gift from some friends we were staying with in Melbourne (the one in Australia, not Florida).

I’ve read it at least four times; I have other copies of LoTR and have read them too. It’s probably the book I’ve read the most, although I haven’t read it since 2002. This copy is kindly inscribed:

There’s a slim space on the shelf that currently holds a few books that I’ve been meaning to read:

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 #17, 4.22.2012

April 22, 2012April 22, 2012 Biblioklept4 Comments

Book shelves series #17, seventeenth Sunday of 2012.

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Camus, Nabokov, Celine, Kafka.

Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones with Revere movie camera as bookend. Littell’s lurid, bizarre book is only shelved here temporarily (he’s in too-rarefied company, perhaps).

A friend gave me this in high school.

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 #11, 3.11.2012

March 11, 2012March 10, 2012 Biblioklept10 Comments

Book shelves series #11, eleventh Sunday of 2012. DeLillo, Denis Johnson, Pynchon (no, I have not read Against the Day nor finished Mason & Dixon). There’s also a hardback copy of Bolaño’s Between Parentheses; I have an ARC of the same shelved with the other Bolaños, which are on the shelf under—but the finished copy won’t fit on the shelf and it fits here. For now.