What does your bookcase say about you?

[lyrasilver]

Maybe I should ask what do you want it to say about you! Mine is in the kitchen and a quick look at the books currently residing there ... thrillers, mainly american authors and quite grusome, some scifi/ fantasy Stephen Donaldson, Eddings,Iain Banks, and loads of Stephen King for light relief. Bottom shelf cookery books and childrens books.
Not sure what it says apart from I like cooking, I have children andenjoy the dark side of fiction.

I don't think that I will ever consider myself as having a lot of books (we have seven bookcases here after a lot of downsizing) as my parents (and the wider family in general) have so many. My father has managed to fill not one but two houses - their holiday home has all the fiction (two complete walls of floor to ceiling shelving, plus a few ordinary sized ones in bedrooms) and then perhaps 10 or so very large bookcases in their mostly living in home full of art, history, biography, travel books, antique books that my father is collecting, tax books (he is an accountant), classics (poets and history), and my mothers collection of ethics (she taught RE). All of them read at least once. But then they do have 30+ years of reading on me...

I have a huge floor to ceiling made to measure book case along one wall in my 'library' (its actually the smallest room in our house and we started calling it the library as a joke and its sort of stuck). Bottom shelf is large non-fiction, mainly history and art(s), next shelf is oversized and hardback fiction/non fiction books, next shelf biog and travel books, Next 3 shelves my fiction - a real mix of stuff from some antique dickens books to trash (although most trash I do get rid of once I've read) and top shelf is DH's fiction shelf which may be moved into its own book case in DH's study in order for me to spread.

Downstairs we have cookery books in the kitchen. Again, a real mix.

DD has a bookcase full of children's books and somewhere we have boxes of children's books she has grown out of.

Plus bed side piles etc...

Lyra- It's taking a while

oh wheely library envy I fantasize of having one including a metal spiral staircase

with old leather chairs
,sfx goes off in mad reverie >

Hmm yes, I think a spiral staircase might take up the whole room (but its an idea as DH's study is above it so I could start to take that over as well.... hmmm.. do you think he'd notice ?).

Loving this thread - makes me feel much better - we have 4 billy bookcases (IKEA) filled with cookery books, gardening books, Sci fi, Fantasy, crime thrillers, reference books (mainly music), some language books (never read) and a few biographies. The odd chick lit book has crept in too.

DD(3)has her own bookcase in her bedroom which is gradually filling up - I think she might become a bookworm like her parents.

I would love a library with lovely comfortable leather chairs to escape to and sliding bookcases with a ladder.

Mine say I'm an intellectual catholic 7 year old wearing a Doctor Who scarf on the back of a turtle whilst trying to solve the mystery of who smothered Bertie Wooster in the cake batter vie authentic 14th century detection methods...

...in blank verse

LOL squeaver - I've still got copies of Beowulf and the Lais of Marie de France tucked alongside my Jilly Coopers

MaryMungo you sound so interesting and unusual... I guess I am a crime solving, scientist living in a zombie/vampire/ demon filled town making delicious meals, whilst flitting between realities and putting the kids to bed.
A proper library room would be wonderful, but I would still have piles of books everywhere! Nice to dream about it tho, tall bookshelves and one of those ladders on rails that slide along. Would hate doing the shelving , did enough of that in the pre children days.

I never think we have many books. And then I realise that actually we do, given that most rooms in the Inferiority Complex are crammed with the buggers.

They say that between us we read a lot of crime fiction, real fiction, sci-fi, the odd bit of very right-on stuff, that one of us had a serious Wimmin's Press habit back in the 1980s, one of us knows about Jography and Development, one of us got an English degree back in the days when it included doing Anglo-Saxon, and that one of us likes Cake.

Mine are empty. I have packed up all 700 (ok, 757) books and sent them to stay in my parents loft for a while. But looking at the amazing spreadsheet I created (listing them by author, title and box number) I can't tell anything about myself at all, except that I only read english. I have a pretty wide ranging collection of sci-fi, not so much fantasy, plenty of crime, agatha christie, ruth rendell etc. LOADS of cookbooks, a lot of 19th century authors, murakami, coupland, some poetry, basically anything from Allende to Zola.

But if you actually loked at my bookshelves...I have the Bible and a bunch of ds's picture books, that's it.

I've recently been ruthless and given away lots of books to the charity shop, and put even more into storage. I got rid of all the worthy things that I'm never going read (Vikram Seth, James Joyce, and the like).

Still have remaining on display:
6 shelves of cookery books in the kitchen
4 bookcases in the sitting room, all double stacked with paperbacks
2 bookcases in our bedroom, jam-packed with hardbacks
1 bookcase in the boys' room, plus overflow pile
plus piles of books here, there and everywhere

That I do not enjoy dusting.

That I'm an avid believer in decluttering but that DH doesn't share my passion, hence endless black Penquin books about the Etruscans.

I can't see books as clutter, they're more like decor to me.

books are in various places about the house
i dread to think what they say about me.
prob that i am fickle, faddy, have multiple personalities, am insecure and have a bizarre complusion to buy books on every topic that glances across my frontal lobes.

or that i have varied interests, to put it more positively

books are clutter??
only if they are bizarre 80's books on soft furnishiongs and needlepoint or some such shit (inherited from dps ex those ones, nothing to do with me, guv. honest)

Closer scrutiny of my bookshelves has revealed ancient Jackie Annuals and a few Oor Wullies and The Broons books.. I am counting these as clutter, still wont throw them out tho!

we have lots of bookcasees in our house, mainly they say we should get a bigger one in the bedroom as it's seriously oveloaded, adn we should prolly take some to the charity shop. BUT I do like re-reading books, and so does DH.

I have just asked DH what he thinks about what my books says about me.....

he reckons I am a crime-busting, vampire wanna-be, with a penchant for 'pretty men' OR, that I am trying to find ways of committing the perfect murder!!!

oh, and that I have a disturbing liking for spending too much money on 'burning fuel'!!

Jackie Annuals - how fantastic.

By the way did you know that Jackie was named after Jaqueline Wilson?

does anyone else find that if they walk into a house with absolutely no books, or any reading material in fact, that it somehow 'lacks something'???

and if you walk into a house with many books, you are drawn to the shelves like a honey to a flower....

a bee to a flower......a BEE!!!

We have two walls in the sitting room devoted to books,one large wall of books in our bedroom,the left side of the hallway is all book shelves,ds has two large bookcases in his room,and the top of my kitchen cupboards are devoted to cook books.

I guess I'm a bookaholic