New Bookshelf!
Okay, here are the before and after pictures of the Great Bookshelf Installation of 2008.
The shelf in its Before state.
Please note the presence of:
a) a hamster Habitrail
b) a phrenology head
and c) a gremlin.
And yes, before you say anything - we're well aware of how badly we were treating our books.
Oh, the humanity!
The shelf after I moved all of my stuff over to the new bookcase. Much better, no? At least the poor things can breathe again.
Also? scarfe is a ginormous nerd. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy? C'mon!
My new bookshelf. *preens* My tiny Mountie statue, bottle of maple syrup and glass Inuksuk have already made themselves right at home.
Please ignore the mess of power cords to the left. I had a system. That system? Collapsed. You should also note that my decorating style relies heavily on very bright colours. meresy calls it, "Modern Canadian Geek." My interior-design show, "Are You Sure You're Not Colourblind?" will begin airing immediately on TLC, right after "Property Swap."
Because you asked, here are closeups of my books:
Top shelf: paperbacks, including my paltry collection of romance novels, which I will forget about until a Respected Colleague visits, after which I'll pretend they're scarfe's.
Second shelf: Can Lit! Writing reference books! The HCL novel! And Deep Blue, my enormous Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, which I have lugged around all over Canada and STILL despise. (I unearthed some of the papers I'd written in grad school while emptying the old bookshelf today. Wee!grad-student Nos makes the baby Jesus cry. I don't understand Lacan or Barthes. I suspect I never will).
Third shelf: Queer Lit! Including the story collections of keerawa and qe2, the series guide to due South that secretlybronte gave me (it's signed!), and some rather unfortunate purchases from Amazon.ca's "gay erotica" list. Folks, don't trust Amazon's "readers who bought this also purchased..." lists. You will be stuck with really horrible stories about cowboys and hot!cops and all manner of dreck.
And for those of you wondering how in the hell I organize my library, given that Breakfast at Tiffany's is nowhere near In Cold Blood...um, I do it by size, colour, and loose thematic grouping? I think? Even so, I'm still not sure how Faulkner, Steinbeck and Kerouac ended up on the Queer Lit shelf. But they're in good company - a book about William Blake's poetry and the short story/essay collection omphale23 gave me is also there. It's a good shelf. Just...oddly organized.
Fourth Shelf: Contemporary Fiction! This is where I mention that my two favourite books of all time are John Irving's The Cider House Rules and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
The rest of the shelf holds classic lit stuff and poetry (Dickens, Austen, Eliot, H.D.) and the 1.2 million books I purchased for my final graduate seminar on race relations. I know everything there is to know about Brown v. Board of Education, by the way. And if there's something I don't know, I can look it up!
Last shelf: the land of lost power cords, and all of the art books j_s_cavalcante sent me, as well as my LSAT prep guides and my driver's testing handbook, and books on handcrafts. I call this one the "shelf of bitter disappointment and frustration." (Seriously, hobbies are hard. I'm lucky I could get myself to commit to this writing thing).
There you go - a magical tour inside Nos' head. Don't forget to sign the guestbook!
The shelf in its Before state.
Please note the presence of:
a) a hamster Habitrail
b) a phrenology head
and c) a gremlin.
And yes, before you say anything - we're well aware of how badly we were treating our books.
Oh, the humanity!
The shelf after I moved all of my stuff over to the new bookcase. Much better, no? At least the poor things can breathe again.
Also? scarfe is a ginormous nerd. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy? C'mon!
My new bookshelf. *preens* My tiny Mountie statue, bottle of maple syrup and glass Inuksuk have already made themselves right at home.
Please ignore the mess of power cords to the left. I had a system. That system? Collapsed. You should also note that my decorating style relies heavily on very bright colours. meresy calls it, "Modern Canadian Geek." My interior-design show, "Are You Sure You're Not Colourblind?" will begin airing immediately on TLC, right after "Property Swap."
Because you asked, here are closeups of my books:
Top shelf: paperbacks, including my paltry collection of romance novels, which I will forget about until a Respected Colleague visits, after which I'll pretend they're scarfe's.
Second shelf: Can Lit! Writing reference books! The HCL novel! And Deep Blue, my enormous Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, which I have lugged around all over Canada and STILL despise. (I unearthed some of the papers I'd written in grad school while emptying the old bookshelf today. Wee!grad-student Nos makes the baby Jesus cry. I don't understand Lacan or Barthes. I suspect I never will).
Third shelf: Queer Lit! Including the story collections of keerawa and qe2, the series guide to due South that secretlybronte gave me (it's signed!), and some rather unfortunate purchases from Amazon.ca's "gay erotica" list. Folks, don't trust Amazon's "readers who bought this also purchased..." lists. You will be stuck with really horrible stories about cowboys and hot!cops and all manner of dreck.
And for those of you wondering how in the hell I organize my library, given that Breakfast at Tiffany's is nowhere near In Cold Blood...um, I do it by size, colour, and loose thematic grouping? I think? Even so, I'm still not sure how Faulkner, Steinbeck and Kerouac ended up on the Queer Lit shelf. But they're in good company - a book about William Blake's poetry and the short story/essay collection omphale23 gave me is also there. It's a good shelf. Just...oddly organized.
Fourth Shelf: Contemporary Fiction! This is where I mention that my two favourite books of all time are John Irving's The Cider House Rules and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
The rest of the shelf holds classic lit stuff and poetry (Dickens, Austen, Eliot, H.D.) and the 1.2 million books I purchased for my final graduate seminar on race relations. I know everything there is to know about Brown v. Board of Education, by the way. And if there's something I don't know, I can look it up!
Last shelf: the land of lost power cords, and all of the art books j_s_cavalcante sent me, as well as my LSAT prep guides and my driver's testing handbook, and books on handcrafts. I call this one the "shelf of bitter disappointment and frustration." (Seriously, hobbies are hard. I'm lucky I could get myself to commit to this writing thing).
There you go - a magical tour inside Nos' head. Don't forget to sign the guestbook!