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A review by spiffysarahruby
My Ideal Bookshelf by Thessaly La Force, Thomas Keller, Nancy Pearl, Miranda July, Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Chuck Klosterman, Jonathan Lethem, Alice Waters, James Franco, Alex Ross, Patti Smith, David Chang, Maira Kalman, David Sedaris, Nico Muhly, Jennifer Egan, Thurston Moore, George Saunders, Rosanne Cash
4.0
This is definitely more of a coffee table book, rather than a read-through book, but I'm glad I went ahead and read this one through. Even though I don't know who half of the people are who got to be apart of this anthology, I still enjoyed reading every one of their spiels about their bookshelves. I tried to dogear pages of the contributors who had bookshelves that were similar to my own tastes. Looks like I only managed to save those of Lev Grossman and Gina Trapani (there were a few others, but maybe I had decided temporarily that dogearing the pages was bad so I stopped. *shrug*). I saved Rosanne Cash's pages too but I think I did that more because I liked her spiel. I really liked reading everyone's spiels. People didn't always talk directly about the books on their shelf. Some talked about how the books influenced their lives, their reading habits, and their work. Some people just told stories about how they came to read the books they put on their shelves. There was a lot of diversity in this book--I think that's what enabled me to read it through.
I like the idea of picking a few books to represent a your ultimate book collection. Before my last move my boyfriend and I decided that packing and unpacking books really, really sucks, especially because we have lots of them (he has WAY MORE than me, but I have a lot of hardback books and those can be fatally heavy, lol!). So we decided that since the place we were moving to would be small (so small there wouldn't be room for ANY bookshelves...), we'd just keep our books packed up, that way the next time we moved, it wouldn't be a pain to pack and unpack them again. I have to say, after living without our books for a year, now that we're a month away from moving out of this little hell-hole, we're both looking forward to a larger place where we can have our books out on display again. I miss my books! Sure, I've brought a ton home from work (the library) and so has he, and those are out all over the place. But all of my Tolkien books, all Harry Potter, all my George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, etc. all those are MISSING from my life now and I can feel their absence. If I were to make my own bookshelf, I'd have to have those authors on it for sure, just because I can feel how much they mean to me now. As far as the rest... I suppose I'd have to pick and choose between the books that are on my Favorites shelf here on Goodreads.
I like the idea of picking a few books to represent a your ultimate book collection. Before my last move my boyfriend and I decided that packing and unpacking books really, really sucks, especially because we have lots of them (he has WAY MORE than me, but I have a lot of hardback books and those can be fatally heavy, lol!). So we decided that since the place we were moving to would be small (so small there wouldn't be room for ANY bookshelves...), we'd just keep our books packed up, that way the next time we moved, it wouldn't be a pain to pack and unpack them again. I have to say, after living without our books for a year, now that we're a month away from moving out of this little hell-hole, we're both looking forward to a larger place where we can have our books out on display again. I miss my books! Sure, I've brought a ton home from work (the library) and so has he, and those are out all over the place. But all of my Tolkien books, all Harry Potter, all my George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, etc. all those are MISSING from my life now and I can feel their absence. If I were to make my own bookshelf, I'd have to have those authors on it for sure, just because I can feel how much they mean to me now. As far as the rest... I suppose I'd have to pick and choose between the books that are on my Favorites shelf here on Goodreads.