What’s On Your Bookshelf? - Part II
Okay, so you splurged on a library wall of gorgeous antique bookcases that transformed your den, giving it a touch of old world charm. Perhaps an Italian Renaissance-inspired design, made of solid wood in a dark chestnut finish, enriched with antiquing wax and gold painted border highlights. Some are open shelves and some covered by lead pane glass fronts. Oh yeah, and since they run 8 ft. high, you also got a ladder and installed ladder rails for easy sliding.
Displayed prominently on these bookcases are the literary classics. Your Dickens collection, the Russians and, of course, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. They must be given their due and this means appropriate positioning. Especially those with proper leather binding, fading somewhat from evident use rather than from bleaching in the sun.
What, however, do you do with the weird books, the arcane and the obscure? Do you file Titania’s Book of White Magic alphabetically. Under what subject heading would you fit Browser’s Book of Endings? Where do you put your Tao of Pooh?
In my collection is the small but precious Bizarre Books, compiled by Russell Ash and Brian Lake and published by Pavilion Books (London, 1998). Any number of the titles listed would create havoc with your inner Dewey.
The specialty books are easy to file. It is easy to imagine a strip mall including The Care of Raw Hide Drop Box Loom Pickers; Wall Paintings by Snake Charmers in Tanganyika; European Spoons Before 1700; Locomotive Boiler Explosions (always engrossing, sometimes disturbing); A Toddler’s Guide to the Rubber Industry (Alice in Rubberland?); and the essential Umbrellas and Parts of Umbrellas Except Handles (a Report to the President of the United States).
In keeping with the interests of this blog’s readers, we do offer some madcap literary miscellanea: Selected Themes and Icons from Spanish Literature: Of Beards, Shoes, Cucumbers and Leprosy; Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France; A Compendium of the Biographical Literature on Deceased Entomologists; New Teeth for Old Jaws: Bookselling Spiritualized; An Irishman’s Difficulties with the Dutch Language; and, my favourite, So Your Wife Came Home Speaking in Tongues?
Now, be honest. Would you really try to keep these treasures under wraps or would you have them front and center, a full frontal trove of trivia and tripe for compulsive browsers?
