Lookng for a delightful snack of a book high on the voyeur rating scale? C’mon, you know you are! Who doesn’t like snooping on writer’s bookshelves? If you thought I was talking about something else you are on the wrong blog!

The book is Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books by Leah Price. Price interviews the writers about their libraries and then photographs their shelves, or some of their shelves. Price asks all the writers pretty much the same questions so it is kind of interesting to read the various responses especially when they talk about the ten books they chose to feature from their shelves and why they chose them (oh yeah, this might add a couple books to your TBR pile too).

It is really interesting looking at the various writer’s libraries and getting a sense of who they are and how they live. Like, Rebbeca Goldstein and Steven Pinker, husband and wife writers and bookworms, have immaculate shelves in an immaculate house that is worthy of a home decorating magazine. And while they are very interesting people with gobs of interesting books, their shelves are too uptight and I know I would never hit it off with them should they ever invite me over to climb up their library ladder. Same goes for Claire Messud and James Wood. I’d be afraid of leaving fingerprint smudges on their very white shelves and their very tidy books. I almost felt the same way for Jonathan Lethem but in the photo he’s sitting in a comfy chair wearing shorts, clogs and a baseball cap so it is clear he is just a bit of a neat-freak who doesn’t like clutter.

The libraries of Philip Pullman and Junot Díaz are more my style with books higgily-piggily on the shelves and piles on the floor and nearly every flat surface. Plus when Price asks Díaz what books does he have that aren’t out on shelves he replies:

I actually own no out-and-out pornography. If I did, I’d probably have it out on my shelves. I’ve never liked the idea of a hidden book. It means no one will ever randomly pick it up and have a conversation with you about it. I know you guys didn’t look too closely on one shelf, because there were stacks and stacks of role-playing games on it. Some of those are more cringe-inducing than any page-worn copy of Hustler

I’d like to see that shelf of role-playing games. He probably has the original dungeon master’s guide that we have on our shelves. Good times!

My favorite library in the book, not only for looks but also for content, is Alison Bechdel’s. She even has a big Altas Ergonomic Bookstand that she admits to buying in order to help her facilitate eating while she reads. If Bechdel ever invites me over to her house to paw through her books I will never leave. And now because I admitted that, the invite will never come. Sigh.

I will leave you with this thought from Lev Grossman whose library is also in this book:

[W]hen you look around somebody’s personal library, you can actually see, physically, instantiated as objects, a map of that person’s interests and preoccupations and memories. When you stand inside somebody’s library, you get a powerful sense of who they are, and not just who they are now but who they’ve been.