November 2024
    M T W T F S S
     123
    45678910
    11121314151617
    18192021222324
    252627282930  

    In [this thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/dpotf/do_you_judge_people_by_the_books_on_their_shelves/), many Redditors shared different opinions on how they do/do not judge others based on the books on their shelves. From what I gathered, most people are quite open minded and accepting of others choices in literature.

    I think it’d be fun to test that.

    Maybe this thread has been done before, but I think it’d be fun to see what Redditors have on their bookshelves right now, at this exact moment. No shuffling them around!

    Just give us a brief run down of what you have on your favorite shelf of books. I feel like everyone has to have at least one shelf they focus their favorite stuff on. If not (or if you keep your books organized another way), than pick ten books from the whole library that you wish other people would focus on when they look through it.

    A list of your books is good, though I imagine pics might be better.

    I don’t mean for this to turn into either a flame war or a massive circle jerk, but I figured why just *talk* about judging other people’s bookshelves? Why not show them off, and see what judgment/discussion comes?

    I’ll post mine to start things off.

    by Gogo_is_Adlai

    34 Comments

    1. My bookshelf:

      * The Portable Walt Whitman (A Walt Whitman anthology)
      * Black Folktales by Julius Lester
      * Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
      * Mythology by Edith Hamilton
      * The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe
      * MLA Handbook
      * Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson
      * Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
      * Selected Poems by Ezra Pound
      * Planet News by Allen Ginsberg
      * How Much Land Does a Man Need & Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
      * The Awakening by Kate Chopin
      * The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo
      * Selected Poems of Paul Verlaine
      * The Snows of Kilimanjaro & Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway
      * Light in August + The Sound and the Fury + As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
      * The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac
      * The Works of Tolstoy
      * The Holy Bible

    2. I don’t really have a favourite shelf. Some time ago I started organising my shelves by size, putting all the books of one author together, keeping books in the same series together etc., but because of my reading habits that didn’t last long. I still think it’s relatively tidy, [but you can see with each shelf](http://imgur.com/0pFIT.jpg) my interest in keeping shelves organised dipped.

      (My [Goodreads account](http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4225116) has a list of all the books on the shelves.)

    3. Several books detailing the films/life of Alfred Hitchcock, plenty of Toni Morrison novels, random E. E. Cummings books, everything John Waters has written that has been published, miscellaneous novels (Jonathan Safran Foer? Yes! Sprinkle in some Kurt Vonnegut, Bret Easton Ellis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hunter S. Thompson), memoirs, film theory textbooks, and cook books that I never use. I think there’s a few Garfield comic books in there too. (NERMAL.)

    4. I have hundreds of books, so I’ll just highlight…

      I have a good amount of Latin American literature, in particular Garcia Marquez. I have a lot of Greek and Latin texts as those were my college majors. I have a few shelves of foreign language dictionaries as well. I also have about 150 mass paperback horror novels (King, Koontz, etc.) from my grandmother. I’ve only read one or two since they’re not my thing, but I can’t bring myself to part with books. In terms of what I’m ashamed of, I have Ayn Rand’s books (only read the Fountainhead) and the Da Vinci Code. There you have it. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

    5. I actually took [this picture](http://imgur.com/KRZaN.jpg) to show a friend some thrift store bookends I painted, but it has all my favorite books in it, minus a couple, so it works well for this thread.

      From left to right:

      * Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

      * Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

      * Grendel – John Gardner

      * One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

      * Ulysses – James Joyce

      * Stardust – Neil Gaiman

      * The Awakening – Kate Chopin

      * Light in August – William Faulkner

      * Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

      * The Bone People – Keri Hulme

      * Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

      * Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke

      Not pictured, but also favorites:

      * Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

      * Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

      * The Phantom Tollbooth – Norman Juster

    6. distortionrock on

      Here they are. Of course, there are books scattered around my apartment, but I try to keep the ones that I’m not constantly looking through/reading for school off the shelves for easy access….

      [One](http://imgur.com/vC5Nr.jpg), [two](http://imgur.com/lFeVb.jpg), [three](http://imgur.com/AwRKc.jpg), [four](http://imgur.com/ffvZ5.jpg) and [4.5](http://imgur.com/aO5Y2.jpg).

      I think I’ve accumulated quite a variety – sans like romance novels though.

    7. 10dollaloveafair on

      I’m at work right now so just shooting off the top of my head

      bread and wine -Ignazio silone

      the giving tree -Silverstein

      Royce’s sailing illustrated

      honorable cat -Paul gallico

      the complete brothers grimm

      These United States readers digest.(copyright 1968 a very interesting read)

      out of sync -lance bass(which I’v yet to finish, but want to)

      lord of the rings/the hobbit

      hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

      one of the foxfire series

    8. http://i.imgur.com/DS5Kv.jpg

      Sans these titles currently out on loan:

      * A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
      * I’m a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson
      * End of Faith by Sam Harris
      * God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
      * Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
      * Billions & Billions by Carl Sagan
      * Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan

      *Please disregard the bottom shelf; it’s the catch-all and soon-to-be-traded shelf. While there is some good shit down there (The Stand by Stephen King, Universe in a Nutshell by Hawking and The Big Book of Filth), it is mostly ‘eclipsed’ by my wife’s Twilight books (see what I did there?).

    9. my library is in storage, but on my dresser i have:

      the tres riches heures

      the flemish primitives by de vos

      the red book by jung

      collected fictions by borges

      the myth of the rational market

      the nag hammadi library

      genius by gleick

      brave new world

      the federalist papers

      civilization and its discontents

      progress and poverty

      the financial expert by narayan

      on the genealogy of morality

      the new industrial state

      the philosophy of william james

      a treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge

      an enquiry concerning human understanding

      practical philosophy by kant

      selected writings by marx

      the basic political writings by rousseau

      tales by lovecraft

      i do read more novels/fiction than is represented, but it’s an equally highbrow selection. i probably need to lighten up a little.

    10. I’m at college, so this is the reduced collection that currently sits on my crates-turned-bookshelves =]

      * The Complete Novels of Jane Austen
      * The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
      * God Is Not Great – Christopher Hitchens
      * The Poems – John Keats
      * Selected Plays of Oscar Wilde
      * Lady Chatterely’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
      * The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
      * The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
      * Walden and Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau
      * Barrel Fever – David Sedaris
      * Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
      * Everything Is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
      * Boy – Roald Dahl
      * Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
      * Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
      * A Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
      * Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
      * Howl and Other Poems – Allen Ginsberg
      * Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
      * Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
      * Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
      * The Wordy Shipmates – Sarah Vowell
      * My most recent addition: Freedom – Jonathan Franzen

    11. My shelves are organized by category-ish. Please notice the following:

      * *Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays* and *All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays* by George Orwell
      * *A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again* and *Consider the Lobster* by David Foster Wallace
      * *The Colour of Magic* and *The Light Fantastic* by Terry Pratchett
      * *The Analects of Confucius*
      * *Slouching Towards Bethlehem* by Joan Didion
      * *Men Without Women* and *Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)* by Ernest Hemingway (what happened to my copy of *Winner Take Nothing*?)
      * *Mother Night* by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
      * *Things Fall Apart* by Chinua Achebe
      * *A History of Western Philosophy* and *In Praise of Idleness* by Bertrand Russel

      My favorite quote from the last one:

      > First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.

    12. [Both bookshelves](http://imgur.com/mHbSV.jpg)

      A list of what’s on them…
      [Shelf #1](http://imgur.com/DJL3n.jpg) on the right. Non-Fiction.

      How to Make a Good Brain Great by Daniel G. Amen M.D.

      Philosophers without Gods by Louise M. Antony

      It Sucked and then I Cried by Heather B. Armstrong

      Things I Learned About My Dad in Therapy by Heather B. Armstrong

      The Cambridge Companion to Atheism

      Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood

      The Atheists Bible

      Confessions by St. Augustine

      Pretty Good for a Girl by Tina Basich

      The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger

      Army Wives by Tanya Biank

      The Art and Craft of Feature Writing by William E. Blundell

      Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden

      Flyboys by James Bradley

      The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott

      Dumbell Training

      A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs

      Ghost by Fred Burton

      Chicken Soup for the Military Wife’s Soul

      Many Mansions by Gina Cerminara

      Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon

      The Game Writing Handbook

      The Five Love Languages (2 copies) by Gary Chapman

      The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

      8 Minute Meditation by Victor Davich

      Utah’s Incredible Backcountry Trails by David Day

      JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass

      Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

      The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief by Tom Flynn

      The World is Flat by Thomas Freeman

      Frommer’s Seattle 2010

      On Being Blue by William Gass

      Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

      Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

      The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell

      The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies

      The End of Faith by Sam Harris (2 copies)

      Humanism an Introduction by Jim Herrick

      God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens

      The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens

      The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror by David Hoffman

      The Quotable Atheist by Jack Huberman (hidden by papers in photo)

      Iran Country Handbook

      600 Mulla Nasreddin Tales by Mohammad Ramazani

      Lonely Planet guide to Iran

      Farsi dictionary

      1001 Persian Proverbs

      Eating for Pregnancy by Catherine Jones

      The Genius of Robert E. Lee by Al Kaltman

      Daydream Believers by Fred Kaplan

      On Writing by Stephen King (hidden)

      Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

      Forbidden Fruit by Paul Kurtz

      The Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis

      The Middle East by Bernard Lewis

      The Book of the Dead by John Lloyd

      Everything’s an Argument

      The Interrogators by Chris Mackay

      The Ayatollah Begs to Differ by Hooman Majd

      Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

      Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

      Parenting Beyond Belief

      Atheist Universe

      The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

      The Little Book of Pandemics by Dr. Peter Moore

      To Hell and Back by Audie Murphy

      What to Expect when You’re Expecting

      Writing Fiction Step by Step

      Dreams of my Father by Barack Obama

      The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

      The Insider’s View of Mormon Origins by Grant Palmer

      The Renaissance by Walter Pater

      40 Weeks Pregnancy Planner

      The Revolution by Ron Paul

      Irreligion by John Allen Paulos

      In the Heart of the Sea by Nathanial Pollock

      The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007

      The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009

      The Long Road Home by Martha Raddatz

      Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran

      Spook by Mary Roach

      Stiff by Mary Roach

      Zen Flesh Zen Bones

      The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

      The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell

      Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell

      The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan

      Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean Paul Sartre

      Me Talk Pretty Some Day by David Sedaris

      The Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

      Writing as Craft and Magic by Carl Sessions Stepp

      The Elements of Style

      The Conservative Soul by Andrew Sullivan

      I Need a Killer Press Release Now What?

      The Interrogator by Raymond F. Toliver

      Hiking the Wasatch

      Spycraft

      Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner

      Civil War by Walt Whitman

      Night by Elie Wiesel

      Sin Boldly by David Williams

      60 Hikes within 60 Miles: Salt Lake City

      The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

      Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent

      Heads in the Sand

      Writing Articles About the World Around You by Marcia Yudkin

      A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

      Various reference, school and puzzle/fun books

      [Shelf #2](http://imgur.com/YVL54.jpg) (on the left.) Fiction.

      Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

      The Deeper Meaning of Life by Douglas Adams

      Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

      The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams

      The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

      City of Glass by Paul Auster

      Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

      Issues of Barrelhouse

      Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

      Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (hidden)

      Ray Bradbury Stories

      A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

      The Nonexistent Night and the Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino

      The Stranger by Albert Camus

      Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and other stories by Lewis Carrol

      What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

      Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

      House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

      Goodbye Lemon by Adam Davies

      Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis

      Sleep by Stephen Dixon

      Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

      Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky

      Literary magazine of some kind

      The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

      The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

      Humor Me by Ian Frazier

      Shattering Glass by Gail Giles

      Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

      The Best American Non-required Reading 2007 by David Eggars

      Gargoyle issue 50

      Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

      The Evil and the Guilty

      The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

      Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

      Extreme Fiction by Michael Martone

      Issues of Hobart

      Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

      The Children of Men by PD James

      Dubliners by James Joyce

      No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

      The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

      Metropole by Ferinc Karinthy

      On The Road by Jack Kerouac

      The Best American Short Stories by Stephen King

      The Stand by Stephen King

      The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

      To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

      Let the Right One In by John Lindqvist

      Holy Bible by men

      The Book of Mormon by stupider men

      Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

      No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

      Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott

      Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser

      Paradise Lost by Milton

      Paradise Regained by Milton

      Utopia by Sir Thomas More

      After Dark by Haruki Murakami

      The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

      Issues of One Story

      The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

      Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

      The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

      Issues of No Colony

      Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

      Prague by Arthur Phillips

      The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

      The Golden Compass series by Phillip Pullman

      Harry Potter #4 by J.K. Rowling

      Harry Potter #7 by J.K. Rowling

      Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

      Quidditch Through the Ages by J.K. Rowling

      Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

      The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

      Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders

      In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders

      Pastoralia by George Saunders

      Literary magazine

      Hamlet by William Shakespeare

      The Prince by Machaivelli

      Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

      Dracula by Bram Stoker

      Perfume by Patrick Suskind

      Issues of TinHouse

      Northline by Willy Vlautin

      Candide by Voltaire

      Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

      A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert

      The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

      The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

      The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction Vol. 1

      The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction vol. 2

      A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

      The Book Thief by Markus Susak

      Revolution on Canvas vol. 1

      The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire

      This Nest, Swift Passerine by Dan Beachy-Quick

      Eleanor, Eleanor, not your real name by Katherine Cowles

      Chrystallography by Christan Bok

      The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot

      Poet’s Choice

      Reinventing the Enemy’s Language

      Literary magazine

      Seagull Reader Poems

      Postmodern American Poetry

      Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara

      Double Venus by Aaron McCullough

      The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath

      Don’t Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine

      The Making of a Poem

      American Hybrid

      Noon by Cole Swensen (hidden)

      The World Doesn’t End by Charles Simic

      American Poetry Since 1950

      Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

      The Yeats Reader

      Zero Makes Me Hungry

      Issues of one story

      Various comic books/graphic novels

      Coffee Table:

      I Am American and So Can You by Stephen Colbert

      Earth by Jon Stewart

      The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex by Kristin Schaal

      Just beginning bookshelf:

      Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism and Humanism

      Early Mormonism and the Magic World View by D. Michael Quinn

    13. I have a lot of books on my bookshelf, but here are some of my favorites:

      * Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
      * C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy
      * Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
      * Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser
      * Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
      * Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara

      For recently read titles, see “what is on your toilet table?”

    14. Unlike others I’m not very well organised

      * Filth- Irvine Welsh
      * Trainspotting- Irvine Welsh
      * The Complete Novels- Franz Kafka
      * The Dice Man- Luke Rhinehart
      * A Writer At War- Vasily Grossman
      * Complicity- Iain Banks
      * Bitter Fruit- Achmat Dangor
      * Ulysses- James Joyce (still unfinished)
      * Another Bullshit Night In Suck City- Alex Flynn
      * The Art Of Happiness- The Dalai Lama
      * Stupid White Men- Michael Moore
      * 9/11- Noam Chomsky
      * One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
      * Black Dogs- Ian McEwan
      * The Long Firm- Jake Arnott
      * He Kills Coppers- Jake Arnott
      * truecrime- Jake Arnott
      * Sahara- Michael Palin
      * The Last Diaries- Alan Clark
      * Great Expectations- Charles Dickens
      * The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Series)- Douglas Adams
      * Notes Of A Dirty Old Man- Charles Bukowski
      * The Bonfire Of The Vanities- Tom Wolfe
      * For Whom The Bell Tolls- Ernest Hemingway
      * Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
      * The Hot Kid- Elmore Leonard
      * 52 Pickup- Elmore Leonard
      * The Total Library- Jorge Luis Borges (Collection of non-fiction)
      * Labyrinths- Jorge Luis Borges (Collection of fiction)
      * Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe- Will Self
      * The Quantity Theory Of Insanity- Will Self
      * Panzer Leader- Heinz Guderian

    15. I don’t have a bookshelf, unfortunately, nor do I have any shelves at all for that matter. I do, however, in my perpetual state of near-poverty possess a pile (a very, ahem, *large* pile) that serves the general functions of a bookshelf.

      That being said, I don’t feel as if posting the contents of my pile here maintains any real relevance–I have a feeling that this thread will quickly devolve into the same kind of nonsense that every thread about comparing tastes in art devolves into: those with the broadest, most generally liked taste will be upvoted, those with more mainstream (read: mass market paperback) taste will be downvoted, and those with truly obscure taste will go ignored.

      Personally, it seems like a pointless pissing contest.

    16. I’ve got a lot more at home (specially from last and this year, when I finally got around ordering books I wanted), but right now I’m in Prague for 6 months so I just have a very reduced collection. The only one I brought here is World War Z (perfect plane book!), the others I’ve bought in Prague.

      * World War Z (finished)
      * The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (finished)
      * The Unbearable Lightness of Being (finished it last week)
      * Gravity’s Rainbow (starting it)

      Here’s my [shelfari account](http://www.shelfari.com/fireblend/shelf) though, and all books I own are supposed to be there (I’m not sure if I’m missing any).

    17. Yeah, I have way too many books to easily pick 10 that are representative… I’d have to take pictures and post them. When I get home, if I have time.

    18. Too many to name and they are shelved alphabetically divided by binding and in the categories fiction, nonfiction, reference, plays, poetry, and short stories (I think that’s it).

      Here’s they are on [librarything](http://www.librarything.com/catalog/zip_000) (which I don’t update often enough these days).

      [Here’s my Author Cloud](http://www.librarything.com/authorcloud/zip_000) (I don’t know why it insists on lumping together Stephen King and Richard Bachman as Richard Bachman… I know they are the same guy, but I still would prefer separate entries, and if not, then to use Stephen King instead)

    19. http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs640.snc3/32094_645473449060_18914827_37479583_3782173_n.jpg

      And I am currently working on marker-painting my favorite quotes on each shelf. Only have one whole book case done.

      My favorites probably go straight to the top including Harry Potter of course, some German/foreign language copies, any rare books etc.

      I could care less if people judged me by some of the ‘guilty pleasures’ I own. It is better than owning no books <3

    Leave A Reply