Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Booking Through Thursday--Patience Among the Shelves

What tomes are waiting patiently on your shelves?



I've kept up with my fiction reading over the years. Outside of my designated TBR shelves, there are extremely few fiction books I own that I haven't read. What I tend to buy and hoard for future years are history and biographies; books on subjects that I've been interested in for a long time. They sit on the long run of bookcases along the living room wall, and every time I walk past them, I smile. I know that Here Be Delight. Books on Arizona history. Books on medieval British history. Books on battles my grandfather fought in during World War II. Books on the Civil War and World War I. Books about famous ships. Biographies of intrepid Victorian female explorers in Africa and the Middle East. Biographies of writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, Jean Rhys and Dorothy Parker. Biographies of pirates and kings and architects and courtesans and rebels. It's not unusual for me to have one of these books in my possession for a decade before I pick it up, read it, and savor each page. But pick them up and savor them I most certainly do.

Now that I think about it, I have no earthly clue why I seem to treat fiction like denim and non-fiction like silk. Both types of books are as essential to me as breathing.


8 comments:

  1. Hm, that's interesting - fiction like denim and non-fiction like silk.I've always seen the other way around: fiction as silk (delicious and opulent) and non-fiction as denim (sturdy and essential) =]

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  2. The denim/silk thought could easily become another BTT question. Oh, you're able to list them by catagories. You're much more organized than I. Thanks for sharing. Come see my answer.

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  3. Great post!I often find the biographies to be nearly irresistible, though I have a few still waiting for me.

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  4. Cathy, I love books about WWII and medeival England too!

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  5. Thanks so much for the comment on my BTT - you are right, I had been thinking of doing a purge of the books I will never read and donating them to the next SPCA sale. It's a wonderful cause, the books will find readers and I will have more breathing room bookwise.

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  6. Silk and denim? A good book is like a pair of denim, it gets better over time. :)

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