Please Don’t Judge Us. It’s Only Our Bookshelf.

I can’t really say we have any peculiar titles on our shelves. But what I will say is this: If I saw all of those titles on one bookshelf, I would definitely be looking forward to some very interesting conversations.

And – at least the boy reads! I don’t think my husband has read a book for pleasure since I married him.

p.s. Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake my brother and sister-in-law made. I accidentally learned all about marital relations because they had a book on their shelf with a title of something about pioneers (sorry, can’t remember) and I started to read it. Turned out to be a guide for newlyweds. This book was on their shelf in the living room, next to the family hymnal and Mormon Doctrine! The bishop could have picked it up while visiting…too embarrassing to consider.

It took a long time for me to look either my brother or his wife in the eye after that.

Heck! I want to be your friend now. And I’m really curious, who IS going to run the frog hospital? I’d volunteer but I’m kinda busy right now.

I am the bookworm of the family, and as I have justly observed, I do not have too many books, I just don’t have enough bookshelves. However, my husband has a statistically representative number of books to his own credit. Most are books of his own choosing; other are gifts from the kids. So he has Church books, about which he is extremely particular, business books, economic books, and astrophysics books, with a sprinkling of golf books here and there. And “It Takes a Village Idiot” by Jim Mullen, which is a favorite of our family and almost everyone has a copy. They are in his office, safe from commentary or note from random individuals.

We do position ourselves (to borrow a business term) with our reading, and not just on a bookshelf. When my husband was asked in an interview to name a book he had read recently, he considered which one of the several possibilities would sound most professional. It’s one way of putting our best foot forward.

Luckily, you didn’t ask about what crazy titles I have.

When I was a newlywed in graduate school, I invited a literature professor over for dinner with me and my husband. My professor was largely responsible for the selection of what I had on my bookshelf, so I hadn’t given it a second thought. The one he chose to comment on–over pork chops, applesauce and sauerkraut–was Tim and Beverly LaHaye’s The Act of Marriage. I must have turned three shades of crimson when he said, “That is a good book.” But he was right. It is.

Another more recent favorite of mine on that particular subject is And They Were Not Ashamed by Brotherson. It’s on my fireplace mantel with several other books, mostly scriptures and church pamphlets. It doesn’t bother me at all these days, but I think it mortifies my teenagers that it is there. Maybe that’s not quite as horrifying as when they actually saw me reading it.

Ok, during the time I took to write my comment, Rebecca stole my thunder.

There’s only one solution, buy him Early Mormonism and the Magic World View

I love snooping on other people’s bookshelves. I always wish I had more space for more books, but currently I’ve got a varied collection including:
Freakonomics
Superfreakonomics
A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book One (In French)
Le Petit Nicolas
Moby Dick
Rough Stone Rolling
Cat’s Cradle
The Book Thief

… and then my textbooks, on government, law, and political novels.

Great post, Lisa. Thanks!

On one of the two shelves in my living room I have Dr. Seuss, musical scores, lots of language dictionaries, Aristotle, Foucault (you can tell I was in grad school not too long ago), lots of Shakespeare, lots of Marlowe, Catcher in the Rye, Jonathan Edwards, The Federalist Papers, and yearbooks from the middle school where I taught, to name a few. I also collect Books of Mormon in different languages, so there’s a growing stripe of dark blue on two of my shelves.

My roommate is a marriage and family therapist. I wouldn’t really care, but she keeps Intimacy and Desire, The Dance of Intimacy, and The New Sex Therapy on the shelf in her bedroom.

Religion and the Decline of Magic is a really cool book.

I don’t have very many books yet. YET

Most of the ones I do have are books about industrial design or art history that I bought for my college courses, but I love the idea of owning books. I think I would be willing to buy books with no intention of reading them just so I could have them in my home (although this post might make me reconsider what message I’m sending out.) I love little bookstores and rooms crammed to the gills with books, making use of every available inch of wall and floor space for shelving. I love books shelved in strange locations like on a rafter beam or staircase.

Sorry – what or who is MFA?

Our book shelves, DVD and CD shelves would say that we (the collective family) either have several split personalities between us or are simply ‘well-rounded,’ as they are all over the place in genre. I am an avid library user, but will buy a book that I love – or is simply too good a deal to pass up. Even so, we have run out of shelves and I have several stacks going. When I suggested to my husband recently that I would like to make/get more shelves, there was some definite eye-rolling happening. The only book I was somewhat embarrassed to have on my shelf was an early edition of ‘Fascinating Womanhood.’ I did get rid of it during a book culling last year.

My husband was woefully unread when we met, and the only book that I recall on his book shelf was a copy of “Dune”. He claimed it wasn’t for lack of desire necessarily, but he just really wasn’t exposed in his small New England high school. There were so many books that I thought were required reading that he had never even heard of! So when we merged our lives, I quickly introduced him to my budding collection and he politely obliged by reading anything I suggested…and ended up loving almost everything he read! It felt like a gamble in our relationship. I mean, we had so many other areas where we connected, but I wasn’t sure how I would feel later on if he didn’t like anything that I did in literature. He even read “The lovely bones” with me and wants to see the movie, which feels a bit weird, but I’ll take it.

He now considers “Fahrenheit 451″ one of his favorites, and over the years has introduced me to some interesting selections like “Freakonomics” and “Blink”. I’m glad I pushed him a bit and didn’t just accept that I was the only book lover in the family.

And I really like the idea of having a book shelf that highlights aspects of your lives and interests, and keeping the weird stuff (sex and magic included) on a bedroom bookshelf. Or at least just pick ONE of each of those genres to showcase and show your depth I have some decorative shelves downstairs for the inevitable “snoopers” (I’m definitely a book snooper) that has at least one of each of my favorite authors and genres – just to give people a taste of who I am that they wouldn’t know otherwise.

We have “Improvised Munitions Handbook 1969″ right next to “How to Teach Your Baby to Read.” What a good thing to teach my baby to read… The books happen to be about the same height and we have limited shelf space. Also, my husband likes army surplus stores.

Also, I’m not really saying sex and magic are “weird”, (I own a few myself), just that I’d rather not have to wonder what impression others have, or have to explain. I HAVE been known to pass my copy of Brotherson’s book around to people that have hinted at having issues – with good results, but THAT’s a weird feeling.

I have five kids. Both my husband and I are confirmed geeks. I’m a little bit more of a book geek than he is, but he is just as attached to his books as I am. I think we had been married for more than five years before I could “safely” give away extra copies of books that we both brought to our marriage (Les Miserables, Huck Finn, Anna Karenina for example). We now have books in almost every room of our house. The kitchen has a whole shelf of the pantry with cookbooks. The living room has art books, piano books and a strange assortment of Asian History, Russian History, American History, politics and popular fiction (Toni Morrison). The family room has Austen, LDS religion books (McConkie, CES, Talmage, Nibley), Russian lit, Dan Brown, JK Rowling, Tolkein, Riverside Shakespeare, and the entire Will and Ariel Durant collection, for example. The office houses all the law books and family history books. Upstairs, we have board books, picture books, beginning chapter books, girl fiction, boy fiction, popular fiction, classical fiction, french, russian and portuguese (in respective languages) fiction. We have both the LaHaye book and the Brotherson book and much much more. Our books upstairs are in double rows and stacked upon stacks, on top of nightstands (I covet the Levenger’s nightstands that are actually bookshelves). And I try really hard not to buy books I don’t already love now. It is a sickness. I don’t know that I would have any embarrassment of anyone seeing any of our books. I had a roommate in college who begged me to put my women’s health books out of the living room–it embarrassed her. That I could never figure out; were we trying to hide our gender? But then she was embarrassed to buy feminine hygiene products too.

I guess we don’t have anything truly strange, sorry Lisa. Our shelves just shout our very pronounced book geek status to the world.

I think I might be the odd man out of this conversation. I D.I. my books once I’ve read them (my mom is an almost clinical level pack rat, I break out into hives now at the thought of lots of things I don’t use anymore filling my house). I only keep the books I will reread, books whose bindings are very pretty or books I have mormon guilt about chucking. I can’t give away any of my Deseret Book books, what if I have to give a talk? OK, I probably would look up articles and quotes on the internet, but still, it’s like turning my back on my religion. That said I’m sure I appear FAR more religious than I am.

Since contemplating getting my master’s in sex therapy, I have bought all the LDS books on the topic I could find. I wanted to know what was out there. (The best one I have found is called “And They Were Not Ashamed” by Laura Brotherson – I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone getting married or even if you are married. It also has a great section on there about teaching your kids about sex and what is appropriate to teach at what age. Great book!)

A few weeks ago, I had a friend over who noticed all the books on my end table. I could tell by the expression on her face, she wondered if I was using these books to help me in my marriage. I told her, “Oh these are not for me,” but I could tell by the look on her face she thought otherwise. Okay, awkward! (I gues that is when I should have gone into my spiel about how I am considering going back to school… blah, blah, blah…)

The Real Gworge Washington, When Character Was King, The entire Louis L’Amour Sckett series, everything that Robin McKinley ever wrote, the Harry Potter series, The Encyclopedia of Container Gardening, and I refuse to tell you what is in the boxes underneath my bed, but I will tell you they are my favorite authors and get me throught the winter. And Lisa, If I lived in Arizona, I would SO be your friend…but I refuse to feel sorry for you. You have Tader Joes and In n Out Burger.

To make a good impression you need to get an old hardback edition of “The Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich.” It’s a nice fat book with a big swastika on the spine. Otherwise, the best book title we’ve got is “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”.

that is, my oldest son, who sleeps in the top bunk, sleeps with books. I really don’t know if the bunk bed itself sleeps with our without books.

Smylies–

I too have Bringing Down the House. Yes! After a couple chapters I read with a black marker so I could black out all the bad words. However, I found the actual story intriguing.