Magical Mystery Bookshelf Tour Stage One: The Hallway

Well, technically, this is stage one of three, one side of the hallway being entirely lined with shelves. Oh, it was a happy day when I realised the hallway would sustain bookshelves! Lucky for Nick, it’s a narrow hallway, or there’d be shelves running down both walls. I did suggest it, actually, but Nick vetoed it on the grounds that it would be inconvenient to have to walk down the hall sideways.

The hallway bookcases, though, are the very shallow ones that my father-in-law made for us. Well, three of those—the original two are still in the living room. I love those bookcases: they just swallow books, and they don’t attract dust as obviously as ready-bought bookcases. Honestly, do the people who design bookcases not actually own any books? They make the shelves such inconvenient sizes.

(Actually, that’s just reminded me: I took the idea of putting shelves in the hallway from Who Magazine, back when I used to read it. I’d forgotten that. They briefly ran a page in the back of the magazine with allegedly fun ideas for each month: one example I remember was “take an embroidery class, then scatter silver butterflies over your skirts and T-shirts,” which I thought was an oddly specific use of your newfound skills. But on one occasion they recommended buying cheap bookcases—I wish they’d told us where to find those mythical creatures, the cheap bookcases—then paint them bright red and put them in the hallway, filled with colourful paperbacks. I was slightly appalled at the expense and effort involved in using books as set decorations—at no point did they actually suggest you might already own the books—but it did remind me of my hallway’s bookcaseless state.)

What I mainly like about this picture is how beautifully the Chagall print has turned out. (Ignore the matting: I know it looks like the print is by someone called “Marc Caoall.” I’ll fix that at some point.)

(The print was a Christmas gift, and I had to undergo a brief but intense battle of wills with my three-year-old nephew when he wanted to open it himself. I even tried misdirection: “Look, there’re the presents Auntie Treena bought you! Look, they’ve got ribbons and everything!” There’s something about preventing a child from opening a Christmas present that makes you feel like a cad. Luckily, his fingers were too small to get the top off the tube.)

(Does that anecdote make me look like a total monster?)

This top shelf’s a weird mixture of my books and Nick’s, but what I really want to know is why I don’t have those Iain M. Banks books together. That’s unusually sloppy. The Banks books are Nick’s; I don’t read him, having unfortunately started with Complicity, which scarred me for life. It doesn’t matter how many times Nick points out the difference between Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks, I’m still not reading more. Although I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that I didn’t start with The Wasp Factory.

I also note some of my Kurt Vonnegut books are on this shelf, over to the far right: I haven’t read Timequake in years and I only recently read Deadeye Dick. But the strange thing is that I have almost a complete collection of Kurt Vonneguts—I don’t have A Man Without a Country, though I’ve read it—so I wonder where the rest are. Why aren’t they on this shelf?

Ditto Sylvia Plath: I can see the copy of The Bell Jar that I bought for a third-year course on women’s writing and Ariel next to it, but I own another copy of The Bell Jar, surely? And her diaries? Why aren’t they all together?

And just to give you an even lower opinion of my classification system, I seem to have lodged The Prime of Miss Jean Brody next to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I’m sure there was a reason for that.

For some reason, the next two shelves are mostly Nick’s books. (Which reminds me: I wonder if he’s ever going to read those Alastair Reynolds? They look pretty, and all, but I might shift them into another room. Maybe then I can fit some more Kurt Vonnegut on there, if I can find them. And I still haven’t spotted my copy of the Heaney translation of Beowulf. Where is that?)

But I am building up a nice collection of Victorian detective fiction. Almost all of them are about male detectives: I do have a collection of stories of early women detectives, somewhere. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s not here.

And I really must buy the next in Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes saga. Actually, the fourth must be out now, although maybe not in paperback.

Hmm. My main intention here was to remind myself what I already had, not to make a list of what I still need to buy.

Hey, look, Agatha Christie! Some part of me thinks it would be nice to have these all in one binding, but I’m resisting the impulse to rebuy what must amount to forty-odd books.

But those numbered black-and-white books to the left of the shelf below the main Christies are brilliant. I found those at a Lifeline Bookfest, and they’re collections of old-school detective-fiction novellas, divided into themed collections: Women Sleuths, Police Procedurals, Locked Room Puzzles, and Great British Detectives. The books are oddly narrow and the binding crackles ominously when you open them—you can’t read them in bed, but have to sit up to do so—but they’re so cool. And pretty. I wonder if there are more than four books in the series?

Ooh, Ivanhoe. I don’t think I’ve ever read that—I find Walter Scott a real slog for the first hundred pages or so, before the narrative really grabs you—and I have a sneaking suspicion that I own more than one copy. I have read The Three Musketeers, though—which is one the next shelf down—and thought it was hilarious. (Except for the bit where Athos hanged his wife. That was well weird.)

Nick and I once had an argument about the Lord Darcy stories, which are on the third shelf here: I really enjoyed them, but Nick unexpectedly came over strongly republican and said he couldn’t stomach all the kowtowing to the Plantagenets, which I’d largely skipped over. I suppose that’s why he doesn’t read much fantasy fiction: there’re far fewer kings in science fiction. And two down from Lord Darcy is William Morris’s North of Nowhere: I haven’t read it, but I’m not the woman to turn down the chance to buy an obscure Victorian novel.

Oh, and hey! There’s my copy of Sylvia Plath’s diaries: last time I read those, I was completing my Honours year. I think it’s best to draw a veil over my resultant state of mind.

Okay, I realise this picture makes the carpet look really grubby, but it’s not, I promise.

Also, Nancy Drew! I love Nancy—she was feisty. In some of the books, anyway. Not the ones where she let Ned do all the dirty work. (One bookshelf over I have a “Nancy Clue” novel, which is slash fiction involving Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames—as Cherry Aimless—who was a nurse in her own series of books. Not usually my cup of tea, but I found it in the children’s section of an Alumni Book Sale. I’m all for children having an open view of life, but this was perhaps a little too explicit to sit next to Lucy M. Boston and Helen Cresswell. Plus, it makes a good anecdote.)

This has to be the geekiest pair of shelves in the entire house: my Nancy Drews—with some random Ray Bradburys propping them up at the end—and then Nick’s entire collection of Doctor Who Target novelisations. And that’s not even including his New Adventures and Missing Adventures, which are all in the spare room.

Still, I suppose you never know when you might want to read that one about the giant maggots again.