Magical Mystery Bookshelf Tour Stage Three: Last Time in the Hallway, I Promise

I would love to fit more than three bookcases in the hallway but, alas, it’s only a thin hallway and a relatively short one. Odd, really: I would have thought the primary purpose of a hallway was for the storage of books. Well, that and to allow access to other rooms, I suppose.

The relative narrowness of the hallway is also the reason why these photos are also taken on a funky angle: artistic impulses don’t really come into it, compared to the pressures of a narrow space and a linen cupboard digging into your shoulder blades.

The picture on top of this bookcase is a photograph taken by one of Nick’s colleagues—or former colleagues, perhaps. I never met him, so I’m uncertain. I believe it’s a Shinto temple, but I’d have to ask Nick to be certain, and he’s otherwise occupied creating music on his iMac (meaning I’m writing this post with my own headphones on and, should I need to speak to him, would have to send him an instant message. Odd, but it works for us, mostly. Plus, I have a glass of a rather nice Peter Lehmann white—a riesling, I think—and the opportunity to update my blog, so I’m perfectly content.)

If I’d been able to take this photograph from the other side, the Georgette Heyers wouldn’t have been quite so prominent—but that’s a confession of weakness I’m going to leave for a lower shelf, which will speak for itself.

The Steven Brust is Nick’s: he’s always telling me to read Brust because I’d enjoy him—although his claims that “It’s The Three Musketeers! But with elves!” reminds me a little too forcibly of this Penny Arcade comic. I’m sure I would enjoy Brust, but somehow I’ve never actually got around to opening one.

Ooh, look: I Capture the Castle. I’d forgotten I had that. I really enjoyed it—which isn’t a surprise, since I loved One Hundred and One Dalmatians, far more than I enjoyed the movie. In fact, that book inspired me with a desire for my own Dalmatian, but I had to settle for an imaginary one in the end. Actually, I still don’t have a real Dalmatian . . . although I suppose, technically, that the imaginary one is still around, somewhere.

I bought the Noel Coward short stories at, of course, a Lifeline Bookfest, but have never read them. At the time—and we’re talking the dark reaches of last year, here—I felt it behooved me to move out of the nineteenth century, and read some of the great writers of the early twentieth century: I’d never moved past a small amount of Mitford and an enormous amount of Wodehouse. So now I have shelves stacked with Vita Sackville-West, E. F. Benson, Ethel M. Dell, Rosamund Lehmann, and the like, most of which I’ve not read (or only read half of, as with George du Maurier.) But I’ll get around to them, someday.

The naked woman at the end is the illustrated spines of Casanova’s memoirs. Unfortunately, I could only buy half the set in this rather lovely Johns Hopkins UP edition, so I only have half a naked woman on my shelf. It’s the top half, but I don’t know if that’s better or worse.

I hadn’t realised how much of the next shelf was devoted to Nick’s books: I’ve never read Robert Heinlein, Piers Anthony, or Robin Hobb. I have read Neil Gaiman’s Stardust—and loved it, of course, despite the rather melancholy flavour—but even that’s Nick’s copy.

But the second shelf here is all mine, and while I’m an admitted fantasy fan, this is more specifically what I love: classic children’s fantasy. I’m not sure there’s much that’s truly classic missing from this shelf (except Lewis Carroll, who’s in the living room), although it’s not a complete collection of any of the authors.

But look at these lovely things!

Running from left to right, I have on this self alone

• George Macdonald (including At the Back of the North Wind, although my personal favourite, by far, is The Princess and the Goblin)
• Susan Cooper (we’ll just skip over the recent film adaptation, shall we?)
• L. Frank Baum (I think I made my passion for Baum fairly well understood in the comments thread to this post)
• Lloyd Alexander (but not, alas, a complete series)
• Alan Garner (I adored The Owl Service and Elidor, particularly)
• Mary Stewart (I don’t know how widely her children’s fantasy is read these days, but I’ve cherished my copies of The Little Broomstick and Ludo and the Star Horse for at least twenty years: these are still those original editions)
• Hugh Lofting (although I wonder, sometimes, whether I’d let children of mine read them, especially the first one, where they visit Africa. I’d certainly not stoop to the bowdlerised versions, though)
• C. S. Lewis
• Elisabeth Beresford (ah, would that we all could womble free)
• Madeleine L’Engle (more sci-fi, I know, but A Wrinkle in Time is still one of my all-time favourites. I think the others in the series are on a lower shelf of this bookcase)
• E. Nesbit

In fact, I should have more Nesbit. I’m sure I just bought The Would-Be-Goods, Five Children and It, and The Phoenix and the Carpet. I wonder where I put those?

Even the non-fantasy books on this shelf are classics, like Richmal Crompton and Helen Cresswell.

Oh, look, an entire shelf of Georgette Heyer books. I wonder how they got there? Let’s just move on, shall we?

In my own defense, can I just say that the Anne McCaffrey and Warhammer books are absolutely Nick’s? I’ve actually never read any McCaffrey, which is a little odd for a fantasy reader my age. At least, I’m fairly certain that I haven’t read any. I wonder?

Mind, many of the other, more obscure books on these shelfs are also Nick’s, including the Ken MacLeod and Snow Crash; that’s my copy of The Diamond Age, but I’ve not read it yet. And, sadly, those are my copies of David Eddings at the end. I have neither bought nor read any of his books in years . . . but I have read up to the end of the second Sparhawk series, which is what’s on that shelf.

On the other hand, there are my Scarlet Pimpernel books! I haven’t read those in years: I don’t think I have all of them, but I’m not certain how necessary it is to read them in order. I really must pull those out again, although they’re an unfortunate mix of inexpensive and fragmentary paperbacks and one fascinating, plump little hardback that’s been roughly treated and poorly rebound.

Most of these are Nick’s too, especially the Will McCarthy: I’ve not read McCarthy, but Nick swears by him, having read Bloom. He writes just the type of science fiction that Nick adores.

At the opposite end of the shelf, there are my Glen Cook novels. I have a number of the novels from the Black Company series—and must get back into them, actually—but what really fascinated me was the Garrett, P.I. series, the hard-boiled detective working in an insane fantasy world. I’m not sure why they appealed to me so much; I’ve never been an enormous fan of hard-boiled detective fiction, because of the complicated gender politics associated with thinking of women as broads and dames (the main reason, actually, why I never got into Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber), and the plots are sometimes rather incoherent right up until the parlour scene. They just thoroughly appealed to me. I might re-read those, actually, once I’ve finished this journal article.

I’m past apologising for the carpet, since this photograph makes it quite clear that I really should have vacuumed. But at least this shelf shows some slightly more high-brow reading tastes. (Not that I’m ashamed of my low-brow tastes.) I mean, look! There’s Kurt Vonngeut (honestly, I really must gather my entire collection together: they’re scattered all over the house), Vikram Seth, and Umberto Eco (now there’s another book I must re-read: I’ve not read The Name of the Rose in at least ten years.)

Sure, there’s also Helen Fielding, but she is funny. I’ve not read the Olivia Joules book, and haven’t the faintest idea what it’s like, though: I picked it up in a Lifeline store, figuring I’d get around to it sooner or later. That was only six months ago, so I’ll probably read it sometime within the next four or five years. (There are, perhaps, some disadvantages to organising your house as though it were a small lending library.)

And my Anne Tylers! I can’t even say what I like about her, although The Accidental Tourist is wonderful . . . and devastating. I think it’s the evocation of the minutiae of life that appeals to me, but I won’t deny that I need to be feeling fairly emotionally robust to deal with some of them, especially Breathing Lessons.

Perhaps that’s why they’re on the bottom shelf, near the grubby carpet.