gullybogan

Flickr photo by Chantalina.

Dear Reader,

It is common knowledge that your bookshelf says quite a bit about you.

In fact, perhaps it says too much.

I find it really invasive when someone comes into my home, and immediately starts examining my bookshelf. Then, invariably, they start a conversation about one or more of the books therein. Like the books are clues, or an open invitation to pry into my psyche.

I feel like they’ve somehow obtained some sort of super power that allows them to read my mind.

And the thing is, because they’re looking at a collection of books that essentially constitute a large part of the contents of my mind, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

We’ve all heard the stories of ppl – really deep, intellectual ppl – who break up with someone after going back to their flat for the first time, not because the sex is dreadful, but because the sexee has a copy of The Da Vinci Code in his/her bookshelf.

Plenty of ppl stagemanage their bookshelf. If they know a particular person is coming around for a visit, they’ll edit the contents of their bookshelf to impress, banishing the more dullardly texts to the cupboard under the sink in the bathroom, and fishing the esoterica out of the big box on top of the wardrobe.

Imagine living one’s life like that, constantly afraid that the books you read will reveal you as a shallow prick with machofascistic tendencies…

Ok, ok… How was i to know that having a copy of Starship Troopers in your bookshelf was tantamount to machine-gunning a boatload of suffragettes?

Anyway, dear Reader, as you can see, i’ve gone to some lengths to establish for you how nervous it makes me when someone examines my bookshelf and offers to psychoanalyse me from its contents.

So this is where i say that i’ve just signed up to a virtual, online bookshelf that allows other ppl to see what i’m reading and what i’ve read, and to engage me in discussions about my reading.

Conflicted, much?

Thing is, i really like discussing books. It’s one of the rare joys in my life when i find that the person i’m chatting to has read the same book as me. It’s like we’re in some sort of Vulcan mind meld.

It’s the juxtapositioning of all the books, and the conclusions they make from that that i find a little threatening.

Like, what does it mean if i’ve got Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer right next to Judy Blume’s Forever…? Or if i’ve got Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird right beside Bruce Chatwin’s Song lines? Or The Best American Erotica 2003 spine-by-spine with The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen?

Nothing, dear Reader, it means NOTHING!

And that girl who ran out into the dark and the rain just because she saw i kept Chopper Read: Hits and Memories, Perfume, and American Psycho with my cook books… that was tantamount to slander.

Yours,
Gullybogan