Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Bookshelf

I have way too many books.  Shelves and shelves of them and still I use the library every week.  But I have one bookshelf, the one closest to my writing desk, that gets preferential treatment.  Only the books that I love best--a very select few--are housed there.  These are the books I come back to again and again.  Dog-eared, their covers often worn soft from use, they are books I turn to not only out of love but for study.  Some I read parts of virtually every week.  They are joined by the books I need for research at that particular moment, but that purpose is different from the use I make of these--which is something more like carrying photos of the ones you love.  A few titles change from time to time.  More will be added.  But there are a few that will always have a place on that shelf.  Among them:

  • The Collected Poems of Rilke
  • The Times Are Never So Bad by Andre Dubus
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
  • Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
  • Joe by Larry Brown
  • Fay by Larry Brown
  • Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Stout
  • The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
  • American Primitive by Mary Oliver
  • The Paradise of Bombs by Scott Russell Sanders
Those are some of mine.  What's on your shelf?

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