As I watch my friends and colleagues using their electronic reading devices, and delay purchasing one myself for as long as possible, I’ve begun to notice and admire physical bookshelves more than ever before.
There has been much speculation on what will happen to the book of paper and binding, but not much, yet, about the architecture of what holds them.
In a friend’s Brooklyn apartment recently, I couldn’t help but notice the way in which authors were shelved side-by-side. A popular biography of Einstein sitting beside Bill Clinton’s autobiography. Memoirs of Jimmy Carter and Michael Lerner leaning against one another. Was this intentional? My friend’s bookshelves held many books by and about “big” thinkers and actors on the world stage.
Visiting another friend for dinner one night, I quietly trolled the bookshelves, pretending to be on my way to the bathroom. His were more enjoyable for their juxtapositions. Ezra Pound’s Cantos sitting next to The Complete Verse of Lewis Carroll, and Philip Roth novels on the same shelf as P. G. Wodehouse. It is impossible to imagine those pairings in real life – only on bookshelves can such people come together!
