I went upstairs yesterday afternoon to burrow under the covers and try to nap but it was too noisy up there. Too many books, all screaming for my attention. All with stories to tell and memories attached.
You see, we have bookshelves in every room of the house. We're overflowing with books. If ever the Raritan River decides to flood its banks, I can supply enough books to build us a dam that would reach from here to New Brunswick. All kinds of books, everything from Jackie Collins to Stephen Hawking. The special ones, though, tend to stick together on the bedroom bookshelves. We're lucky enough to have a big bedroom with a hallway and that hallway is lined with bookshelves, beautiful mahogany shelves that once belonged to my mother and before her to Grandpa's favorite wife Margie. (He had five of 'em.) (Wives, not bookshelves.)
I suppose we can be defined in some very important ways by the book company we keep. These then are the books I keep closest to me, the ones I want within reach on a cold winter's night in central New Jersey.
On the first two shelves, in no particular order:
Lady Chatterley's Lover - D. H. Lawrence
All of Laurie Colwin's works
Csardas - Diane Pearson
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (a book club edition from 1968)
Dance from the Dance - Andrew Holleran
Silences - Tillie Olsen (Her essay "I Stand Here Ironing" always moves me to tears - so many women's voices lost to us. There's a poem by Adrienne Rich - I wish I could remember the title. It's about a man [or maybe a woman] watching an old love as she hangs wash on the line. A phrase lingers: "...bride and lost...")
Locked Rooms and Open Doors - Anne Morrow Lindbergh (diaries)
The Flower and the Nettle - AML (also diaries)
Living Free - Joy Adamson (this is my childhood copy - a long ago Christmas present. Books were always my favorite presents.)
Iberia - James Michener. Far and away my favorite of Michener's many books.
In the Flesh - Hilma Wolitzer
Moving On - Larry McMurtry (I re-read this every year or two and have since 1972)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Bliss - Elizabeth Gundy
Melbury Square - Dorothy Eden
Men in Love - Nancy Friday
Ladies Man - Richard Price.
Departures - Jane Bernstein
Gus in Bronze - Alexandra Marshall
Meeting Rozzy Halfway - Caroline Leavitt (who amazingly became a friend and knitting blogger last year; life is filled with infinite surprises)
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Intimate Male - ed. Anthony Pietropinto
The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
The Complete Works of Robert Frost
The Collected Works of Ogden Nash
The Complete Works of Theodore Roethke - Roethke wrote my favorite poem. ("She was the sickle and I, poor I, the rake...coming behind her for her pretty sake. . .)
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Evangeline - my Grandpa's copy with Christy illustrations (published 1905)
The Little Prince - Saint Exupery. Kathy Callahan gave this to us, Christmas 1969.
Elizabeth I - Anne Somerset
Skye O'Malley - Bertrice Small
Swimmer in the Secret Sea - William Kotzwinkle
A Fine and Private Place - Peter S. Beagle
I See By My Outfit - Peter S. Beagle
Prologue to Love - Taylor Caldwell
Writing Down the Bones - Natalie Goldberg
The New Diary - Tristine Rainer
Teenage Treasury for Girls - ed. Seon Manley
The Chess Apprentice
Peter Pan - Sir James M. Barrie
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott. (Given to me by my parents, Christmas 1960. Beautiful watercolor frontispiece and pen and ink drawings inside.)
Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates - Mary Mapes Dodge
Swiss Family Robinson - Wyss
The Incredible Journey - Sheila Burnford (easily forty-five years old)
Prayers from the Ark - Carmen Bernos De Gasztold and Rumer Godden
Anais Nin, Vol I - Anais Nin
Linotte - Anais Nin, the early diary
Johnny Panic - Sylvia Plath - journal excerpts and a handful of short stories
Creative Dreaming - Patricia Garfield, PhD
Art of Fiction - John Gardner
The Rebecca Notebooks - Daphne duMaurier
Journeys through Bookland - all ten volumes. (Robert Louis Stevenson's counterpane poem, the myth of Baucis and Philemon, so many other delights. This was given to my dad on his seventh birthday. Beautifully worn red leather bindings.)
The Romance of Lust or Early Experiences - A Classic Erotic Novel of Victorian England - Anonymous
The Pearl - A Journal of Voluptuous Reading
What's on your keeper shelves?
