What's On Your Bookshelf?

I was reading the December 2012 issue of Town and Country today and came across an article about My Ideal Bookshelf, a new book by illustrator Jane Mount. She interviewed 100 people to find out what was on their bookshelves and created images based on those selections. Thessaly La Force wrote the accompanying essays. "The point was to find people whose books gave you a sign of how they become who they are."

What's on my bookshelf? For a booklover, I actually own relatively few books. I give away books I've read so that they can enrich other people's lives and I mostly get books from the library. Still, I have a couple shelves of books that I've held onto over the years. The shelf I picked for this exercise includes my art history textbooks from college as well as "The History of Painting," and "Janson's History of Art" that I picked up at the library book sale for $1 this summer. I also have the quilting pattern book I got when I was nine years old at a school book sale. I begged my mother for that book and I'm sure it seemed a silly purchase to her at the time, but she bought it for me and fourteen years later, I fulfilled my desire to start quilting and I haven't stopped. In addition, I have an old (1960s?) Better Homes and Gardens "How to Sew" book, not that I sew particularly well (I have no idea how to use a sewing machine). I also have a screenwriting book on that shelf. Screenwriting is on the list of things I want to do.

What's on your bookshelf?


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