Want to talk about books?

[boxofdelights]

I got this idea from rachelmanija. Here are two pictures of my most random bookshelf. Do you have any opinions, recommendations, questions about any of them? Comment below!



Click to embiggen!

Comments

[carbonel]

The first book that caught my eye in the photo is M.F.K. Fisher's omnibus The Art of Eating, which I love. I don't think I've ever made any of the recipes, but I've reread it several times.

[kathmandu]

I don't usually read horror, but I went through a Shirley Jackson phase. Partly because an omnibus collection of her short stories had some with a fairy godmother, and I am into those. Turned out those were stories she wrote for one of the supermarket women's magazines like Marie Claire: they couldn't publish anything casting a negative light on home/hearth/children, and she couldn't normally write non-negative fiction, so overt magic became the acceptable common ground.

And then I read Raising Demons and Among the Savages, and marveled at how cute yet enraging some of the scenarios were, and how distant in time and culture some of it was from ~ 2010.

I haven't read 'On Joanna Russ', but I've read everything by her that I could get. How to Suppress Women's Writing, in particular, made a deep impression on me.

[lcohen]

i don't see a single book that we have in common, though to be fair, a lot of them, even after clicking on the picture, i can't really read the spines. but i feel like i should send you some books--god knows, i have a lot of them!

[mecurtin]

On the top shelf I see a "mystery double": Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Careless Cupid; and Agatha Christie, Endless Night.

Over at mine, we've been talking about The Moving Finger and why Christie has such enduring popularity world-wide. Meanwhile, my spouse & daughter often watch Perry Mason episodes together, and my mother is also watching them--in her case, for the nth time.

Which do you prefer, Gardner or Christie? Why do you think Christie's popularity rises above all the rest enduringly? For instance, our public library has replaced a lot of Christies with new editions from the 20th century, but the Gardner editions are much older--indicating that the Christies are read a lot more and wear out faster.

[pameladean]

I love Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons so much. The marital tension is a bit jarring; Jackson tucks it away inside a bunch of contemporary cliches, but it still would stop me dead even as I tore through a rereading. I mean, it's way worse in Thurber. But aside from that, which is intermittent, she's just so good at writing in that funny mode. The mode turns up in some of her fiction, I think notably The Bird's Nest, but it has a different effect there.

P.

[lunabee34]

Of these, I've read Kitchen Confidential and Poor Richard's Almanack and most of the Bible.

[misbegotten]

I love shelfies! Thanks for sharing.

[snacky]

Oooh, I love shelfies! I see The Art of Eating, which I also love!