The Purple Shelf

It's been a while since I featured a coloured bookshelf but with the acquisition of Inkdeath I finally accrued enough purple books in London to make s shelf of their own (some of these were on the pink shelf so I may recreate that at some point; I have a copy of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño that should easily replace them).

Reflective of my collection as a whole, this shelf contains the obligatory Angela Carter texts as well as some secondary material. Frances Hodgson Burnett appears in duplicate as does Colette (I adore Colette and I adore the Vintage editions of her books). Armistead Maupin is given a place as is another beautifully-written (and Scottish) LGBT book, Trumpet by Jackie Kay. For the first time, I think, in my bookshelves series we have a biographical work, Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side of Neverland that lends its hue wonderfully well to the shelf. I shall leave you to browse the other titles but I will point out that the pale lilac of Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie may be at the lighter shade of purple but for the title alone had to be included.

The Other Green Shelf

I have previously shared my bottle-green Virago shelf but I had many other lighter green books on my shelves and I brought those together to create the other green shelf.

First of all, there is NO Angela Carter book! I think this is the first shelf, other than the white one (and I do have a white Angela Carter book, but not on that shelf) that doesn't include a book by my favourite writer. There are, of course, the obligatory Virago Modern Classics; this time they are both Barbara Pym novels and are new additions to my shelves this year. Penguin are as always well-represented in classics (one read and loved and the other currently unread), beautiful John Wyndham novels, and a Gabriel Garcia Marquez one (also a regular feature amongst the colour-themed shelves); Vintage also sneak onto the shelf yet again with another Rushdie novel.

The Rebecca Wells novel is also a new addition and is a vile shade of lime. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is my all-time favourite Children's novel and this is a beloved copy and one of the oldest books in my collection with Wild Swans by Jung Chang a close second (a fabulous autobiographical family history that has had a place on my shelves since 1997).

I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume is a Japanese classic that you will be reading about soon on my blog and the green Jasper Fforde books belong to great literary crime/fantasy novels and I adore the covers with their spoof beat-up appearance. Lastly on the shelf there is another vividly coloured TC Boyle spine.

I love green as a colour and like the freshness of this shelf, what about you?

I have exhausted the range of colours in my possession, covering the spectrum of the rainbow as well as some other core colours, so this will be the last in my colour-themed bookshelves series until I acquire more books! In the meantime, if the voyeur in you is seeking out then you can watch a vlog tour of Eva's new rainbow bookshelves.

The Beige Shelf

The beige shelf is just for fun; I noticed that I possessed a number of beige and cream books in my collection and I thought it would be interesting to see how effective they were en masse.

Penguin seem particularly inclined to use this shade for their books, single editions as well as the inexpensive classics and the Shakespeare series. Virago apparently like to employ a range of rainbow colours in for their covers, which explains why I have a couple of Viragoes on each rainbow shelf so far (well, that and the fact that I love Virago titles). On this shelf there is also the obligatory Angela Carter novels (this time edited by her); a seminal piece of feminist fiction, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong; some more drama (Irish as opposed to Shakespearean); a beloved Children's literature classic; and a good selection of modern literary fiction including works by two of my favourite writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. I also have to make special mention of one of my best reads this year: The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice; I read a library copy but managed to pick up a pristine copy for a very good price in a remainders shop a couple of months ago.

Does this shelf pop for you, do you find it striking or altogether too beige?

The Red Shelf

Do you like the red shelf? My mind isn't entirely made up about it perhaps due to the disparity in heights and hues. I also have a larger collection of Vintage Classics and together they would make a striking colour & publisher shelf like my silver Penguin Modern Classics one.

As for patterns, I don't notice any overt publishing preferences except for Vintage Books but I do see a correlation between the colour red and children's literature or the gothic novel. As with most of my other coloured shelves there is an Angela Carter title (actually a duplicate copy as Nights at the Circus was my first Carter novel and my favourite); a Virago Modern Classic; an Armistead Maupin Tales of the City book and a mixture of other books including an absurdist Irish play, Irish novella (both of which are highly recommended), a collection of short stories and contemporary fiction. When creating this shelf I could not exclude Dr Seuss.

The Yellow Shelf

During my rainbow bookshelves series I have been conscious that I had no yellow shelf to contribute. For some reason I don't own many yellow books (and yet have an abundance seemingly in other colours); what I do have can be seen below in a little stack, minus a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini that would have looked splendid itself in the pile but someone has borrowed it. However, Verity kindly offered to write a guest post as she -as you can see- has a yellow shelf! Welcome Verity and thank you for adding to my series.

I have greatly enjoyed Paperback Reader's series of Rainbow coloured bookshelves, and having been wondering about creating my own, I couldn't resist offering to do a guest post with yellow books when she said that she didn't have a shelf-ful of volumes in this colour. I then discovered that some of my very favourite books are yellow.

The largest collection of yellow books in the middle of this picture are my Greyladies titles. I came across this imprint earlier in the year, and finally got around to reading some of the titles this year. The books fall into what I would describe as a genre of children's books for grown-ups; they include some of Noel Streatfeild (writing as Susan Scarlett)'s lighter novels and include
adult school stories. I wrote about one of them here.

On the left, I have some non-fiction yellow books. Mrs Milburn's diaries are the wonderful second-world war writings of a housewife and give a fantastic insight into life on the Home Front. The child that books built is also autobiographical, tracing the origin's of Spufford's love of reading. I picked up Cornish for beginners on holiday this year; I love Cornwall and hoped to pick up some of the language, but I haven't yet got very far.

Deric Longden's A play on words is fictionalised autobiography, and absolutely laugh-out-loud-hilarious; I discovered him whilst still at school, and bought this with one of my leaving prizes. I didn't much enjoy Andrea Levy's Small Island, but I adored her other books, including the yellow-sounding Fruit of the Lemon. The bee season was a book acquired cheaply in an offer from The Times and is the literary equivalent of the film Spellbound, tracing a young girl's progress through school spelling bees. The ladies of lending is a library book with a title that grabbed me; as a librarian I love to read about others in the same role and I am looking forward to reading this one very soon.

It turned out that several of much-loved children's books had yellow spines. My Dad read Eve Garnett's Family at One End Street books to me when I was little, and the best in my opinion was this one, Holiday at Dew Drop Inn. Five go adventuring again is sadly faded, but another childhood favourite. Little house in the big woods was the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder books that I encountered, through hearing it read on the radio; I only acquired this copy last year. Two of my Chalet School books have yellow covers too.

The final two books relate to a current reading challenge - my attempt to read through all of the Virago Modern Classics. I read and reviewed the appropriately titled The yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman back in August. And I acquired Excellent Women only last week to add to my collection of recently re-issued Barbara Pym books.


Thank you, Verity! I find it interesting that a lot of children's books have yellow covers and wonder if whether that is why I have so few. In my stack below you will see that Verity and I share the aptly entitled The Yellow Wallpaper. I also have the latest books by Jasper Fforde and Salman Rushdie (published in 2007 and 2008, respectively); a thrift book; Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks (which has the appearance of a lovely children's schoolbook); and one of Colette's Claudine novels, which is by far one of my favourite series designs (by Vintage).

I have family visiting this weekend but as always I love your comments and will respond at some point over the weekend.

The Blue Shelf

So, what do you think of my blue shelf? Again, in honour of my colour-themed bookshelves, this shelf was a spur-of-the-moment creation for the photo-op. Perhaps coincidental, I notice that there are a number of enchanting reads on this shelf, all magical in their own way. I love blue and the gradation of the colour from left to right, darker to bluer.

Bookshops 1.1

This isn't the best photograph that I have ever taken and it also doesn't do justice to the cavernous space of Foyles bookshop but I did promise an indoors image for my Bookshops series of posts. This is an appendix to my first post of the series. I love wandering around this shop, especially the General Fiction, some of which (F-H) are shown above, along with the Graphic Novel section and some great display tables; the table directly facing the camera currently hosts a lovely selection of Pushkin Press texts, which I had never paid much attention to before.


Around the corner, display bookshelves can be found including this one. The rainbow table was the inspiration for my bookshelves of many colours series and this has moved to a bookcase. I think that striking and creative displays in bookshops are an inventive use of resources and excites me as a book buyer. Do you find that interesting displays -tables, shelves, or gondolas by colour, prize-winners, or setting- are more likely to attract you to a book and make you more inclined to buy it?

The Pink Shelf

Purely for the photo-op but isn't this shelf striking? I'm not sure if my head would hurt having this as a permanent fixture although I do love purple and pinks.

On the pink shelf are a handful of Virago Modern Classics; some more Angela Carter; some seminal LGBT fiction; some erotica; some fairy tales secondary material; children's literature; and also literary and contemporary fiction.

Next week, we have the blue shelf.

The Grey Shelf

I retained the grey shelf in my book collection to share with you this week during our Persephone Reading Challenge. Some of the Persephones shown above will feature themselves when I blog about them, either as ones I have previously read and loved or ones that I will be reading, at some point this week. Those books to the left of the slim volume of The Victorian Chaise-longue -which interestingly is so slight that it foregoes the Persephone logo- are the ones unread, including Miss Buncle's Book that lies along the top. I also have another grey Persephone currently on my bedside table, the Classics on another shelf, and other editions of Persephone titles shelved elsewhere. I love the uniform refinement of these books on a shelf of their own.

How do you shelve your Persephone Books? I considered ordering them in number and at first shelved them randomly, but then settled on dividing those read and to-be-read titles. I am already struggling for space so I foresee a reorganisination of my bookshelves in the near future (especially as forthcoming Persephones will be published on October 22nd). I envisage one day having an entire bookcase devoted to Persephone Books.

The Green Shelf

I have referred in the past to my burgeoning collection of the original bottle-green Virago Modern Classics. My green shelf photographed above is actually only about half of the ones I have so far collected with some double-backed and others in a pile elsewhere. I also have about another thirty Virago Modern Classics with modern covers.

I began collecting VMCs last May through a love for the imprint, intrigue, and a compulsion for collecting. I have collected some beautiful and rare editions (the green editions are around twenty-five years old usually), with some beautifully chosen artwork on their covers (I'll dedicate a post to that at a a later date), but, at this rate, I am collecting far more than I am reading.

As there are close to 550 titles on the Virago Modern Classics list (Verity's Virago Venture is an exciting attempt to read all of the titles that feature on the list in a Virago edition) and because I recently -and unwisely- worked out that I probably only have 5200 books left to read in my life-time (based on living to eighty years old and reading a conservative 100 books a year), it is unlikely that I will read all of the VMCs. As I live in a metropolis where space is definitely an issue, it seems impractical to collect for the sake of collecting. I intend to curb my collecting of VMCs to only the ones that I have a desire to read and weed my current collection of the ones that I don't; I imagine that there will still be at least one green shelf amongst my books from now on but no future green bookcase.

The Black Shelf

Another colour-themed bookshelf for your bibliophilic voyeuristic eyes! Like the orange shelf, this black one is purely for the photo-op, but it is so striking that I am persuaded to create one in the future as a permanent addition to my personal library.

Perhaps telling of the genre, most of the black books above belong to the fantastical or are about the dark, twisted world of fairy tale. There is also a Gothic classic, a collaboration by two favourite writers, and a novel by an Australian musician...

I definitely like the effect of this shelf and it would complement my white shelf wonderfully. I also have my boyfriend's leather-bound editions of Absolute Sandman by Neil Gaiman (signed, no less) and the remainder of my black-spined Neil Gaiman books that I could add to these, providing I made it the bottom shelf of the bookcases.

So far, which has been your favourite colour of shelf photographed?

The Silver Shelf

Previous posts have shown you some of my colour-themed shelves, which are a mix of titles all with their cover cover in common. My silver shelf is slightly different (and less exciting, I think) in its being devoted to one imprint, Penguin, and their silver modern classics. As a book lover I am a huge admirer of Penguin's designs through the ages (I covet this book and also this one) and have orange, mint, silver, and now white Penguins gracing my shelves. However, as you may know I also like to have matching sets of books so I treat my Penguins by colour and the silver ones live together on the shelf above. Where on this shelf I have incomplete collections of author's works (as in the case of Anaïs Nin, Jean Rhys, and Vladimir Nabokov) I will try to track down a copy of the silver edition rather than the new white, to maintain their uniformity. Saying that, the remainder of my Virginia Woolf collection (I have all but one of her books) are in various editions and it hasn't killed me... When it came to novels that I required for University -like Woolf and Joyce- then I often went for the cheaper or more readily available edition rather than striving for a matching set, which explains why they differ.

The first twelve titles on the left are actually in a box: the Penguin banned books collection (limited edition) and provided me with a few duplicates at the time but now I only have Lolita and The Annotated Lolita; I won't give up my annotated edition as it's an incredibly good resource and I can't disturb the box-set.

I guiltily notice that there are quite a number of the books photographed that are unread, a shockingly high amount, but they are ones that I look forward to reading some day and that I want as part of my book collection.

I have potential Penguin-centric posts for a future date, including special attention to their cover art, but in the meantime read this fun, Penguin related post from Verity of The B Files, which originated in a suggestion I made.

There you have it: another insight into the bookshelves of Paperback Reader and her many book collecting neuroses.

The Orange Shelf

Following the introduction of my white shelf I thought I would, in a creative spurt, temporarily add an orange shelf to my bookcases. I have always wanted an orange shelf and one day this will become a permanent addition but solely for your viewing pleasure -whilst I was in a bored and restless mood- I tried it out for a thematic sense of what it would look like. I like what I see. I created it quickly and with more time and effort involved for permanence I would alternate a few titles; I forgot that my copy of The Women's Room by Marilyn French (this edition) was orange and it would make a welcome edition in the future.

As you should be able to see, despite the glare, a number of the orange books are old orange Penguins, which isn't surprising. Some of these live on the short story volumes shelf, a couple on the shelf that houses Colette's books, another where Virginia Woolf likes to reside.

A few of these orange books can be found normally on the drama shelf and two belong with the other Angela Carter books on a shelf devoted to her alone. Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment should be on the fairy tale shelf and both The Madwoman in the Attic and Cunt: a Declaration of Independence (yes, I really do have a book with that title) come from the shelf reserved for feminist writings.

Last, but not least, The Other Hand and The Bone People both reside on my immediate reading pile, not on a shelf as yet.

This, readers, is my orange shelf -or something resembling it- once I have one.

The White Shelf

Due to popular demand I decided to post a photograph of my white shelf today. An homage to The Beatles' White Album is appropriate for someone whose blog name plays on their song "Paperback Writer".

I wrote yesterday that all of the white books were Vintage Books but there's Animals by Keith Ridgway at the end of the shelf. One of his novellas, Horses (an amazing book), is peeping in at the end, the only non-white book on the shelf, but I couldn't separate it from Animals and the claret colour compliments the font on the Murakami spines.

I also notice that the two Toni Morrison hardbacks -her latest novels, of which Mercy is a signed copy- are no longer published by Vintage but by another Random House imprint, Chatto & Windus.

The Haruki Murakami and Toni Morrison books are some of my favourites; they have such lovely, distinctive covers and have been extremely well published. As I add to my collection of these authors (I have every novel that Toni Morrison has written to date but still have a few Murakami books to buy) a reshuffle of shelfs will be order but at the present I am very content with this shelf. When I have more of them and more shelf space I'll add the new white, Penguin Modern Classics to these ones.

I love themed tables in bookstores and will instantly be drawn to them to peruse at leisure. I think colour themes are exceptionally striking and have seen a white table, a red table, a black one, and a rainbow one in different bookshops and all were appealing. As for my other shelves, I have a dove-grey shelf beneath the white one (no prizes for guessing what they are); a bottle-green Virago shelf a couple of bookcases along; a rainbow coloured Virago shelf beneath that; and perpindicular to that I have a silver Penguin Modern Classics shelf. Look out for another photograph of one of these colour-themed shelf in a few weeks.