A few "Shelfies"

There's a trend - or at least on Twitter it seems to be - of photographing one's books (Specifically, Folio Society books - but then, that's because I follow their feed, so others may do it with others) and calling it a "shelfie," as a riff on "selfie."

While I generally cast suspicious glances at neologisms, I have to admit I kind of like "shelfie," because it's parodying a trend that sort of bugs me, and also, I always enjoy seeing how other people have arranged their books or what titles they have.

Confession: in the few decorating magazines I read, the thing that catches my interest most is a room with lots of bookshelves in it. A lot of magazines rarely feature these (Country Living seems to have them more often than many) but I am sure there are enough people out there who have lots of books that want to have them out and visible. (I am always suspicious of dwelling-places that are too magazine-photo-perfect: what do people do with their spare time? Don't they read or do some kind of craft, don't they hang onto a catalog while they decide if they really want to buy that thing in it? Or do the people with the "perfect" houses have some kind of secret TARDIS storage-closet I don't know about?)

But anyway. I have lots of books and I like them out where I can see them, not hidden away somewhere. (Same is true of my knitting/handquilting/embroidery projects: If I put something away, I'm a lot less likely to work on it.)

One thing I did over the weekend was to clean and tung oil the little bookshelf I bought, and then I took a bunch of my small older books and put them on the shelf:

In the process, I freed up space on a couple of my other shelves, so I was able to consolidate most of my Fairy Books onto one shelf:



Yeah, I decided I wanted a spectrum theme. (Not shown are Grey and Brown, which didn't fit. They're on the next shelf over.). The one over to the far left - Red - is a different publisher and age of the others, which are all the big gorgeous Folio Society versions. The Red Fairy Book I have is one that was my mother's when she was a child. In fact, my grandmother, who had kept it, gave it to me when I was about the same age my mother was when she first received it. I didn't even know then there were different-color Fairy Books or that it was a whole series - I learned that much later. (And it was the offer of Blue, Yellow and Green on a good price that first got me to join the Folio Society).

And now I have all of them. (I think 12 is "all," if I remember correctly).

I also put some other books on the next shelf over. These are all Folio Press books, so I guess this qualifies as a "Folio Shelfie."



Mostly what might be called "Children's Literature" (The Wind in the Willows is there, the title is just too pale to show up on the light green binding). The other fairy-tale books (Perrault's, Grimm's, and Andersen's) were ones that came free from Folio over the years. (They get people to re-up by offering fabulous gifts-with-purchase).

And the new shelf. These photos are kind of dark but I often find that the flash washes things out, like type.





The nice thing about rearranging shelves is you find stuff you had forgotten about. I pulled out that copy of Adam Bede and started reading it the other night and I think I will continue.