I started Me, My Shelf and I because I believe you can learn a lot about people — their tastes, interests, histories and influences — by the books they choose to surround themselves with, and the book-collecting impulse in general.
For many bibliophilic Chicagoans — despite living in a digital age, or perhaps because of it — their print collections are what make a house a home.
Other takeaways from this series: 1) Bookish people love loaning out their favorite titles (they’re cool like that); 2) Loaned books, it should be cautioned, are almost never returned; 3) Winnowing down one’s library can be hard; 4) Moving one’s library across the city/state/country/world can be even harder; 5) Chicagoans keep their books on more than just shelves: in boxes and cupboards, on window sills and floors, on the back of the toilet or stuffed into shoe racks; 6) Some people love organizing their books by color; others find it detestable (there is no in-between).
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For this final installment, I took stock of my own collection. So many people invited me into their homes over the past two years to talk books; it seemed only fitting to return the gesture.
Happy reading.