Talking bookshelves and ghostly books

Let's be honest: it's pretty much impossible to keep from judging someone on what he or she is reading. You're on the subway, you look at what your fellow rider is [admitting to] reading, and you can make some assumptions about him or her, fair or not.

So when it comes to guests looking at a host's bookshelves, the judgment is probably one hundred times greater. After all, these are the books that a person can, ostensibly, hide from the prying eyes of strangers, and books that they like enough to have bought and/or keep. So, take a look at your bookshelf--what does it say about you?

I know, it's not fair. Analayzing my bookshelves before my last move, I noted all the bubblegum-pink paperback freebies that I had accumulated in my years working in kids'/YA publishing, and they didn't necessarily reflect my entire range of reading interests. Luckily, I'm a bit less of a hoarder than most of my fellow bibilophiles. I actually love sending books out into the universe--selling them to a cool secondhand store, giving them to friends, leaving them in my apartment building's lobby for my neighbors to find.

So I managed to pare down my collection to only books that had major sentimental value for me, great books that I like to refer to over and over, and books that I've worked on. I'm quite proud of my current streamlined (for now) book collection, and would not be embarrassed by any guest poring over it. In fact, my shelves are in my office-slash-guestroom, and I love the idea of a houseguest looking through my tomes to find something interesting to read before falling asleep, and thereby discovering a new favorite.

All this to say that I know my current catalog quite well, so I was intrigued and a bit creeped out when I spotted a stowaway on my shelf this afternoon. It's a yellowed paperback of The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles, and I've never seen it before in my life--nor, I should perhaps be ashamed to admit (since the quotations on the book indicate that it's quite famous and important), had I ever heard of it before. (I'm giving myself a pass though, as it was published in 1949.) After making my jokester husband swear that he hadn't placed it there and that he knew nothing about it either, I'm now trying to figure out how it got there--a ghost, or a sweet-but-sneaky houseguest? It still has its pricetag from the Brattle Book Shop, so it hails from around these parts, but that's all I can figure out.

Whatever its provenance, though, I may just have to read it. Maybe the answer to the mystery will found be inside its covers. . . .

- L'Editrice