#homeshelf2014

[rjwheaton]

#Homeshelf2014

A pretty simple concept (obviously based on #homescreen2014). One Billy shelf* (that's 30 inches of space) – what will you put on it?

Here's the full list, in rough sequence of when-I-read-them, from left to right:

Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson by Alan Greenberg

Light in August by William Faulkner

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Essential Hemingway (mostly for The Sun Also Rises; but also the vignettes in In Our Time) by Ernest Hemingway

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Selected Poems by Ezra Pound (really only for Cathay; I will someone would publish this in a lovely little pocket edition)

Howl by Alan Ginsberg (honestly, it's in there)

Neon Vernacular by Yusef Komunyakaa

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

'Exterminate All the Brutes' by Sven Lindqvist

Beyond a Boundary by C. L. R. James

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

Seven Nights by Jorge Luis Borges

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

On Photography by Susan Sontag

Chekhov's Short Stories by Anton Chekhov

Collected Stories by Isaac Babel (really only for Odessa Tales)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

There's No Such Thing as Free Speech by Stanley Fish

The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand

Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis

Holy Land by D. J. Waldie

The Control of Nature by John McPhee

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Crime / Guilt by Ferdinand von Schirach

I'm assuming this is a repeat-every-five-years type of exercise, rather than an annual event. With that in mind, these are the books that fell off the shelf, through realistically most of them could easily make a comeback next time around.

The Palm at the End of the Mind by Wallace Stevens

The Beat Reader

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The White Album by Joan Didion

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk

A slightly thicker edition of Huck Finn

* Why a Billy shelf, rather than say 24 titles (i.e. the same severe limit that an iPhone screen has on the number of apps)? I feel like a shelf is the basic unit of measure for books, instead of a screen; but I think we should allow an e-reader screen or reading app screen. I do read in both formats, but interestingly – and worryingly – nothing I had read digitally seemed to make the grade this time around. I'm sure some audiobooks might have made the cut if I'd been more diligent about this exercise.