Sunday Salon

I have acquired a new bookcase.

It was on sale at a local furniture store and is handmade. Unfortunately, we just got a new digital camera and I haven't figured out how to use it yet, so I can't post a picture at the moment. Maybe next week.

My old bookcase was made for me by my father and has three shelves. The the top shelf has all my history books; the middle is essays, memoirs, plays, and poetry. The lowest shelf is a double row of mass-market paperbacks, mostly Anne Rice, Dean Koontz, Faye Kellerman, Dan Simmons, and Star Trek, along with the complete dialogues of Plato, two Isabel Allendes, a volume of Poe, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, The Decameron, Potok's The Chosen, and Johnny Got His Gun. I generally try not to buy books in that format, unless they happen to fall into one of the first five items on that list.

The new bookcase holds all my novels. It has four adjustable shelves and can easily fit a fifth, although that is currently not necessary. (Yet.) Right now, two and a half shelves are filled. The top one-and-a-half are trade paperbacks going in chronological order, beginning with Voltaire's Candide and ending in Ara 13's Fiction. The bottom shelf is hardcovers and extra-tall trade paperbacks, in semi-order both chronologically and by size. The empty second-to-bottom shelf holds a framed copy of this picture and a leather-covered box that has my few DVD's and some MP3 player equipment.

On top of the bookcase is a small display case holding my collection of vintage shot glasses. I'll have to post a picture of those too, once I get that damn camera working.

As for books I am actually reading - I am in the middle of Pascal Mercier's Last Train to Lisbon and once again have An American Tragedy on hold. When I intend to finish the latter is, as Mark Twain would say, a dark and bloody mystery.