Book Bout - A Tour of your Shelf

[Prof. Tarma Amelia Black]

Where do you keep your books? Do you have a shelf (or shelves) full of books? What does it look like? Take a picture of your bookshelf and post it below for 5 team points. Please also include a short description of your graphic underneath it. (If your books are all on a Kindle, that counts!) If you choose to describe your bookshelf (or book shelves) please feel free to do that instead -- just be sure that your post is of at least 80 words.

In addition to the team points, you will earn 10 beans when you complete this task, which needs to be done by August 23rd.

If you post a picture, please be sure that it does not exceed 600x600 in size.

[Prof. Maxim Trevelyan]

Heh, this post is funny because only yesterday I was rearranging my book shelf. I have three big wooden bookshelves; I think they are made from oak, not sure to be honest. One is set on the shortest wall and has four shelves and the other two are thinner, but taller (six shelves) on opposite sides of my office. The taller bookshelves mostly have law and medical textbooks, as well as books that we read once or just do not read frequently. I house my favorite books, those that I have yet to read or those that I read frequently on the smaller shelf, because I am a tiny person and I can easily reach them. Plus, they are easier on the eyes.

[Iverian Gnash]

I have a bookshelf above my piano in the living room. It's lined with books, entirely filled so I couldn't fit another book up there if I wanted to All the Harry Potter books are there along with the Lunar Chronicles, Chronicles of Narnia, Hunger Games, Giver series, Greenglass House series, and many books on their own. Then on the other side of the living room, there are three shelves above the couch at the corner where the couch turns which have bunches more books on there, some of them are my dad's agriculture/aquaculture books. In the other corner there's a really tall bookshelf that holds all the Percy Jackson books, and then school books and supplies. In the dining room, the wall has a bookshelf going across the entire thing that's mostly filled with educational books like biographies and historical reads. Most of my new books I either get from the library and then leave on my dresser or I get them on my library app.

[Louis Walles]

I started collecting books when I was 14 years old. Every single year, after holidays in Poland, I used to have 20 new books in my luggage. I have a huge collection of books in English and Polish - my native language (currently, I own 240 books, I have more in my bedroom). I love a variety of different books, the most common category is “Fiction”. My favourite author is Neil Gaiman and I own his every book in Polish. Other favourite categories are thriller, biographies and modern literature. I own some poetry too. In addition, I have read some book series such as “Werewolves from Mercy Falls”, “Maze Runner”, “Narnia”, and many more. I decided to keep track of my books with the use of an app called Book List which is available on Google Play Store (no, not sponsored ). It’s a really nice app which allows me to keep track of how many books and pages I read per week/month/year.

[Isa Vestal]

My bookshelf—at least, at the moment— is pretty disorganized. A few years ago, I was big into rearranging my books (sometimes by genre, author first/last name, alphabet title, date, etc.) but I soon got tired of doing this and ended up sticking to a rainbow order of books with white books at the top, black books at the bottom and orange, red, purple, blue, and green books in that order.



I have quite a few bookshelves around my house and this is just one (the others are very cluttered) but I have collected quite a few over the years including 3 full sets of Harry Potter books (people kept gifting them to me for my birthday/Christmas) and a bunch of books that I’ve never read. Thankfully, this Book Bout activity is giving me the opportunity to explore some of those unopened ones!

[Prof. Scarlet Leslie-Lewis]

I'm fortunate to have an excellent library system, so I've never felt the need to buy many books. The majority of the ones I own are at my parents' house. In my apartment, books tend to find their way to one of two spots.

The first is a small bookcase in the bed room. Most of these books were the ones that traveled from Texas. Toby, my netbook, lives on the second shelf. He hosts all the SQT bots, which are named after cats in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles in the boxed set right above him.



A larger metal bookcase holds all our collections - my orcas (who are apparently Dallas Cowboys fans now), Cody's zebras, and my salt and pepper shakers. Our Harry Potter books and the Percy Jackson series are on top.

[Carrie Warts]

Just like Isa, I have many bookshelves in my house but this one is my favorite cuz it has all of the books I have bought thru out the years plus some pictures and figures
Every summer I pick an old one or buy a new one to read, I always prefer books with a continuity like HP and its 7 books.
I enjoy reading since I was very little so in my bookshelf you might find some childish books but they are still been read by me LOL <3

[Charlie Spencer]

I also have a lot of bookshelves; this specific one is dedicated to my favorites, including books I read when I was younger. It's also home to some cookbooks, several plays, and a Danish to English dictionary. It is, clearly, quite a mess. Once upon a time I took the afternoon to sort them by author, but that quickly proved to be a waste of time because I ended up running out of space and resorted to piling them.

[Gail Allen]

I love hedgehogs! These are just four of the ones I have. So let's just get that out of the way right away

As for the books, this is a lovely mix of languages: There are english, danish and german books here. And what amuses me always is that while the danish and english books have their titles written from the top and going down the spine, the german books go the opposite way. Aquila in the middle is a good example of this.

Otherwise they're vaguely sorted: Top row starts with fantasy: George R. R. Martin and Tolkien.
Next row is historical fiction, and then Terry Pratchett
Next row is historical fiction specifically from the viking age, and then more fantasy
The final row is non-fiction: largely history and mythology as well as historical crafts. I also have a cookbook there with recipes for prehistoric cooking.

This is just one of the book cases I have, and sadly most of my books are still with my parents since I can only move a few of them at a time; books are HEAVY.

[Prof. Sindor Aloyarc]

I used to have bookshelves full of both paper and audio books. These days, much of the collection that travels around with me is on my phone. Not because I don't prefer hard copies, I frequently have one physical and one digital and/or audio book going at any given time, but once I moved out on my own and have spent the last 13 years gypsying every 6-12mo from place to place --luckily as of January having settled in what should be a more long-term home-- I quickly got tired of carrying so much stuff around, and sadly said goodbye about a decade ago to much of what I grew up with. It's been a good lesson though in keeping my load a little lighter, as I tended to hold on to things too long in the past, and I've grown to be somewhat more realistic about purging when necessary (which is always cathartic) while giving myself permission to keep as much as I still view as precious and wish to hold onto. It also put me in the position of giving more books and such items away to friends and family, which has been a fun way to share my favorite things with the people I love when the time comes that they no longer serve my highest good, or simply pass them on to the fates of the universe to bring them where they're most needed.

The physical copies I have around now are scattered in various places (some by the bed, some in a closet here or a drawer there). That being said, some books in my libraries at present include the following:

"The Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram
"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
"Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain" by David Eagleman
"The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
"Sleep Smarter" by Shawn Stevenson
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes
"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline
"The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker
"Uprooted" by Naomi Novik
"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins
"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman
"The Journeys of Socrates: An Adventure" by Dan Millman (currently reading)

[Amy Smith]

I have a lot of shelves at my home. I have different types of books like triller,mythology, books related to history,young adult, fantasy,books related to adventures and so on. I also have a lot of books in kindle which I have saved.

[Harry Walles]

I don't own many books (I live with my husband and he usually buys tones of books which I later read after him) but I do collect National Geographic Magazines! I try to buy them as often as I can and my favourite issues I keep on my shelf. As you can see, I do have 2 great photoalbums (Dynasties, Seven Worlds and Blue Planet 2). All three books were written by David Attenborough whom I really like. Other things you probably have spotted on my shelf is:

- The blue ring binder (it belongs to my husband who collects coins)
- Two colourful notebooks (I found them in my local bookshop for just £1 each. They are from WWF, and they are very beautiful)
- The brown box with a Teddy Bear, a postcard and 'something' in a frame.

The right side of the shelf is purely an adoption pack! My family has decided to support WWF and we adopted the Amuro Leopard. This species is considered to be critically endangered with a population smaller than 150 leopards in the wild! We received an adoption pack and a certificate and we decided to put it in a frame.

[Emerald Wolvenhowl]

There are 2 small bookshelves on my bedroom wall, and one of those hold my Harry Potter novels. The other shelf is lined with Gothic Novels and short ghost stories . As my room is small, I decided to empty a cupboard to create more book space and which are now filled with novels of Agatha Christie, Daphne Du Maurier and Classics such as Jane Eyre. Quite a few children's books live under my bed too such as Watership Down, Mr Men/ Little Miss and Brambley Hedge. My bedside table has not been wasted either and they always store Medieval literature. Every time I mention I might buy a new book, a relative rolls their eyes and asks if I am going to hang them from the ceiling as I haven't anywhere else to put them. Although I have tried to stop buying books for a while, thankfully I have a large 'still yet to read' pile to keep me going for quite a while yet.

[February Fortescue]

While most of my books are on kindle, I do have one bookshelf in my living room. My mother did lots of carpentry work and built a large entertainment center on one wall of my house with a bookshelf at the end (it doesn't lean, my photo is off ) It's painted my favorite color and contains representations of so many of the books I love, such as Harry Potter, Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, Dan Millman's Peaceful Warrior, Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It, and various dog books. I love vintage, and the bottom shelf holds my 1950's panther lamp. That shelf looks a little rough for wear, because my dogs used it as a teething board when my back was turned and I haven't fixed it yet because it reminds me of them and makes me smile. I collect snow globes and angels and have some of them on the shelves as well.

[Emily Spencer]

This is one of the built-in book shelves in my living room. It is just one of many in our house, and the main reason I chose this one was to show off my Doctor Who collection. Both built-ins located in the living room are floor-ceiling and crammed full of books. Mind, a good bit of those are my cookbooks, which I also collect. We also have bookshelves in the bedrooms, and office.

As you will notice by the book titles, I am a rather eclectic reader and have no real rhyme or reason to what stories attract me. I have everything from Science Fiction to Horror to Historicals; fiction, non-fiction,it all depends on my mood at the moment. The only types of books I don't like are romance novels. No offense to anyone who does; it's just not my thing.

I do a lot of my reading on Kindle now, so that has cut down on the number of physical books I purchase; a fact that I am sure my husband is most grateful for if truth be told.