I have shared this picture a few times now, but when Anne @ Modern Mrs. Darcy talked about how she sometimes judges people by their bookshelves even though her own bookshelves couldn’t all stand up to such scrutiny (and many of us agreed that we do the same), she challenged us to share our own bookshelves on our blogs and talk about what books we read and how we store them.
So I wanted to open this post with my prettiest bookshelf photo because I’m hoping maybe you’ll judge me by THAT and not by what you’ll find below! And truthfully, there was a lot of careful cropping even in the photos below so you are only getting a half truth.
Full disclosure? I am a messy person. I have stacks of things in every room of the house where small children don’t linger and though I’m always trying to tackle those piles, oddly other things tend to take importance and the cutter, it lingers. It lingers in front of my beautiful bookshelves and sometimes those piles are piles of books (you’ll see some of that below) rendering them less than polite company worthy. So if I don’t invite you to peruse most of my bookshelves, you’ll know why.
This beautiful front facing bookshelf in our dining room is one exception – it holds some of the kids’ favorite picture books (no not all – you should see their bedrooms. They make mine look tidy by comparison!) and I love to show it off. It’s one of the first things my husband ever built for our home and I love it. We have an eclectic mix of classic children’s books and irreverent, but the general “theme” that I tend to shop by when it comes to picture books is simply beautiful / good pictures. Picture books, I think, should be judged by their covers.
These are some of the books in my office – LOTS of careful cropping here. This is where I keep cookbooks, some books I’ve already read and some books that I’m too lazy to carry upstairs. This is also where I keep all the family photo books that I’ve made (they are on the top shelf – all those super skinny books). This is the only bookshelf in my home with any real semblance of “organization” in that all the cookbooks are lumped together. After that it’s maybe sort of organized by size and that’s about it.
There is also a small stack of Jane Porter books on my desk that I won in a giveaway (yay!) at Chick Lit Is Not Dead. Love them. Funny story? I was looking for a book I wanted to loan a friend and could not find it anywhere. ANYWHERE! I had given up and moved on and a month later I decided to clean my desk and totally found the book buried under a pile of god knows what. So leaving books on my desk is clearly dangerous. Good luck Jane Porter!
Upstairs you would find even more books in my bedroom (if I ever let you in there).
On the nightstand in the cute little “house shelf” that hubby built are the books I’m currently planning to read soon:
As You Do by Richard Hammond (love him)
Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond
The Last Word by Lisa Lutz
Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster
The Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (not to be confused with that other book)
Wish You Were Eyre by Heather Vogel Frederick
Plus all the books on my kindle. There are a LOT of those!
This is actually a really good, concise sample of the books I read – you would get a good feel for my book tendencies here though the truth is I’ll gladly read almost anything. I gravitate towards celeb memoirs, funny books, YA books, historical fiction and fantasy book.
On my actual bookshelf is basically an ocean of unread books – aside from all the other ones I’ve shown you. In FRONT of that bookshelf is an embarrassing stack of books I’ve already read that I need to DO something with, like donate them or get another bookshelf or something.
Perhaps the truly embarrassing thing is that there are definitely more unread books in my home than books I’ve actually read. I tend to collect them way faster than I can read them. It’s a disease. A sickness. Chaos. And yet if you offered me a new book right now, I’d be giddy with excitement. Is there a bookaholic rehab center? Cause yeah…
Mommablogsalot 
13 responses to “A tour of my bookshelves.”
Maybe look on craigslist for some free bookshelves?? That’s were I get mine. I’ll have to take a pic of my shelves if I can ever pry the camera phone out of Alex’s hands.
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We really need more places to PUT a bookshelf even more than we need the actual shelves, but that is a good idea!
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Loved getting to see your bookshelves! I see some faves in your collection! I love how you display your kid books – awesome! 🙂
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The Eiffel tower, the birdhouse bookcase, and “Wish You Were Eyre”? I can tell from your bookshelves we’d get along great. 🙂
Thanks for sharing your shelves with us!
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Aww thanks! That night stand is slowly becoming my pride and joy – if I only I could replace the night stand itself which is one of those awful shiny black fake wooden things that my dad bought back in the 80’s for HIS room that I was unlucky enough to inherit lol
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I’d be right there with you in bookaholic rehab! And I just have to say-I also adore Richard Hammond 🙂 You’ll have to let me know how his book is!
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I’ve only read the introduction so far but I can already tell I’m going to like it – his writing style is very good: funny and flows well – not always a given with celeb authors! Also my husband ADORED the book (he’s a huge Top Gear fan) and kept reciting passages to me while he was reading it, so I think that bodes well also!
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That kid’s book shelf is amazing! I have a special fondness for kids’ books myself and even though my kids are in the process of growing out of picture books, I can’t part with them.
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A book-a-holic rehab center would only be good if it were in a library. Seriously, thanks for sharing your shelves. Want to feel better? Check out some of the picks I put up. Books in laundry baskets that are IN the laundry room for heavens sake. I am a self proclaimed messy, fortunately I can blame my chaos on flood damage we had last spring, but there are no pictures from my bedroom because it is beyond ridiculous. I feel your pain, but seeing and enjoying each others books is worth every moment of it all.
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I simply adore that little house shelf…so pretty! If you ever find that bookaholic rehab club, I’m coming with you! Today I only shared my physical book shelf…my Kindle book collection is INSANE. 😉
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We also just put in some front facing shelves (rain gutters) and I love how much quicker the kids pick up some of the picture books.
And the acquisition of books: my husband and I had to stop going to library sales because we kept buying all these books we didn’t really have room for, or ever get around to reading. Not every $1 book needs to be purchased!
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I also pick my children’s books based on the cover and illustrations, I’ve made notes of which editions of classics I want based on the illustrator. I think it’s important to surround them with beautiful words AND pictures, especially since mine aren’t reading yet. =)
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Glad I’m not the only one! I have one ferocious reader and one who is starting to sort of recognize words but mostly just her name so far (and when she writes her name she likes to change the order of the letters for fun lol)
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