What's on MY Bookshelf?

My turn to jump off the cliff.

 

It's a mix.  I generally pass light fiction on after reading, trying to use the "Will I ever read it again?" rule.  But periodically I have to do a sweep through and take out the ones that I never actually got back to and have realized I never will.  There's Douglas Adams and Bill Bryson, lots of Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft.  Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dickons, Shaara, Tolkien, and Twain.  Books on Catholisism and Church History.  Science and books on old movies, to which I just added a biography of Claude Rains that I'm anxious to get to.

History and biographies - the Tudors, the Founding Fathers, presidents up through John Tyler.  I've been trying to read at least one biography for each president but have gotten very slowed down - it's sometimes hard to find one for certain presidents. Plus I get side-tracked.  Figures such as Lafayette, Napoleon, and Daniel Boone all are integral to our history as well, and I haven't even gotten to Henry Clay or John C. Calhoun.

Everything that doesn't currently fit on my night stand ends up over here, and right now it's everything from writings of Benedict XVI to a narrative of the hunt for John Wilkes Booth to Dean Koontz's Frankenstein.

And then there would be the cookbooks (and other stuff).  Currently accompanied by a chemistry experiment - my first attempt at homemade peach brandy.

I'll never be a Kindle user - I have to have the feel and smell of books in my hand.  And I will only order so much from Amazon - there is too much pleasure to be had from browsing book shelves, enjoying the smell of a new book, the feel of it in my hands as I open it, deciding do I want this one or that one.  Nope, gotta have a real book.  But that does cause storage problems, so I'm working on cleaning up more shelf space in the form of an antique pharmacy cabinet that was given to me.  My sister helped me anchor it to the wall while she was here and I spent Labor Day going through buckets of Murphy's Oil Soap giving it a bath.  Next is a good polish.