Bookcase Showcase: Author AE Rought

OVERFLOWING LIBRARY POST

Thanks for having me here! You guys are getting a two-for-one post today—a look at my book collection and my holiday decorations! Which, for me, books and Christmas just go together, because books are always #1 on my wish list. J

First off, a confession… I don’t have a bookshelf. Not even one. I know, I know… The Horror! Our house is small, and I’m still clinging to other space-hogging collections that eat up what little room I would’ve had for a shelf. Someday, I will have to purge the stuff and make room. 

Currently, my books line both my dresser-top and desktop in our bedroom. There’s always at least one book in the bathroom for tub reading, too, as well as books borrowed by friends. So, the books you see in these pictures are only a smattering of what I’ve read. In a sense they are my “keeper shelf” of current reads. I’ve given many books away as prizes on blog contests, and to various teens that have visited that I thought the YA titles would fit well with.

If this collection held my junior high and high school favorites, Tolkein and Stephen R. Donaldson would dominate. I had all of Tolkein, even The Silmarillion. If a book series could define a time period, though, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and The Second Chronicles were my senior high years. Sure, I read other books, like The Sword and Circlet series by Carole Nelson Douglas, The Iron Tower Trilogy, etc; but there was something about Thomas Covenant and his unbelief… I think this is where my love of the dark, tortured hero took root.

See? If I still had all those books, and had they were on a shelf, it would take up half a wall. Someday, I will hunt them all down and own them all again.

After high school, I hit a bit of a reading dry spell in college. Too many big books to read and still have a life. Once I met my husband, though, I got back into reading for me, and my reading habits took a slight turn from high fantasy to Anne McCaffrey’s dragons and the weirs of Pern. I also fell in hard, fast book love with The Cuckoo’s Egg by C.J. Cherryh.

When our son started in on the Harry Potter Series, I read them too. And seeing as I refuse to part with them, they could be on my “keeper shelf”—however, they’re on his. 

 Then, the girl who used to be our neighbor and occasional babysitter, shared a copy of Twilight, and my YA fate was sealed. Since then, all the books pictured have been read, including a bunch currently on loan, and at least as many that I’ve borrowed. It’s hard to remember all the books that have passed between us—some great readers, some not so much, even a few I struggled to get into enough to finish. Those books found new homes quickly.

Of my books borrowed by friends, I will honestly say I’m getting kind of antsy about getting some of them back. I love my books, and certain ones make my space…fuller. I feel better when my book babies are home.

By the way, in the first couple pictures are books from Marjorie Liu’s Hunter Kiss series, one of the few adult series I read. And in a couple near the end is a copy of a book from an urban fantasy author friend Nancy Holzner, and two copies of a book she blurbed. That last stack, by Sherrilyn Kenyon? Recommended reading by a friend. They’re up next!