A while ago Meaghano answered one of my questions:

Ha, and no, no custom dust jackets. I HATE DUST JACKETS. I have taken dust jackets off, I’ll tell you that. But it sort of feels like a betrayal to hide what book you’re reading. It’s like you have to earn the right to read it by owning up to the fact that you’re reading it. But i am Catholic so keep that in mind.

I’ve been thinking about the dust covers a bit since then. Dust jackets are kind of annoying and impossible not to throw on the drawers when you read a book. But! I also quite like the idea of having an author with a unified spine design in the bookshelf. Especially when they span over a few different publishing houses like Jonathan Lethem. I want to be able to look at a shelf and see where the authors are without having to know.

So yes, I’m thinking good paper stock, a ruler and illustrator. You think this is sad? Fuck you, I take my bookshelves seriously. If I could, I’d bend the room in more dimensions in order to get more walls to cover up with books.

A book meme

From pikkutiikeri because I like books even though memes aren’t my thing really.

1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?

Oh. There is no possible way I can know that. Possibly one of the green-spined youth books that my father had before me.

2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next?

Reading the Poetics of Space (Gaston Bachelard) and the Land of Laughs (Jonathan Carroll). Finished Iorich (Steven Brust).

3. What book did everyone like and you hated?

Lord of the Rings. To Kill a Mockingbird.

4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you’ll read, but you probably won’t?

Finnegan’s Wake. Because I’m not smart enough and well, lack a few areas of expertise to be able to make sense of it.

5. Which book are you saving for “retirement?”

I don’t. I’ll have enough books read then without planning.

6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?

The end. Why spoil you on something that in most cases don’t even make sense?

7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?

Definitively not a waste. Next you’ll say dedications are a waste too and then we’d never have read the wonderful “To James Joyce, here is my latest masterpiece” penned by Flann O’Brien.

8. Which book character would you switch places with?

Eh. The main character in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle? He’s got a cat and spaghetti.

9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?

Yes, some. There are old things, not up on the walls any more that reminds me of the speaker I had above the bed when I was ten. Some reminds me of train rides, bus waiting and the class I took in English Drama.

10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.

I got a Swedish version of the Little Book of Calm, only not so little, when En Björn said “come and take books from my job.”

11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?

No. My life is filled with non-specialness.

12. Which book has been with you to the most places?

Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers because that one is always in my bag for quite some time now.

13. Any “required reading” you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?

Dear lord, I con’t remember much of that time at all. So no.

14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?

Money. I sometimes put them in books because I don’t care and need a bookmark.

15. Used or brand new?

Both. A book is a book. There’s different smells to them, but that’s all. To prefer one over the other that would be… No, that’s unthinkable. As Holbrock Jackson wrote in the Anatomy of Bibliomania: “No sport so seductive, so rich in temptations, falls, repentances, so fraught with achievements and disappointments. What joy to return home after a day’s sport with your pockets bulging books!”

16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?

Not a genius but not as bas as opiate. He’s just uneven.

17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?

Blade Runner. Not a bad book, but I found the movie more interesting.

18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?

Watchmen. That one deserved to be better than a bland miss the point ordeal. I have to agree that Jackie Earle Haley did a great Rorschach though. I blame script and the hack director. However, I think never is a too strong word. It’s this version that happened to be made that’s wrong. Book and movie are two different things, you can make wonderful things out of throw-away lines from a book (see: Blade Runner).

19. Have you ever read a book that’s made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?

Dzur! Yet again, Steven Brust, where each chapter begins at a dinner table where the food is described. He does this wonderfully and I drool just by thinking about this. (Want to try his Klava idea as well.) Also a short story by Patricia C. Wrede which contained a “Quick After-Battle Triple Chocolate Cake” — recipe included.

20. Who is the person whose book advice you’ll always take?

Jophan and En Björn.

My favourite Internet bookshop — not to be confused with my favourite physical bookshop — has this thing that’s a bit annoying. You can’t order stuff they don’t have in. So if it’s temporary out of stock, all you can do is put it on the watch-list. Which is nice in a way , there’s few “sorry, we can’t deliver this” messages. But on the other hand, how do they know which titles to prioritize? I hope they get a blip when you add something to the watch list, but I’m too cynical to believe that.

It would be nice to get that Francesca Woodman book for a decent price instead of needing to mortgage the kidney. Which apparently Amazon wants you to do. I like my kidneys. They are a part of me as well as protected by a sticky layer of blood.