Toward a more perfect union of shelves.

Recently, we received a note:

Hello, Book Bench!

Jessica and Michael, Philadelphia, PA

O.K., Jessica and Michael, in taking on your shelves I risk opening the floodgates to all those millions of couples who didn’t get selected for video vows. But your message was too cute to turn down. I mean, please, if you’re sending joint e-mails this sweet, there’s no way you’re incompatible. I don’t even need to look at your shelves to tell you that, but since this is nominally a books blog, I will. I’m assuming the shelf on the left, with the figurines and photos is yours, Jessica, and the one on the right is Michael’s. First, I think you both have awesome books—there’s nary a dud among them. Jessica, you’ve got the best Faulkner (“Absalom, Absalom!”), the best English translation of the Aeneid (Robert Fagles’s), Clive James’s flashy “Cultural Amnesia,” Francine Prose’s super-cool “Anne Frank,” and Kristof and WuDunn’s “Half the Sky,” a book I wish everyone would read. Michael, you’ve got Heinrich von Kleist’s “The Marquise of O,” Kafka’s Complete Stories, a couple James Baldwins, and lots and lots of philosophy. This, coupled with Jessica’s above claim that you wanted to take the shortest route through your pre-marital counseling, leads me to believe you value rationality highly. Jessica’s books are perhaps a tad lighter in spirit, but still quite serious and thoughtfully selected—your collections complement each other.

I also see, Michael, that you’ve got a volume of the Harvard Classics, which is a good sign. In my experience, only really cool guys are into the five-foot shelf.

Want your shelf analyzed? E-mail a picture with your name and location to bookbench@gmail.com.

Toward a more expressive bookshelf.

Matthew Rodriguez, Park Slope, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Matthew, I clicked on your shelf and my eye, travelling downward, was caught by these titles:

“The Corrections”
“Collapse”
“Black Hole”
“Clay Walls”
“The Tipping Point”
“Out of Order”

Chaos, Matthew. Or order? I, too, find the question of which governs our lives interesting, though not, perhaps, as interesting as you do. You seem to want to make order out of chaos (hence the many titles on the subject of terrorism), but you also want to make chaos out of order. Is that bookshelf leaning dangerously to the left, or have you only framed the photo to make it appear so? I deduce, too, from the object sitting on top of your shelf, and the object to the right of your shelf, that you embrace chaos in other aspects of your life. Skateboarding and snowboarding: two sports which, however poised and intent the practitioner is at the beginning of a run, frequently end with him splayed out on the ground, limbs akimbo. My guess is that you do it for the part that comes in the middle, the part where you’re flying through the air, the part where you can feel like characters in your books “Superheroes” and “Harry Potter” and “Watchmen” and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” and “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” characters who, without chaos, would have no reason to exist.

What your books say about your love for your city.

Bill Moss, New York, N.Y.

Chapter one. ‘He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion.’ No. Make that ‘He romanticized it all out of proportion. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white, and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’

Bill, I adore New York City, and I adore you because it’s clear that you too adore New York City. Moreover, you’re that particular breed of New Yorker which many of us transplants aspired, wisely or not, one day to become. You romanticize New York City out of such proportion that you send a black-and-white photograph of a room decorated with a black-and-white photograph of Paris, but not a photograph you took yourself—an art poster in a black metal frame (this is a quintessential Upper West Side decorating technique, for readers farther afield). Three crystalline liquor bottles glint in the sunlight refracted by a chrome lamp. The dog, white and clean and smiling, a departed friend, perhaps, now a faithful watcher of the bookshelf—bookshelves being as crucial to the New Yorker’s interiors as asphalt is to his exteriors, the scaffolding erected around the cathedral of his cultural identity…

Corny. Too corny for a man of my taste.

Moving on, to the actual books: Carson McCullers, a beautiful Complete Works of Shakespeare, an aging copy of “The Catcher in the Rye,” a guide to publishing, Ansel Adams, “Julie and Julia,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Bataille, Eugenides, “The WPA Guide to New York City,” and one you’ve seemingly digested in full: “Living Large in Small Spaces: Expressing Personal Style in 100 to 1,000 Square Feet.” This is a well-rounded, ambitious shelf. A shelf with very few unromantic titles (I’m pretending not to have noticed “The Unix Programming Environment”). This is a shelf for a true New Yorker. When people see this shelf, Bill, I’m sure they think, He’s as tough and romantic as the city he loves.

Keep up the good work. New York’s your town, and it always will be.

Want your bookshelves analyzed? E-mail a photograph with your name and location to bookbench@gmail.com.

What your books say about your marriage.

Katy, Oakland, California

Katy, you write that this is a pair of his-and-hers nightstands. Based on the titles of the books, I’d guess that the nightstand on the left is the “hers”—“Special Topics in Calamity Physics,” “I See You Everywhere,” “The Middle Place”—and the authors on the right nightstand suggest it’s a “his”—Ian McEwan, Nick Hornby, Paul Auster, Junot Diaz, Barack Obama. But actually it’s quite difficult to tell. They say that the individuals in a couple begin to resemble one another over time (personally, I subscribe to the theory of facial similarity as a predictor of attraction/compatibility—i.e. “echoism,” denoting a similarity of one or more facial features, and “harmonism,” denoting a similarity in facial proportions. Meaning, I think you should already look like your significant other at the outset of a relationship) and I suppose the same is probably true of their nightstands. I imagine that you and your husband have an ongoing conversation about literature, and that if one of you finishes a book you’ve particularly enjoyed you roll toward the other and say, “Here, darling. You really must read ‘The Gravedigger’s Daughter,’ ” and over it goes to the other nightstand, and then it’s lights-out.

Ah, the terrible symmetry of cohabitation! There might be two separate nightstands but they’re identical, as nightstands, which always come in pairs, always are. Perhaps this is due to the vast conspiracy among American furniture makers to keep the nation’s marriages from busting up, but this can’t explain the lamps—those are all on you, Katy. However, I don’t think it’s bad that you’ve sacrificed your individuality to your marriage. As a therapist, I think it’s healthy for couples to lose themselves a bit in each other. Otherwise, each person is simply too aware of the other’s presence, which causes irritation. And as a reader, I’m completely envious of your setup: the solitary act of reading is very pleasurable, but having someone to share the book with after turning the final page is bliss, which is why the happiest marriages are always, without fail, marriages between readers.*

Want your bookshelves analyzed? E-mail a photo with your name and location to bookbench@gmail.com.

*I have no proof of this. But Paul Popenoe, the father of marriage therapy and the subject of Jill Lepore's Critic at Large piece this week, might.

The pages of your mind, flipped through by the Book Bench.

Robin Cameron, Chinatown, New York City:

Robin, your shelf is so light and inviting, just like the inconceivably gorgeous day beyond the office windows, and I find it quite expressive. You write that you are an avid zine collector and a maker of “artists’ books,” and although I’m not really sure what that means, that’s the phrase that pops into my head when I look at your shelf (with the apostrophe and the “s” transposed): artist’s books. You clearly delight in the texture of things, and like to bring out their tangible qualities. There are very few shiny spines on your shelf: instead we get the papery thinness of zines and the tatty dust jackets of aging art books, and you’ve arranged that stack of thicker books so that only the whites of their insides are visible. All this suggests to me that you’re someone who likes to go beneath the surface—you appreciate layers and depth, and you try to create them in your surroundings. Perhaps that’s why you’ve topped this shelf off with a skull—a crowning nod to interiority.

Would you like your bookshelf analyzed? Send a picture with your name and location to bookbench@gmail.com

Quello che i tuoi libri dicono di te.

Maria Sepa, Milan, Italy

From the celestial sphere, knowledge, immaterial at first, rains gently into the minds of men; from there it falls onto the pages of books; and from there it comes to rest—for a time, at least—in your lap, Maria. That you acknowledge and respect the divine origins of knowledge is evident in the way you've arranged your bookshelves like a halo about your head (like your namesake, you are truly a Madonna of the book), and in your fuzzy red slippers, plainly the creation of an ennobled mind. I've no doubt you devote your days to writing or teaching—your way of sending back to the heavens all you've received.

Would you like your bookshelves analyzed? Send a photograph with your name and location to bookbench@gmail.com.

Your bookshelves and you, one and the same

Emily, Princeton, New Jersey, who writes, “I would like it noted in the record that I am a college student with a hundred and twenty square feet in which to live, and so my selection at present is somewhat limited.”

Emily, what can I say. I find this shelf inspiring, all the more so because this collection represents those precious few books you wouldn’t live without for even a semester (granted some are probably coursebooks, but I’m guessing that most—even if they began that way—now hold personal value). I see many essential reads—Sedgwick’s “Epistemology of the Closet,” Butler’s “Gender Trouble,” Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” Whitman, Wilde, Waugh, Freud, Nietzsche, James (William), Ed White. There’s also Peter Manso’s “PTown” and “The Group Singing Songbook.” To state the obvious, this is a gay bookshelf, which isn’t, in itself, anything to get excited about. What I like about it is its range: if you are concerned with a particular topic, it’s smart to read widely and with purpose. I’d wager that you’re interested in activism (or are already active), and have educated yourself appropriately. It’s inspiring because it is all too easy to be both very concerned with something and too lazy to do the work of becoming truly informed. Your books suggest to me that you are serious, smart, and un-lazy. But on to your second shelf:

Your bookshelves speak volumes…. We’re all ears.

John and Jana Remy, Irvine, California:

Dear John and Dear Jana,

It’s a gray day here in New York City, and I can’t tell you how your shelves have brightened it. First of all, I love that each of you e-mailed me this picture, without, I’m assuming, knowing that the other had. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I have very little critical to say. Normally, when I see a library arranged by color I wonder a bit about the owners: do they think that books are merely decorative? And, if so, do they not know that books look great not arranged by color? And do they not realize that any strict organizational system in a home library seems controlling? In your case, though, I don’t wonder any of those things. Your bright and cheery arrangement is perfectly suited to where you live—what in New York would feel twee seems organic in California. Also, your books sort of lean peacefully into each other in a way that says, Yes there’s order here, but not too much. The titles on your shelves—lots of sci-fi, lots of fantasy, lots of religious history and theory—tell me that you’re dreamers and feelers (dare I say seekers?) first. Your arrangement is not the product of over-thinking, and the bits of clutter here and there back this up.

But the main impression I get from this picture is one of harmony. As if the pleasing double-“J”s of your names and the twin e-mails aren’t proof enough that your family is—sigh—happy, the adorable child ensconced on the couch with a paperback is a dead giveaway. We don’t entirely have control over things like happiness, of course, but I think carving out a space in the house where everyone can gather to read is a good start.

Want your shelf analyzed? E-mail a picture with your name and location to bookbench@gmail.com.

You have books. We have a desire to judge you on them.

Angela, Vancouver, Washington:

Angela, I’ve no idea how you’ve done it, but you’ve managed to assemble the book stack of my nightmares. I’m going to assume that, since they all appear to be library books, you’ve done this as a joke, just to make me cringe and avert my gaze and write a hysterical Subconscious Shelf. If this is the case, you should know that it isn’t funny; it’s the equivalent of telling your psychoanalyst that you were beaten as a child when you weren’t. On the other hand, if it isn’t a joke, and you’ve checked out these books in earnest, I guess we’ve got real problems. It appears that you are confused about the following:

How to read people
How to make people read you
How to like people
How to like men
How to plan a wedding on a budget (oh, ugh)
How to make money
How to be pretty
How to sell a book (oh, god)
How to publicize your book
How to get rid of the life you’re stuck with
How to determine what you’re good at
What to watch on your television

You and your bookshelves, analyzed through the ether by the unprofessionals at the Book Bench.

Chris Cook, Chandler, Arizona

Chris, the human body, when propped up in the vertical position, is divided, very broadly speaking, into two thematic zones: the upper realm, to which belong the intellect and the emotions, and the lower realm, where, it might be said, our baser impulses dwell. Your house respects this division: books and precious objects breathe the rarefied air near the ceiling, while the lower level has been transformed into a garden of earthly delights. I like that your "serious space" has a touch of whimsy: teddy bears, toy horses, a ceramic Madonna, but I'm also troubled. Were these playthings once the belongings of children, and have those children flown away? And are you saddened by their absence? Or are these the remnants of your own youth? Recall the tale of the Velveteen Rabbit, its coat rubbed off, turned real by love, only to be contaminated with scarlet fever and consigned to the flames. The rabbit, of course, is rescued by a kindhearted fairy, but the point is that I fear none of your stuffed animals—and, perhaps, none of your books—are being given the kind of love they deserve. The kind of love that rubs their fur off and cracks their spines and brings the most cherished of them to the brink of ruin. In short, I worry that you are keeping your higher instincts too separate from your lower, your adult self too separate from your childhood self (which is obviously still quite present). Don't forget to bring your objects to life every once in a while—climb that ladder, pull down several things at once, and let them enjoy all the pleasures of a sunny Arizona day.

Want your shelf analyzed? Send a picture with your name and location to bookbench@gmail.com.