In the last Bookshelfie post we were in the front of the house, with books in my fanciest set of shelves. Today, we’re at the back of the house and a much more crammed full shelf, where you will spot some old friends of mine – including a stack you may recognise from yesterday’s Series I Love post! And you can also see a couple of problems I have here too. Last time out, I mentioned my shelving issues with the Viragos, well here we have the shelving issue with the Gail Carriger. No, I don’t know why my Heartless is a different size to the rest of the set. Yes, I do know why the Custard Protocol changed size – the publishing deal changed and they have a different cover model to the US version as well as the difference in sizes.
Then there is the historical romance collection. And the eagle eyed will spot that I have a UK edition of Brazen and the Beast and a US one. The UK one is because I wanted Sarah MacLean to sign it when I went to her tea party. The US one is because I couldn’t bear the non matching set. Behind the front row of Sarah Macleans are the Eloisa James’s – mostly in US mass markets, but a few in UK paperback. Also hiding in the back row are my Julia Quinn books – which are a mix of my favourite Bridgertons and then a selection from the Bevelstoke and Smythe-Smith series.
Also hidden in the back row are a couple of old favourites – there are three Melissa Nathan novels (how is it fifteen years since she died?) and my favourite Sarah Mason Playing James (I hope she’s still writing somewhere out there under a different name that I don’t know about), an aged Carole Matthews, Welcome to the Real World which is both the first book of hers I read and still my enduring favourite – it’s about an aspiring singer who gets her big break on a tv singing competition the same week she lands a job as PA to an opera singer who, unbeknown to her is the newest judge on the very talent show she’s about to be a contestant on. To the far sides of the front we have crime – historical crime on the left with Frances Brody and cozy crime on the right with Jenn McKinlay’s Cupcake Bakery series (as discussed yesterday). Further back are some of her library lovers books as well as some odds and ends of other cozy crime series. And finally, there’s also the baseball I caught at Nationals Park when I was in D.C. – although I still deny that I elbowed anyone out of the way to get to it though and credit my success to catching practice with my dad back in primary school cricket days!
It’s not the most obvious of stuff to put on a shelf together at first glance, but I promise there is reason there: it’s favourite authors and books at my eyeline in fairly logical order. They’re all books that I might want to lay my hands on in a hurry for a reread. Case in point I took the photo for this post after I’d already written half of the post and wrote the whole thing on the sofa, only going to the shelf right at the end to check that it was the Nathan, Matthews and Mason in the back row – the only book I had forgotten was there was Bridget Jones! I definitely can’t claim the same level of familiarity with the other shelves in this bookcase. But that’s a story for another day…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 