Collections upon collections. Whenever i walk into someone's home, one of the first things i'm bound to do is seek out their book collection. What can i learn about them from what they read (or don't read)? What do the books look like - have they been moved lately? What type of order are they in? How read are they? We have so many notions behind books, an understanding of what they stand for, of what they are about, about who reads them and why.

Above is about 2/3 of my book collection. These are the books that sit in my room in Boston; they are the first thing you see when you walk in the door. On your right are the non-fiction books; on your left, the fiction. Unlike this list, they are clustered based on similarity in my mind, an ecclectic ordering that i know by heart but everyone else is bound to mess up. On top of the rows of books are new books that haven't yet found their home amongst the older books. At the bottom shelf of each are the books that i am currently reading, either for class or for pleasure. Yes, there are always at least 10 fiction books started at once. My books have character; that is half of my pleasure in them. Most of them were purchased used and have acquired even more wear & tear since then. There are a handful of books that i've gone out of my way to collect, spending obscene amounts of money on them. They are on top of the shelves, far away from the random items that get added to the shelves. There is a notice about my books that often adorns the bookshelves. Anyone may borrow any unsigned books; the signed books are not to leave the room. The shelves of my books also host the disarray of my life. The beat-generation fiction row hosts all of my daily medications and vitamins, to be taken on the way out the door. On the shelf below, there are all of the pocket items that get rotated between pockets each day. There are candles, half-eaten candies and drinks, fliers for events that i've promoted, bills that need to be managed, ticket stubs, random notes to self, cat treats, etc. Inside each book there are also plenty of treats - pieces of paper that got added during the process of reading each book, filled with historical markers of places i've been and people i've talked with.

My books have character. They host so much meaning in the perusal, in the markings, in the food stains and the water marks, in the bits of paper stuffed in them. Together, as a collection, they tell a story about their owner.