When I finished expanding the shelves on one wall of my study a short while ago, the shelf space more than tripled and books immediately began colonizing the new spaces. They came from all over the house where they had sat in piles on top of shelves, tables, and wherever. For the time being there is a little bit of room for more. Notebooks, sketchbooks, and some art materials and unfinished projects have handy-to-reach places that are now somewhat neat. Perhaps I will be more productive.
There are more bookcases on the other side of the room not seen here, in all the other rooms, and in the wide front hall, so the little c. 1900 house is well on its way to being the proverbial book-lined cottage, though not nearly so much as the charming one inhabited by the character C.S. Lewis as played by Anthony Hopkins years ago in the film Shadowlands. I recall being a bit envious of that setting.
On the turning bookcase side table is a guide to Edinburgh, and a children's book titled Scotland's Story vies for attention with the tv remote and a sketchbook on the ottoman. I'll be off to 'Auld Reekie' in a short while and will no doubt post some thoughts on the experience upon return. Meanwhile I travel through a universe of places and ideas in the library. The books are in disarray, but whole shelves could be filled if I organized them with collections that would reveal obsessions: time, space, perspective, science (esp. physics) and math, history, music history & theory, luthiery, chess, foreign languages, cryptography, ancient scripts, philosophy, Leonardo, and of course art from all times and places. There is fiction also, but mostly in other rooms. Historical fiction and science fiction probably outnumber other categories in that. But from the age of two I have preferred to read non-fiction.
My favorite poet for 40 years has been Yeats; favorite non-fiction writer for 18 years Martin Kemp, favorite fiction author changes much more rapidly. For some time Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series held my fascination, then the books of Neil Stephenson, especially Cryptonomicon and the immense three volume Baroque Cycle. That latter has as one of the main characters Sir Isaac Newton. Leibniz and King Louis the XIV make their appearances. It leaves you wondering for over 4500 pages why it is categorized as science fiction, why not historical fiction, but then . . . . I won't give it away. Iain Pear's Dream of Scipio left me pondering for quite some time, and so for a while I read others of his books, all quite good reads. Enjoyed Robert Harris's Pompeii so much years ago that I tracked down copies of his Cicero books Imperium and Conspirata this summer. I once wrote a book review of his Pompeii, comparing it with Bulwer-Litton's Last Days of Pompeii. They are very similar stories with often parallel characters: a hero from out of town, a maiden in distress, an evil priest of Isis. . . , but the comparison reveals the difference of world-views between the 19th century and the late 20th. One can compare the treatment of his Cicero with that of McCullough's saga. In her books he is a background character who seems to have sided with the bad guys, while Julius Caesar comes across as heroic and sympathetic. I got to suspecting as I read the 7-book series that the author was in love with Julius Caesar. But in Harris's books, Caesar seems the bad guy and Cicero is a very complex and reasonably good character who does the best he can in difficult circumstances. The more you know of someone, the more you spend time in his house and his mind, the less I think you are likely to judge and dismiss him.
So many books, so little time. Now I must get back to work.
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