ChatterBlog: Bookcases

One of my favorite things about staying in other people's houses when I house/dog sit is the opportunity I get to raid their bookcases. And last week was amazing, because they had so many books scattered on shelves throughout the house. For me, a book choice says a lot about a person, and the books people decide to display say even more.
Coffee table books do the same thing. For instance, if you're a very religious person you'll be more inclined to buy religious books and display them. If you're into gardening, your coffee table will have a book about gardens, cooks will display cooking books, etc, etc.
Back to my original point... I love raiding bookcases. For me, it's like roaming a bookstore without the commitment. I can sample books and then put them back. I can learn something about the tastes of the person who bought them. In the house I was at last week, the wife is an artist. So in their bedroom on the bookshelves were books on artistry, but also feng shui, and a few guidebooks (Italy 2007 and Newsweek's Nation's Best Colleges stuck out). In the hallway were more novels. A few books that I'd glanced at in Border's were stacked there, in addition to the Postsecret books (if you don't know what Postsecret is, go to Postsecret.com. It's an amazing site.). It was interesting to see that some of my taste of books is echoed in that house and I also opened a few novels that are outside of genres I would usually pick.

With that being said, when it comes to bookcases, I love messy ones. Like such:

That's one of my many bookcases in my room. There's no order to it (Well, I try to group authors together...but other than that there's none). Maybe the stacks of books on top of each other just indicate that I need to spend money on more bookcases. But to me, this is a seriously personified bookcase. This is character. I absolutely HATE clean and tidy bookcases. And maybe I'm alone in that. But a neat bookcase to me says that the owner bought the books for decoration and they've been read once or twice but tossed up on a shelf to show off. I have some books like that... but mostly because I'm a freak. I have Harry Potter books that are for reading and others that are collectables. I have a problem. I'm willing to admit that, lol.

But as evidenced above, the rest of my bookcases look as though a tornado hit them.

Anyways... that is my rant for the day.

To recap: