Bookcase.

Oddly - or perhaps not - my ideal bookcase is not significantly different from my actual bookcase. For several years now I have been engaged in a life project of minimizing what I own and this has led me to a place where I’ve downsized my library by more than half. So when I sit at my table writing, I can glance up and see them peering back at me, the books. My living room is dominated by several of those cheap black Ikea honeycomb shelf cubes. They’re low and flat and I don’t put anything on top of them. The long bare line of the top of the bookcases helps make the room seem tidy, it makes the ceiling seem high, and it helps to create a sense of calm which brings me a lot of joy. Depending on what I’m writing, I will rearrange the books on the shelves nearest to me. Much like the lighting design of a theater, I like to design the creative radiation coming at me from the nearest books. This would be my ideal design:


Amnesiascope, Steve Erickson. For the longest time this was my favorite book. It is strange and sexy and meandering and not really about anything, but also kind of about everything.


Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins. For my money this is just about the most perfect and beautiful small novel.


Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender. Basically just the best collection of stories ever.


The Godfather, Mario Puzo. Despite the book’s pulpy reputation and the movie(s) overshadowing it, this is a huge and epic novel that deals with everything from Medieval history to Vegas showbiz politics in the 1950s. I’m shocked that it isn’t read more.


House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski. There is something darkly magical about this book. When you read it, it invades your life and hides in all the dark places. I have never read anything else that is as much of an experience as this weird, weird, weird book.


One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. So cliche, I know! But it is only about 400 pages long and yet seems to contain within it everything.


Collected Stories, Carol Shields. Shields is a talented writer, but I own this collection because it contains her story “Various Miracles” which is one of the best things I have ever read.


Said the Shotgun to the Head, Saul Williams. This is the “book” that first made me question the differences between poetry and narrative, fiction and nonfiction, text and graphic design. This book is still a big deal to me and I think about it WAY more than is reasonable.


The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis. Does it get better than Lydia Davis? I love not just her writing but also the way that she will write something and say, “Here world, I wrote this. You figure it out, I’m busy writing the next thing.”


The World Without Us, Alan Weisman. This is the nonfiction book that everybody was reading on airplanes several years ago. It simply imagines what would happen on Earth if all humans suddenly disappeared. Such a simple idea, but it is fascinating.


All in the Timing, David Ives. This collection of one-act plays contains the seminal work “Variations on the Death of Trotsky” which is not just absurd, but brillant.


Sixty Stories, Donald Barthelme. For the better part of a decade I have been haunted by the story in this collection “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning”. I cannot figure out what makes this story work. When I don’t know what to write, I take this book to a bar and try to crack that story.


Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands, Judith Schalansky. This is literally a tiny book of maps of remote islands. Accompanying each map, there are two pages describing something about the island. It is oddly heart-breaking in a way that I have never been able to properly describe.