Lost in the Stacks Home Edition: Ted

Ted, who has been blogging since 2007 at Bookeywookey, manages to combine reading, working and writing a dissertation (he's completing his PhD) with the cultural possibilities that living in New York City brings.  He writes about such diverse subjects as literature, theatre, film, music and neuroscience with a keen eye and great insight, which comes from experience as he used to direct opera and theatre and taught acting.  He lives in a residential part of NYC with his husband, known in his blog posts as the Ragazzo.  Perhaps the topics about which he writes aren't really so very different after all since how we think, see and feel must all be interrelated.  If you've not yet met Ted, do click on over and check Bookeywookey out.  In the meantime you can click on the photos for a closer peek at his bookshelves and some rather towering piles of books!    

1. Describe your library/bookshelves. Are the books randomly placed or do you have them organized in a special way?

My library has over 1,000 volumes in it.  The many shelves and piles are organized loosely by genre, but not by much else.  I have a built-in hutch with poetry, shelves featuring biography, music, theatre, visual art, design, neuroscience, psychology, other science, history, poetry, cookbooks, reference books, and then fiction grouped by fantasy, literary fiction, short fiction, modern fiction, one shelf with books just by Virginia Woolf (and anything on or by other Bloomsburians), Alice Munro, Gertrude Stein, A.S. Byatt (but her sister lives elsewhere), Joan Didion, May Sarton, Penelope Fitzgerald, Dawn Powell, and Iris Murdoch, another shelf that has just Shakespeare, Shaw,  Eugene O’Neill, Hesse, Mann, and short fiction anthologies,  and then there is a shelf where I have both fiction and non-fiction on the subject of modernism, so all of my Pat Barker novels live there but so do non-fiction works on German expressionism, the Bauhaus movement, and The First Moderns by William Everdell.  I don’t alphabetize, I like to have all of an author’s works together but I’m not completely successful in doing that.  I know where stuff is by feel.  I can see the book.  I know the color and shape of it, and I’ll usually be in the right neighborhood, even if I have to look around for a bit.

2. Do you like to weed and recycle as you read or do you prefer to hold on to all your books?

I can’t hold all the books I read, I live in a one-bedroom New York apartment!  After I read a book, I make a choice about whether I want it to be a part of my library, whether I will pass it on to someone else, or sell it.  My library is in a constant state of flux.

3. Are your books confined to one area or are they spread out over your house?

They are in every room except the bathroom which has no shelving and gets too damp.  I have built-in shelves in the kitchen, livingroom, and dining room and free-standing shelves in the bedroom, kitchen, and dining room, a few small piles strategically placed throughout the house, and a massive to-be-read pile by my bed.  The Ragazzo says it’s beginning to approach the dimensions of the Great Wall of China but I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

4. How long has your oldest unread book sat on your shelves.

A few books on my shelves have reached the status of having them just to have them.  I have owned them for maybe 30 years and may never read them but I can’t imagine myself without them.  I received JR by William Gaddis as a gift in the early 1980s.  I haven’t read it but I have no interest in giving it away either.  I keep thinking I will get through Catch 22, and perhaps one day I will.  I have a number of books from my grandparents’ library that are in German, which I can’t read at an adult level.  I also have a number of their books which I hope to read – Andre Malraux’s diaries, novels by Thomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger – but whether I do or not, they are a part of my library because they were my grandparents’.   A few on the Great TBR pile have, sadly, been there for maybe six or seven years now.  A few of Orlando Figges’s books on Russian history are among them.  I really do intend to read them.  Honest.  I just haven’t combined the right reading mood with remembering that I owned it.

5. What is your most treasured book?

Just one?  Oh, I’m sweating.  I think it might be The Vakhtangov School of Stage Art by Nikolai Gorchakov.  This is an English translation published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow.  It’s a book by a pupil of Yevgeny Vakhtangov, a great Russian theatre director and teacher, and a pupil of Stanislavsky.  Vakhtangov’s approach was probably most influential of my own as a theatre and opera director and acting teacher.  This is a used hardcover copy, with its jacket in excellent shape, which I tracked down after a long search, through the Shelly Bookshop in London.  This really speaks to the influence of the internet in locating out-of-print books.  I can get the stuff I want now much, much faster.  I find most books nearly instantaneously and can have them sent in under a week’s time, but do I have the same sense of triumph in locating them?  Do I treasure them as much?

6. If you could pick one "lost in the stacks/on your bookshelves" book to rediscover and share with other readers, which would it be?

I went walking around my apartment, glancing at the shelves, thinking about how I might answer this question.  I have written about so many of my favorites on my own blog, but I don’t think that I have ever mentioned Mr. Mani by Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua.  It is about six generations of a Sephardic family, named Mani, and progresses backward in time from the mid-1980s to the 18^th century. In each of five sections we are privy to only side of a conversation in which a speaker describes an encounter with a Mr. Mani.  So it is both an epic chronicle of a family and a detailed psychological portrait of five story tellers. It’s a wonderful novel that I tried for many years to get produced in a dramatic adaptation.  Unfortunately, that’s a project that never came to fruition, but it remains a great read.

Many thanks to Ted for sharing photos of his bookshelves and piles with us.  Check back next Friday for a peek into another reader's library.

Comments

[Cornflower]

Wonderful! Thanks to you both, Ted and Danielle, and what a marvellous collection you have, Ted.

[Stefanie]

What a fun look at Ted's books! I have never heard of Mr. Mani before but I am intrigued! Will have to see if my library has it.

[Danielle]

I spot a number of books that grace my own shelves. And that rather tall stack of books looks familiar, too. Usually in a case like that whatever I want is inevitably the one on the bottom!

[Danielle]

I'd heard of the author but not that book. Like you I'll be looking him up. I am pretty sure my library has Yehoshua's books.

[vicki (bibliolathas/skiourophile)]

I'm so enjoying this series, Danielle. I'm always to be found 'grazing' other people's bookshelves when invited to their homes.

[ted]

As unwieldy as it is, I love my 'stacks' both as a home for old favorites and potential new ones.

[ted]

Hi Stefanie. This novel was a real favorite of mine. Yehoshua is a wonderful writer, even if not as well known as his countrymen Oz or Grossman.

[ted]

Me too. It's the place I always head when I visit someone's home for the 1st time!

[kathy]

That was almost as good as strolling through your apartment looking through your books. I have a few books in common with you, but you're incredibly well-read--I feel inspired to broaden my reading explorations. That's one of the best things about reading blogs and these Lost in the Stacks posts--exposure to so many of other people's favorites. Thanks for the peek into your reading world!

[ted]

I'm always glad to share my enthusiasms. My favorite thing about the book blogging community is all the books I have been encouraged to try that I otherwise would have never known about or assumed I wouldn't like.

[ted]

Thanks for hosting this, Danielle. It was a lot of fun!

[Caroline]

Wonderful shelves and stacks. There are many books I've not heard of. I'm a regular visitor or Ted's blog and have discovered many books, especially non.-fiction.
I have never heard of Mr Mani but will invetsigate immediately.
I should follow this example of deciding very well after I've read a book whether or not I keep it. I just give away those I really didn't like.

[ted]

Thanks, Caroline. Sounds like Mr. Mani may have a modest revival!

[Penny]

There is much, MUCH, that I envy in your vast collection, Ted, and appreciate a peek at them.

As always, Danielle, love all your lost in the stacks, especially this new avenue you are taking.

[litlove]

I just adore this series! These books seem to be the most integrated into the household that I've seen so far; I don't have any ornaments, for instance, on my shelves, but I love the look that Ted creates here. And as ever it's fascinating to browse the shelves - loved the biographies!

[ted]

Thanks, Penny. I feel like I've just had a little party with all these great bookey people. It's been such fun, I'd love to send everyone home with a loaned copy.

[ted]

Litlove, thanks. I have the Ragazzo to thank for a lot of the look of the place, that and the fact that we have so many things we simply have to double up. Bios have always been a special pleasure of mine.

[Danielle]

I'm glad you are enjoying it Vicki--it is really fun to put the posts together and so nice to get a peek at other reader's books!

[Danielle]

Thanks for answering my questions and sharing your photos--it's very kind of you to allow us all into your home for a peek at your books!

[Danielle]

So glad you are enjoying the posts Penny. I hope to line up a few more in the coming weeks.

[Danielle]

It is nice to see books sharing the same space as household items--I need to do that more myself rather than keeping them all in their own places.

[Danielle]

I'm lucky since I am in a house and could spread my books out more--I always forget how hard it is for apartment dwellers to have a nice book collection in limited space. Someday I want built in shelving like you have!

[Alex in Leeds]

I love the idea of grouping all the works by Woolf together with all the works *about* Woolf, such a lovely flowing way to shelve them.