one of my all-time favorite teachers (and probably the one who is most responsible for helping me pull my sad ass together to whatever extent i’ve blocked een able to) said something really great to me this one time. well, she said lots of great things lots of times, but here goes a specific time. when i’m in an instructor’s office, i always look carefully at the books on the shelves. this specific one time, i happened to be in her office, and she was reading over a draft of some nonsense i had written, which gave me plenty of time to gawk at her books. eventually, i realized that she had finished reading, and now she was looking at me looking at her books. somewhat embarrassed, i explained that i’m always interested in seeing what professors have on their bookshelves. she smiled, responding, “it’s much more interesting to think about how many of those books on their shelves they’ve actually read.” i thought this was one of the greatest things i’d ever heard that wasn’t spoken, you know, in a book or movie. i repeat it sometimes, and i always give her credit.

the contents of a single shelf of my books:

1. Making Sense of The Troubles (anthology)—mostly read it, as it was assigned for a class (taught by the cool teacher described above)
2. The Water Cure (Percival Everett)—haven’t read it
3. Wounded (Everett)—haven’t read it
4. Erasure (Everett)—read it (recommended by a creative writing teacher i took a graduate creative nonfiction class with. totally amazing book, so good that i bought the other two Everett books that i then didn’t bother to read. i actually just ordered another one by Everett because it was really cheap. i’ll definitely read it.)
5. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game (Patricia Highsmith) —read the first one, but not the others (not sure when i got this, but it seems likely that it was soon after seeing the 1999 film adaptation of the first novel)
6. The Talented Mr. Ripley (Highsmith) —read it (got this extra copy from the university bookstore when i taught it in a class on film adaptations, focused on novels (we watched the 1999 adaptation and Purple Noon). i didn’t technically need it, but it was better to have the edition i’d assigned them, because it made class discussion easier for us all to be referring to the same pages. of course, it didn’t matter, because half of them got a different edition than the one i assigned.
7. ***: Stories (***) —read it (written by the instructor of the graduate creative nonfiction class who recommended Percival Everett to me. everyone else in the class bought her book at the beginning of the semester, which was weird to me. after having her as an instructor for most of the semester, i actually decided that she most likely was a good writer (really observant and insightful), so i bought her book. i thought that buying it from her directly might be better, like she would keep all the money instead of just getting a piece of it (which is how i assumed it works, i guess like how record companies take all the money when you buy a record). she was like, “no, i don’t think it makes a difference,” so i was kind of embarrassed. she asked me if i wanted her to sign it, which i had an answer for (i didn’t want her to sign it, because it would feel uncomfortable, though i had a better reason than that to tell her), but i was so flustered by her response to my idea about buying the book directly from her that i just weakly said “you don’t have to,” which probably seemed ambiguous and noncommittal enough to suggest to her that i did want her to sign it and i was just too embarrassed to ask, so that she felt obligated, and she wrote something in there about how i’m a good writer and i should ‘keep it up!’ anyway, the book is good. there’s some good flash pieces, and this story about air quality, that i believe opens the collection, is really good. she’s got a great wit. i L’d out loud, probably.)
8. Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier) —haven’t read it (assigned in a class on civil war literature along with a bunch of other books i didn’t read. if i ever actually read any of them, it will probably be Gore Vidal’s Lincoln. but i probably won’t ever read any of them.)
9. Underworld (Don DeLillo) —read it (out of the DeLillo books i own and have read (as opposed to the DeLillo books i own and haven’t read—they’re about even, i think), this is the best one. sometimes i recommend to people just reading the opening section at the Polo Grounds)
10. Falling Man (DeLillo) —read it (out of the DeLillo books i own and have read (as opposed to the DeLillo books i own and haven’t read), this is the least of them, in my opinion. also assigned for the terrorism class.)
11. White Noise (DeLillo) —haven’t read it (first book by DeLillo i ever read. assigned by the cool teacher, but not for the terrorism class)
12. Mao II (DeLillo) —haven’t read it
13. Libra (DeLillo) —might have read it (i honestly don’t remember. i remember clearly taking it on a plane ride with me once, probably to a conference, but i definitely didn’t read it on that occasion. there’s at least one more DeLillo book on another shelf, separate from the main DeLillo collection)
14. By the Lake (John McGahern) —read it (i know i read it, because it was for the terrorism class, which was a graduate class, and i never skipped something I was supposed to read for a graduate class, but i could not tell you a single thing about this book beyond the fact that the guy who write it is Irish, and i can only tell you that because most of the authors we read in that class were Irish)
15. Resurrection Man (Eoin McNamee) —read it (see above, except i’m pretty sure this one was much darker than the McGahern book)
16. A Belfast Woman (Mary Beckett) —read it (again, see above. Definitely Irish, and i know i liked it)
17. Give Them Stones (Mary Beckett) —haven’t read it (i know I liked the previous Mary Beckett book because i bought this one on my own, and then didn’t read it. i remember thinking the title was really dope.)
18. Waiting For Godot (Samuel Beckett) —read it (i heard of this in high school, bought it from Barnes & Noble and loved it. read it like a dozen times, ripped it off like mad in plays that i wrote in high school)
19. More Pricks Than Kicks (Samuel Beckett) —haven’t read it (tried, but it was way harder than Waiting for Godot. i ran out and bought this after losing my shit over Godot)
20. Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable (Samuel Beckett) —haven’t read it (see previous entry)
21. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce) —read it (took multiple tries. love it a good bit)
22. Dubliners (Joyce) —read it (only took one try, like it a good bit.)
23. Quicksand and Passing (Nella Larsen) —read half of it (just Passing, because it’s the one that was assigned. liked it, but obviously not enough to read a whole other half of a book)
24. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) —haven’t read it (my first real girlfriend swore up and down that this book is vastly superior to The Grapes of Wrath (read it). i’m still just taking her word for it)
25. Proxopera (Benedict Kiely) —read it (another one from the terrorism class. i remember liking it a lot. i think there was a bomb in a car, or a bomb and a car. whatever it was, it was good)
26. The Assignment (Friedrich Durrenmatt) —read it (last terrorism one, and my absolute favorite from that class. kind of experimental, i think(?). really fun to read i remember, but, honestly, this might be the book with the bomb/car.)
27. The Maytrees (Annie Dillard) —read it (it’s pretty fine. i wonder if i would have finished it if it hadn’t been written by Annie Dillard)
28. The Living (Dillard) —read it (see previous book. maybe a little more taxing)
29. Teaching a Stone to Talk (Dillard) —read it multiple times (i love Annie Dillard so much)
30. Three by Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life) —read em all multiple times (this is the literal book that changed my life, like the actual physical copy. we were assigned to read An American Childhood in this twentieth century American literature class, and i was the only one in the class who liked it, but i loved it enough for a thousand classes of grumbling, dead-eyed chuds. it blew my mind, and i decided that i wanted nothing more than to be as sincere and open to the world as Ms. Dillard (still working on that one), and also that i needed to really think hard on a plan to trick her into marrying me, just in case the opportunity ever presented itself. i read it like three times in the month after it was assigned, but i actually haven’t read it since, because i’m afraid to. the actual specific  contents of the book, for the most part, has faded from my memory, and what remains is its vastly more meaningful emotional significance. this book was (and remains) so important to me, and reading it was such a monumental moment in my life that i want to preserve that. i’m afraid of reading it again and seeing that it’s just another good book, or even (gasp) that it’s not that great to me now. it can’t possibly be to me now what it was to me then. i’m not the same person i was when i read An American Childhood for the first time, so i can’t possibly have the same experience, but the experience of reading this book for the first time is so important to me that i want to protect it. this is dumb, of course, and i will read An American Childhood again, but i’m not ready yet. i put a sticker of Lisa Simpson holding her saxophone on the cover of this book.)
31. An American Childhood (Dillard) —read it multiple times (i’ve got multiple copies of this special book. this one is not great looking. it’s got this ugly block letter font, and an illustration of something related to Pittsburgh on the cover)
32. An American Childhood (Dillard) —read it multiple times (same cover illustration, but way nicer font. just overall more aesthetically pleasing. Milhouse sticker on the cover)
33. An American Childhood (Dillard) —read it multiple times (ugly block letter version, but hardcover)
34. An American Childhood (Dillard) —read it multiple times (special copy: manuscript copy with handwritten corrections by Ms. Dillard. my partner got it for me for my birthday a few years ago)
35. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Dillard) —read it multiple times (1^st edition, hardcover. i like this book quite a bit, but it’s no An American Childhood)
36. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Dillard) —read it multiple times (ugly block letters edition, paperback)
37. For the Time Being (Dillard) —read it twice (i ran to Barnes & Noble to get this the day it came out, which, who rushes to the bookstore for the week’s new books? i was worried they wouldn’t get it (Annie Dillard isn’t J.K. Rowling, after all), so i asked my girlfriend to call and special order it to make sure i would be able to have it the minute it came out. she made me actually go pick it up myself, which was rough)
38. Under Western Eyes (Joseph Conrad) —read it multiple times (read it twice for the cool teacher in the opening anecdote (realized it’s one of the best books i’ve ever read the second time through) and once for another teacher. i take very good care of my books, but this one does look a bit the worse for wear. i’m gentle, but it’s been well-loved. actually, the second time i read it might have been in the terrorism class.)
39. Under Western Eyes (Joseph Conrad) —read it multiple times (this particular copy is unread. i just wanted to have a nice copy of a book i love so much)
40. Lord Jim (Joseph Conrad) —haven’t read it (a Norton Critical Edition that i got when the Norton rep came to OU with tons of free books. i grabbed it because i love Conrad, but didn’t read it because i don’t love reading that much. like DeLillo, there are other Conrad books on a different shelf, but this and Under Western Eyes don’t constitute the ‘main’ collection.)

for me, this is a pretty good batting average, as far as the ratio of books of mine that i’ve read to ones that i haven’t. i keep messing up the math in my head, but it seems like it’s around 70-75% (less if i don’t give myself credit for the ones where i only read part of the book). though i enjoy reading, i’m not a great reader. fortunately, i rarely talk about books.

i swapped out one book that’s normally on the shelf, in-between Erasure and the Ripley collection:

41. Girlvert (Ashley Blue) —read it (it’s a book about the porn business, and i took it out to avoid saying i had a book about hardcore porn)