Buried in Books

Hello!
How are you? I hope you’re doing fine 🙂

I myself am doing fine, though my son had a high fever a few days ago and it threw me in a state of panic. Now he’s getting better, and I have the time to take a look at my long-neglected bookshelf. It was sad.

One of the perks of being a book editor is getting a copy of the book you work on. For quite sometime, every time I got a new book I just put it randomly on the shelf, until the piles were getting high and there was no more room. For an organized person like me–well, at least I try to be–it’s annoying to see messy piles of books. So, I tried to tidy up a little.

First of all, I bought some bags of dehumidifier. The bookshelf is in the corner of the room and during this rainy season the left side is really damp… making some of my books got yellow spots. Then I sort them based on genre and author.

On the bottom left, I put some hardcover fairy tale books, Tolkien box-set (The Lord of The Ring + The Hobbit), Harry Potter series (JK Rowling), and Neil Gaiman books. Also The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) and A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness). This is my favorite corner.

On the bottom right, there are Middle Grade books. I love them because they usually have awesome illustrations and cover designs. Such as Septimus Heap series (Angie Sage), The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (Claire Legrand) and Nightmares! (Jason Segel).

There are also children books, like Roald Dahl’s and Eva Ibbotson’s, and some Disney fairies books (but they are in the back). I also put some graphic novels here (not manga), by local artists such as Mantra (Azisa Noor & R Amdani), Nisbi and Morte (Ekyu), Afterdark (Archfriends) and some translated gravel like Anya’s Ghost (Vera Brosgol).

Above this two sections is one big section of various genres. In the far left are horror & thriller genres (these two are my favorite genres). At the back are local books and at the front are English/translated books. My favorites from the stack below are Winter People (Jennifer McMahon), The Ghost Bride (Yangsze Choo), Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares (Kendare Blake), The Girl from The Well and The Suffering (Rin Chupeco).

Moving on to the right… (please refer to the first photo) the back pile consists of local romances, and the front pile consists of classics. Though romance is my least favorite genre, I collect books from Prisca Primasari and Moemoe Rizal. Both are my friends and I enjoy reading their stories.

Next… the back pile consists of translated Korean and Japanese books (drama and romance), and the front pile consists of more classics (Jane Austen’s books) and Dee’s Supernova series.

The rest of them (there are 4 more piles) are fantasy books.

One of my favorite authors is John Connolly. I love The Book of Lost Things and Charlie Parker series. And I really hope a certain Indonesian publisher will publish more Charlie Parker books.

I also like Lauren Oliver, but I think she’s better in writing drama rather than fantasy. I love Liesl & Po. And I’m currently reading Rooms, so it’s not in the pile.

Moving to the section above (right side), there are some of my favorite fantasy books: Legend, Prodigy, Champion (Marie Lu), His Dark Materials trilogy (Philip Pullman), Bartimaeus trilogy (Jonathan Stroud), and Lockwood & Co. (on-going series, also by Jonathan Stroud). I took a separate photo, but it’s accidentally got deleted.

The left side of this section, also both sections above consist of manga (Japanese comics.) Some of my favorite mangaka are CLAMP, Kyoko Hikawa, Emura, Masami Morio, and Matsuri Hino. I like reading since I was in elementary school, and was crazy about it during my middle and high school.

Well, that’s it. I actually want to decorate and make my bookshelf more beautiful, but it’s going to require more space… and for now I cannot afford it. Getting my books organized makes me happy enough.

By the way, my TBR (to-be read) piles are stored in different bookshelf :p

Have a nice day, everyone 🙂