Rate your bookshelf

Are you a fan of teen-fiction, a lover of literary classics, or a sci-fi sentimentalist? 5 writers assess their own bookshelves and find out what dark, book-related secrets they harbour…

Rebekah Ellerby

I am very proud of my chocka-block full books shelves dotted around my house, at least half of which I have never read but still look rather lovely. I went through a World War II phase in my teens and a Jane Austen obsession (I have two biographies, multiple editions of the novels and her letters). Among my non-fiction collection are exhibition catalogues of David Hockney, Lucien Freud and Manet; Hummingbird Bakery, Delia and Nigella Lawson cookery books; and a book by Darcey Bussell about pilates in the hope I will someday be as graceful as she is. Naturally all of my course books are shunted off into the study so that pleasure reading and academic reading aren’t confused.

Josh Denoual

Looking at my bookshelf I realise I am a book hoarder. I’ve built an impressive collection of books I’ve never even opened – yes I’m looking at you Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. From the top shelf, there’s a lot of classics: Hardy, Brontës, etc. The second shelf contains more modern classics, in the vein of Trainspotting and American Psycho. The bottom shelf hides the less literary books, although Stephen Fry’s autobiography is little to be ashamed of. The best thing about a bookcase like this is I’m never short of something to read (if I get time for leisure reading outside of uni work.)

Francesca Peak

Looking at this selection of the books in my room, I look about as interesting as a brick. Although I’m pretty certain I’ve never picked up Literary Terms and Literary Theory, you can see my well-thumbed copy of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, a beautiful work of Italian fiction. I love historical non-fiction, particularly anything about 20th Century United States or The Second World War – just out of sight is Ian Kershaw’s mammoth biography of Hitler. Autobiographies are my favourite and I’m currently ploughing through Bill Clinton’s. What I’m possibly missing is adult fiction, not Fifty Shades exactly, just an absorbing novel, but anything in the rom-com genre makes my skin crawl.

Lillian Hingley

Considering that I share my bookshelf with my twin sister, there is a bit of a dissonance between the representations of my personality in the physical presence of my book collection. Therefore, if we subtract the eccentricity of the likes of the science fiction of Piers Anthony and invasion of Sherlock DVDs, I’d like to think that my bookshelf, from Emily Bronte poetry to A Clockwork Orange, demonstrates a multiplicity of tastes from the dystopian to the more ‘classical’ English literature canon, whatever that indeed means. However, I also think that there will be a metamorphosis in my bookshelf thanks to my degree in its worldly introduction to the likes of Kafka to Borges, potentially shaping my bookshelf from its merely English derivations when I return home in summer.

Michael Perry

Given the rapidly-dwindling amount of space in my bedroom, most of my books are scattered around the house, in various places and cases.  This particular set is actually held in my DVD cabinet, but it’s where I tend to keep my most recently-read works of fiction, and some of my favourite individual novels.  Most of these on display are widely considered to be customary reading, simply because I’m such a skittish (and slow) reader that I’m still catching up on the alleged ‘classics’ which I really should have read by now.

Aside from a few teenage favourites (Stephen King, Anthony Horowitz) featured here, our spare room houses most of my childhood books, including an extensive selection of Roald Dahl books, which remains my pride and joy, even at the ripe old age of twenty.  Once the summer exams are safely behind us, I’d next like to add some Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson to my rather scattershot collection.