Bookcase of the Week - Starring... Josephine Angelini

In today's Bookcase of the Week feature, it is with great pleasure that I bring you author Josie Angelini's bookshelves. I was ecstatic when my dear friend Danny and one of the founders of Kismet Book Touring asked me to participate in Josie's book tour... like if I could pass up on that (duh!).  I was even more excited to learn that Josie agreed to show us her bookcases as part of the Bookcase of the Week - eeeek!!  Aren't you excited?!  I know I was.  So without further ado my peeps, here is Josie...  Josie the mic is all yours:

At first, I thought I was going to do the safe thing with this essay and take a wide shot of my big book case, write a few lines about what books in general have meant to me over the years, and be done with it. Then I started looking at the books I have all jumbled up together and I realized that the safe route wasn’t going to cut it. My bookcase was talking to me. What is was saying was, “You’re an odd duck, Angelini.”

I’ve never had a system for how my books appear on the shelf. I usually try to lump all the works of one author or an entire series together, but only because it looks better that way. Mostly, my books go up on the shelf the way they come out of the box when I move. I’ve never been afraid of randomness; in fact, I’m a fan of trying to find patterns in chaos. I don’t know if there is any code to all this, but I do know that I found some things that I thought were worth pointing out as if to say to the
world… WTF?

Ah, Douglas Adams. How do I love thee? And right next to “The Guide” is Chabon’s awesome “The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay”. Not too weird to have those next to each other. But look to the left. Just beyond “The Red Tent” (a book about the beginnings of Judaism and women’s place in it) is “The Eternal Now” a book written by Socialist Christian thinker Paul Tillich who taught at the Harvard Divinity School. And next to that is a book about particle physics written by the Nobel Laureate and funny man Leon Lederman. Next to that is “Monkey”, a collection of Eastern folk tales about a monkey who meets a bunch of gods and ogres and causes a lot of mischief.

So we’ve got a Christian Socialist, Judaism, particle physics, and a monkey all hanging out on a shelf together. That reminds me of a joke….

Mythology, The Bible, a collection of some of the greatest plays ever written, Eastern religion, the dictionary, and a book called Art and Physics.

Art, god(s), and Physics all stacked up together. Oh, and a dictionary in case I don’t know what a word means (which happens a lot more than I should probably admit).

I’m starting to see a pattern here…wait for it… nope. I lost it.

Okay, now that’s just weird. I don’t remember buying “The Power of Myth”. Must have been a present. The rest of the books are fantastic and I’d recommend them in a heartbeat, although the one about Heisenberg (a physicist and contemporary of Einstein’s) might be a little dry for most people’s taste. Pablo Neruda *sigh*. Man, I love a good poet. I wonder if Neruda and Heisenberg would hit it off over cocktails?

I am not getting any clearer to myself. But “Catcher in the Rye” is one of my favorite books ever, whatever that means.

A lot more about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on one side-- then as we travel through M. John Harrison’s fantastic books, through “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Doctor Faustus” (our moral compass swinging wildly as we go), we end up in a godless, post apocalyptic hellscape with Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”. That book still gives me nightmares and makes me think. Amazing book.

And now I’m lost again.

I have no idea what my bookcase says about me. I studied a lot of religion and philosophy, art history, and a smattering of physics in college, not to prepare myself for the future (whatever that means) but because these subjects interest me. Heck, I was getting a BFA, why not study what I want? Nothing you can do with a BFA in the real world except maybe have a lot of interesting things to talk about at a dinner party. I figured, why  not go all in and study every non-career oriented subject they teach at NYU and see if I can’t make myself the most un-employable, but hopefully interesting, person I can be? And for years, outside of bartending, I was unemployable-- but I sure did get invited to a lot of dinner parties! So, mission accomplished, I guess.

I’m so lucky I got published. Maybe that’s what I’ve learned by going through my bookcase-- that I should feel fortunate I got to read all these books and think all these thoughts and I can still support myself by doing what I love.

Yeah. I’m very lucky. And very, very grateful.

For those of you who don't know, Josephine Angelini is the author of Starcrossed. She is a Massachusetts native and the youngest of eight siblings. A real-live farmer's daughter, Josie graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in theater, with a focus on the classics. She now lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Starcrossed is her first novel.

Thanks so much Josie for playing along with us and giving such a wonderful tour of your bookcase.

Stay tuned for my review of the awesomeness that is STARCROSSED and for your chance to win a Kindle 3!

If you would like to learn more about hottie author Josephine Angelini and/or her debut novel Starcrossed, you can stalk find Josie here:  Facebook  //  Twitter   // Blog