You know, Past Leslee’s blawg (over at http://letterstofutureleslee.wordpress.com) is a constant source of gnawed minutiae and spurious organs. When it’s not being totally random (and a little gross, based on my choice of descriptors) I get to thinking a little about what she’s writing about. And she has recently written about dating people on dates and about how you should scrutinize someone’s bookshelf to get to know them. And so I decided to do the bookshelf test on myself, to see if I’m date-able or whether I come off like a glue-sniffing serial unlicensed hedge-pruner.
Hey other bloggers, what does your bookshelf look like? Do your own and link back to Past Leslee and myself, and then we’ll do an awesome roundup!
UPDATE: Kelsey of Bent fame has written her own Bookshelf Test, and has begun what can only be described as an epic crisis in the interblawgural relations between our two blawgs.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Lady Sadie, another new writer for Bent, has her own bookshelf at Horse Crazy!
Commenters — what does my bookshelf say about me?
My bookshelf (top to bottom) is currently looking like:
a giant Superman (there’s a story there involving airport security when I was four) – a cricket ball – a cold-war era Canadian jetfighter – squash goggles
a bunch of cars – a holy water sprinkler – a small paddle
handpainted cards – a robot named PornBot – a silver dish – a vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost
a book on the Etruscans – The Walking Dead – Green Grass, Running Water (Thomas King) – Philosophical Essays by Descartes – The Life of Charlemagne – The Inferno – a collection of Shakespeare – a collection of Holocaust diaries – a book on homebrewing beer – Game Programming in DirectX 9 – a turn-of-the-century surveying scope
history books – K.A. Applegate’s Everworld series – books on history and linguistics – books on pedagogy – After Effects CS3 Professional Studio Techniques – Kevin Smith – Stephen King – Canada’s Secret Commandos (about JTF2) – The Aneid – visual reference of arms and armour – Chuck Palahnuik – Disgrace (Coetzee) – The Exploded View (Ivan Vladoslavic) – Catch-22 – a book about building canoes
Guinness World Records – Ford Mustang compilation album – various pictoral history books (for teaching resources) – behind-the-scenes book of the 1960s BATMAN TV show – Latin textbook – book on Jesse James – book on Canadian pilots, planes, and trainers in WWII – more history books – more Stephen King – assorted dust-covered fantasy novels
This of course is just the bookshelf in my room. Not counting one downstairs, the shelves in my closet, or the volumes just strewn about.
[…] attempt to measure his own ‘datability’ by examining his own bookshelf and blogging (http://spillwaybrain.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/the-bookshelf-test/) about it in response to Leslei’s post. Now, I’m assuming he hopes to have some […]
Dude bro, you’re such a dude. Also, why have I never been formally introduced to Pornbot? I feel slighted.
I’d like to dub the ‘crisis’ the Bay of Pigs Deux
For some reason, I never really picture you being into WWII planes and stuff like that. or at least not owning books on them.
Your bookshelf tells me you have a lot of areas of interest that at times overlap and other times are out in left field; You have interest ADD. So, you’d best date someone who is more than a one trick pony and either has similar interest ADD, or can keep up with/endure your flavour of the month changing.
Also, random objects in your bookcase…reminds me of a crow…oooo shiny!! 😛
I do in fact have interest ADD, damn bookshelf giving me away.
Re: planes and stuff — I LOVES PLANES. And the Canadian front in WWII, namely, the training of pilots and officers to fly with the Brits, is a fantastic setting. Anything I’ve read about it is kind of a love-letter to Canada’s coming of age and to the wartime Joe Canuck archetype.
Canadian aviation history after that, too, with the CF-100 (which is the model on the top of my bookshelf) and then the subsequent development of the Avro Arrow is a fascinating bit of engineering and political history. So cool, so dramatic. I love all Canadiana, and I love planes, and history, so they end up all fitting nicely together 🙂