Shelf Esteem is a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors, and other word lovers, as told to Emily M. Keeler. This week’s shelf belongs to Carl Wilson, the author of Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, and, as of very recently, Slate’s Music Critic; he is also a Contributing Editor to Hazlitt. Walking up the stairs to his west Toronto apartment, the first thing you see is a long white bookcase full of volumes of poetry. The rest of Carl’s library is contained in shelves that line the walls of his dining room. I visited on a cloudless morning, when the sunlight hazily filtered into the rooms through large east-facing windows and a long skylight.
It’s pretty simple. Poetry is over there. Fiction’s on this shelf, with some miscellany at the end. This tiny little bit here is plays. Then music books. And then non-fiction for the bulk of the rest. And then it gets weird. These two shelves are current research stuff. These are miscellaneous large things. Some 33 1/3 books. Journals and stuff down there. And then this area is mostly books written by friends and colleagues. That’s kind of my favourite part. It’s overflowing now, so I’m going to have to figure out what to do about it. It’s such a friendly thing, like, Oh, there’s everybody!
I have a book club, consisting of me and two other people. The book club is only about this book. We meet once a month and basically talk about time management, and similar problems in our lives. And set homework and things like that. It’s basically a book club of people who have the same problem, where we either can’t do very mundane things in our lives or things that are too big. The book is actually very helpful. It’s basically about making to-do lists, and how to make to-do lists. It wants you to stop making bullshit to-do lists that are only things like picking up your laundry. No, the to-do list should be sit down and work on my book proposal. Or, like, stop the bank from doing that thing to you that you’ve been letting them do! It’s about setting priorities, and getting over the emotional issues that stop you from doing things. The club has been going for almost exactly a year now, and still none of us have implemented the strategies completely. But having to talk about it every month changes your perspective on how you’re spending your time. Because you have to explain to people what you did.
Shelf Esteem (usually) runs every Tuesday.
