Shelf Esteem is a weekly look at the bookshelves of writers, editors, and other word lovers, as told to Emily M. Keeler. This week’s shelf belongs to Grace O’Connell, whose debut novel, Magnified World, was released earlier this year. Her bookshelves are in her downtown apartment, which she shares with her boyfriend, fellow writer Evan Munday.
We just have a lot of books. There are books in the closet, there’s books everywhere. We’ve got one shelf for non-fiction, one for YA and film theory, the biggest one is fiction. These are all mixed together. Mine and Evan’s. It would be really difficult to figure what is whose, if we ever needed to. We’ve lived together for four, maybe five years. We also have a poetry shelf, but it’s particularly horrifying. We keep the comics on it, too. Oh, and then there’s another book case, which is mostly comics, but also overflow. And then there are all the random stacks of books that are also overflow.
But I actually think that in many ways he’s been quite overlooked critically, probably because of his subject matter. And I think that somebody else that I would say—that I think is underrated as a stylist is Russell Smith. I think he’s an unbelievably good writer. It sort of mystifies me that he hasn’t won every writing prize in Canada. I think Girl Crazy is basically a modern Canadian Lolita, which was for all of its controversy praised universally, at least on the level of style. But yeah, Girl Crazy doesn’t necessarily have the epic themes that we normally reward. But I just think he’s so talented. They’re great books for writing students to read as well, just to see that kind of restraint and technical genius.
Really, when it comes down to it, when I choose books to read—other than all the books that my friends write—I’m not really particularly worried about the cache of what I’m reading. I just wanna read something where I forget that I’m reading. That’s what I love about authors like Munro. I feel like the set just falls away and you just are there. And that’s nice, because you’re not really thinking about style or technique at that point. You’re just in the story—even though she is an incredibly accomplished stylist. It’s like virtual reality or something.
