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 Zoe Whittall, who is a book reviewer, creative writing instructor, poet, and the author of the novels Bottle Rocket Hearts and Holding Still For as Long as Possible, which was named an American Library Association Stonewall honor book. Her bookshelf is in her west Toronto home, which she shares with her partner Marcilyn Cianfarani and their three cats, Licorice—who is pictured below—Bones, and Biggie Smalls.
So when I moved in with Marcilyn a couple of years ago, I was thinking it’d be quick move. I don’t really own much, but I realized the bulk of my investments over the past 10 years were in books. We actually had to have this shelf built. When you look at it, it’s kind of awkward. This morning I tried to think if I have a system for all this, because I knew we had a system when I moved in, but I feel like it’s gone a little bit crazy. I find whenever I work on a long-term project I’ll just pull books randomly all the time, and then things get into a disarray. And now that I’m teaching, I’m like, “Oh, we should read an excerpt of this, or that.” So there’s really no order to it right now. Except graphic novels, and memoir and poetry. They have their own sections, more or less. The graphic novel shelf is very organized, because they’re mostly Marcilyn’s.
Most of my collection is fairly contemporary. I feel like when writers get photographed with their book shelves, it’s very—“These are the classics, I read them.” But I’m a very contemporary reader, so that’s more what my collection is made of.
I keep all of the books I’ve written or that my writing’s in, up here, with the Unicorn. It’s my favorite tchotchke, from a London pawn shop. London, Ontario. As if there was a question! I did a really weird gig there, and it was on a street just filled with pawn shops. So that was my find. Above my own books, I filled that shelf with Douglas Coupland. I happened to have almost all of his books, and I just wanted to fill the space with something. So, yeah, nerds in action!
Marcilyn and I have mostly intermingled our books. I have a system where if I buy any books, and I feel like I buy about 25 a month, or am given them to review, then I have to move some of them out. I’ll give them away, so I usually have a shelf for what’s next to go. I’m ready to let go of Anita Shreve, and the Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Eventually.
