Self on the Shelf

Aimée Bissonette

Self on the Shelf 3

A few days ago, I scanned my many book­shelves in antic­i­pa­tion of writ­ing this piece. My charge was to assem­ble a small stack of books that had sig­nif­i­cance to me.  Per­haps, I thought, I’ll write about my love for mys­ter­ies. After all, I spent count­less hours as a young girl devour­ing the Hardy Boys and Nan­cy Drew mys­ter­ies before mov­ing on to Agatha Christie, Tony Hiller­man, and Sara Paret­sky.… more

Candice Ransom

Self on the Shelf 0

Books swept me away, one after the oth­er, this way and that; I made end­less vows accord­ing to their lights, for I believed them. (Annie Dil­lard,  An Amer­i­can Child­hood) It’s hard to say which came first: did I adopt traits of the main char­ac­ter in cer­tain books I read, or did I grav­i­tate towards those books because I already had those traits?… more