Six Shelves of My Bookcases
Most people I know organize their bookshelves by genre to some
degree or another. I don't. I put all my books in alphabetical
order by author's last name, or by editor's last name if there's
only one editor, or by subject's last name for biographies (because I can
never remember the names of the biographers). Books with more
than one editor go at the end of the alphabet, but all the other books are simply
alphabetized without any regard whatsoever to genre. I like
filing them this way because it means that any single shelf of my
bookcases provides a completely random glimpse into my life. And
I enjoy those glimpses.
Below, I'm sharing one of those glimpses with you: a list of each
and every book on my shelves filed between G and M
(for Gayle and Madwin—hey, why not?) on my
bookshelves. Please bear in mind that I don't necessarily
actually like them all. I just happen to own
them all. Some of them were given to me as gifts (such as the
books about writing—never tell your family that you're a
writer unless you're prepared to have six dozen books on how to
write, all written by people who do not know how, dumped
upon you at every holiday by family members who can't think of
anything else to buy you). Others were were assigned to me as
textbooks in college (I was an English major), and I've even
owned a few of them since elementary school (such as The
Arrow Book of Poetry, Grimm's Fairy Tales and A
Field Guide to Dinosaurs). But however I acquired them, I've
at least read them all and held onto them. In some cases you can
tell who my favorite authors are by the fact that I own more than
one book by them.
- Mary Gaitskill: Because They Wanted To: Stories
- Mary Gaitskill: Two Girls, Fat and Thin
- Neil Gaiman: The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish
- James Finn Garner: Once Upon a More Enlightened Time: Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
- Jean Genet: The Balcony
- Jean Genet: Funeral Rites
- Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet
- André Gide: The Counterfeiters
- André Gide: The Immoralist
- Fiona Giles (editor): Dick for a Day: What Would You
Do if You Had One?
- Robert Girard: Learn Art in One Year
- Jane Goodall: Through a Window: My Thirty Years with
the Chimpanzees of Gombe
- Michael Gorman: The Empress Is a Man: Stories from
the Life of José Sarria
- Stephen Jay Gould: The Mismeasure of Man: The
Definitive Refutation to The Bell Curve
- Philip Gourevitch: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
- Judy Grahn: Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds
- David Grambs: Death by Spelling: A Compendium of Tests, Super Tests, and Killer Bees
- David F. Greenberg: The Construction of Homosexuality
- John Howard Griffin: Black Like Me
- Susan Griffin: A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War
- The Brothers Grimm: Grimm's Fairy Tales
- Jessica Hagedorn: Dream Jungle
- Radclyffe Hall: The Well of Loneliness
- David Halperin: Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay
Hagiography
- Donna Haraway: Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™
- Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure
- Bertha Harris: Lover
- Le Ly Hayslip (with Jay Wurts): When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
- Seamus Heaney: Seeing Things
- Anne Heche: Call Me Crazy
- Jack Heffron (editor): The Best Writing on Writing
- Ursula Hegi: Floating in My Mother's Palm
- Ursula Hegi: Stones from the River
- Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
- Marjorie Heins: Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to
America's Censorship Wars
- Joseph Heller: Catch-22
- Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale
- Gilbert H. Herdt: Ritualized Homosexuality in
Melanesia
- Herman Hesse: Siddhartha
- Carol de Chellis Hill: The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer
- Carol de Chellis Hill: Henry James' Midnight Song
- Alfred Hitchcock: Stories NOT for the Nervous
- Alfred Hitchcock: Stories That Scared Even Me
- Peter Høeg: Borderliners
- Peter Høeg: The History of Danish Dreams
- Peter Høeg: Smilla's Sense of Snow
- Peter Høeg: Tales of the Night
- Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner
- Khaled Hosseini: A Thousand Splendid Suns
- Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald: Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators and Law Enforcers
- Langston Hughes: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
- Keri Hulme: The Bone People
- Zora Neal Hurston: Dust Tracks on a Road
- Masuji Ibuse: Black Rain
- Eugène Ionesco: Four Plays by Eugène Ionesco
- John Irving: The Fourth Hand
- John Irving: The Hotel New Hampshire
- John Irving: The 158-Pound Marriage
- John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany
- John Irving: Setting Free the Bears
- John Irving: A Son of the Circus
- John Irving: Until I Find You
- John Irving: The Water-Method Man
- John Irving: A Widow for One Year
- John Irving: The World According to Garp
- Christopher Isherwood: Berlin Stories
- Christopher Isherwood: Christopher and His Kind
- Christopher Isherwood: Where Joy Resides: A
Christopher Isherwood Reader
- Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- Henry James: Italian Hours
- Henry James: Portrait of a Lady
- Henry James: The Turn of the Screw and Other Short
Fiction
- Tama Janowitz: The Male Cross-Dresser Support Group
- Derek Jarman: Modern Nature
- Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Shards of Memory
- Ha Jin: In the Pond
- Ha Jin: Waiting
- Jingsheng Wei: The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings
- James Joyce: Dubliners
- James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
- Franz Kafka: Diaries
- Franz Kafka: Metamorphosis
- Franz Kafka: The Trial
- Jonathan Ned Katz: The Invention of Heterosexuality
- Randall Kenan: Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
- Jack Kerouac: On the Road
- Jack Kerouac: Visions of Gerard
- Jamaica Kincaid: Annie John
- Jamaica Kincaid: The Autobiography of My Mother
- Florence King: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
- Barbara Kingsolver: The Bean Trees
- Barbara Kingsolver: Pigs in Heaven
- Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible
- Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior
- C. Everett Koop: Dr. Koop's Self-Care Advisor: The
Essential Home Health Guide for You and Your Family
- Jerzy Kosinski: Being There
- Larry Kramer: Faggots
- Milan Kundera: Identity
- Milan Kundera: Immortality
- Milan Kundera: Laughable Loves
- Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Hanif Kureishi: The Black Album
- Hanif Kureishi: The Buddha of Suburbia
- Hanif Kureishi: Gabriel's Gift
- Hanif Kureishi: Intimacy and Midnight All Day
- Tony Kushner: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on
National Themes
- Wally Lamb: She's Come Undone
- David Lambert: A Field Guide to Dinosaurs: The First
Complete Guide to Every Dinosaur Now Known
- Nella Larsen: Quicksand and Passing
- William L. Leap: Word's Out: Gay Men's English
- Chang-Rae Lee: A Gesture Life
- Chang-Rae Lee: Native Speaker
- Russell Leong: Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions
of the Gay & Lesbian Experience
- Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook
- Doris Lessing: Martha Quest
- Doris Lessing: The Memoirs of a Survivor
- Doris Lessing: The Summer Before the Dark
- Doris Lessing: The Sweetest Dream
- Donna Levin: Get That Novel Started! (And Keep It
Going 'Til you Finish)
- Anna Livia: Minimax
- James W. Loewen: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Teacher Got Wrong
- Audre Lorde: Our Dead Behind Us
- Audre Lorde: Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
- Mary Mackey: The Dear Dance of Eros
- Robert Matthew Walker: Madonna: The Biography
- Norman Mailer: The American Dream
- Norman Mailer: The Executioner's Song
- Norman Mailer: Harlot's Ghost
- Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead
- David Mamet: American Buffalo
- Joey Manley: The Death of Donna-May Dean
- Gabriel García Márquez: News of a Kidnapping
- Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Thomas Mann: Death in Venice and Other Stories
- Thomas Mann: The Transposed Heads
- Jaime Manrique: Latin Moon in Manhattan
- Saadat Hasan Manto: Letters to Uncle Sam
- Maria McCann: As Meat Loves Salt
- Ian McEwan: Atonement
- Ian McEwan: The Cement Garden
- Ian McEwan: Enduring Love
- Ian McEwan: The Innocent
- Ann McGovern (editor): The Arrow Book of Poetry
- Daniel Mendelsohn: The Elusive Embrace: Desire and
the Riddle of Identity
- Nicholas Wadley: Michelangelo
- Claude Mignot: The Pocket Louvre
- Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems
- Kate Millett: Sita
- Anchee Min: Becoming Madame Mao
- Anchee Min: Katherine
- Anchee Min: Red Azalea
- Yukio Mishima: Acts of Worship: Stories
- Margaret Mitchell: Gone with the Wind
- L. M. Montgomery: The Blue Castle
- L. M. Montgomery: Emily Climbs
- L. M. Montgomery: Emily of New Moon
- L. M. Montgomery: Emily's Quest
- Lorrie Moore: Birds of America: Stories
- Peter Ackroyd: The Life of Thomas More
- Toni Morrison: Beloved
- Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye
- Toni Morrison: Jazz
- Toni Morrison: Paradise
- Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon
- Toni Morrison: Sula
- Toni Morrison: Tar Baby
- John Robertson (editor): Morrissey: In His Own Words
- W. Scott Morton: China: Its History and Culture
- Haruki Murakami: After the Quake
- Haruki Murakami: Dance Dance Dance
- Haruki Murakami: The Elephant Vanishes: Stories by
Haruki Murakami
- Haruki Murakami: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End
of the World
- Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore
- Haruki Murakami: Norwegian Wood
- Haruki Murakami: Sputnik Sweetheart
- Haruki Murakami: A Wild Sheep Chase
- Haruki Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
- Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe (editors): Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature
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