Browsing the shelves

Guilty confession : when I visit someone's house, when I watch a movie, or when I read a magzine, and there is a bookshelf somewhere, I will browse the shelves to see what is on display.

I'm intrigued to see what books other people willlingly put on display. It answers brings up sorts of questions - which genres do they read most, which authors are their favourites, do they collect cookbooks, do they have beautiful coffee table books, are they fans of pulp fiction?

So it was with great pleasure that I recently got to "browse"the personal book shelves of well-known writers, such as Alison Bechdel, Steven Pinker, Lev Grossman, Junot Diaz, and Philip Pullman, in Unpacking My Library : Writers and Their Books.

The authors willingly talked about what is on their bookshelves, how they organise their personal libraries (answers ranged from "by topic", "by age", "wherever they fit"), as well as nominating their personal Top 10 books from their collections.

There's also a companion volume - Unpacking My Library : Architects and Their Books.

So am I the only one who "browses" other people's bookshelves? Surely not.