Not Quite The Thing

Hmm, this old thing again: You are your music collection.

Hmm - I don't buy it.

However, I do form opinions about people by their books. It's more than judging a book owner by their covers. And I clearly know that their is a significant difference between what someone has read and the books they choose to keep. And beyond that, it's only a clue to their personality and intellect, not a precise map. But when I visit someone's house, one of the first things I look for is their reading material. Too often I find nothing. Zip, nada, zero. Maybe a magazine. An old copy of People. Yikes.

What can you tell about me by the books you see in my house? Well, it depends in what room you're in.

If you enter the house from the front door, you'll find the music room on your right. A baby grand piano and string base. No recorded music evident. You'll have to look through the music cabinet there, but you'll only find what we're playing recently. My drawer is filled with Scott Joplin, the Grieg lyric pieces, a few pop collections (James Taylor, Billy Joel, and one of my favorites, some nifty arrangements by Jimmy Web of his hits). Maybe some Broadway scores, like Guys and Dolls, some Irving Berlin and a collection of Oscar Hammerstein. Other drawers contain the girls current lesson. Jennifer's neatly organized in her music case, Kathleen's jumbled in the drawer, probably not closed, and strewn across the piano. The rest of the music is in the living room cabinets.

Oh, back to the books.

You'll enter the family room and find a wall of books. It's overflowing and I'm beginning to wonder where I'll put the next 40 years or so of them. Starting in the far corner you'll find shelves loaded with religion, philosophy, classics and mythology, science, and humor. The next section is largely history - a shelf or so of American and another or so of world. Lower down you'll find mystery with a large section filled with James Lee Burke and another with a significant collection of early 20th century American mystery. The lower shelf in the section is filled with Ghost stories and horror. Another full section is filled with plays and books on theater, with a few on movies. These shelves are all for the most part hardback with a few trade paperbacks (the plays are mostly actual play books and scripts).

By my leather reading chair is a book stand with a few in current reading.

But if you go upstairs to my office/den, you'll find a very different me. Another leather chair, but this one less formal than the overstuffed monster down stairs. This one is a Ekornes "Stressless" with footstool. You'll find another entire wall, also bursting with books. Here you'll find paperbacks as well as hard backs. Lots of science fiction, categorized loosely. One shelf is dedicated to naval fiction, mostly Patrick O'Brian. A middle section is reference and science texts, computer software.

I think that a knowledgeable reader spending a few minutes browsing my shelves might be able to judge the following: The collector is likely male, a voracious and wide reader. Given to self entertainment, probably highly imaginative. Fairly well educated, but mostly self-educated in literature. Curious, restless, politically hard to pin down, but with the lack of any identifiable political books, it's likely that the reader is not a conservative. In fact, taken in whole, it's likely that the reader does not identify with a party or political bent. The stack of Barbara Tuckman books suggests, combined with the books on science and skepticism bear this out.

The additional information of the titles and condition of the books would add to this profile, but I'll leave that to you if you visit me.

What do the books you keep say about you?

Oh, from their list in the article, I have only the Beethovan. I have a wide classical collection, lots of Jazz, a little pop, but very little recent. My iPod is loaded with a pretty interesting mix, but not if you only listen to top 40 radio.