The Books on My Shelf, The Books on Myself?

Here in my office, I have a couple bookshelves. They are crammed rather haphazardly with books representing a lot of divergent interests my wife and I have. They are but a fraction of the books I own which is best expressed not in numbers, but in tonnes. I have so many, they couldn't all be displayed in my house because even if I had a whole Saturday devoted to building Ikea shelves, I wouldn't have enough wall space for them. I have heard it said that you can tell a lot from a person just by looking at their music and book collections. I'm not so sure.

I spy my management section with the requisite Patrick Lencioni, (Five Dysfuntions of a Team/Three Signs of a Miserable Job), and Spencer Johnson,(One Minute Manager, Who Moved My Cheese, The Present) titles. Robert Fulghum's Maybe, Maybe Not is in there, too. While the last one is not strictly a title on management as such, it is a book on how to act in life to be a successful person... a lot of golden rule type stuff and very humorous. It's there right along side How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie's master work which should be read by all people, everywhere. If you were here, in my office, you would question my use of the term "management section" as there is no rhyme or reason with my books other than the ones I read most recently are at the top, the ones I haven't looked at have sunken to the bottom. Each and every one of those books says I should be well organized. I think it is clear I am not. If I followed any of the ideals in any of these books, I would probably actually be good at what I do. Hell, I'm writing this blentry while on a conference call, stopping only when I hear my name to take my phone off mute and give my input. I don't even know if I am giving feedback on the topic they are discussing now, or the topic they finished with five minutes ago.

Most of these books are pretty formulaic and told in parable, featuring a well-meaning manager who is struggling with a subordinate or group of subordinates. There is one savior who has all the answers and will deliver the manager the goods so he or she can deal with the unruly subordinates who are all too eager to suckle at the teat of knowledge and drink the kool-aid. It's like an episode of Brady Bunch. no matter what, everything always ends up in a happy little package in the end.

Also there are a number of general business titles from Microtrends to The Next Big Thing, among them, The Tipping Point which if I recall is not about how to most efficiently upend a cow. Bummer.

There is a fair bit of humor on the shelves as well. Bill Bryson, Tim Allen, Paul Riser and Stephen Colbert are represented next to titles like The Friar's Club Book of Roasts, How to Live With a Neurotic Cat, and a book called Husbandry which according to the blurb offered by the publisher is a hilarious look at being a good husband. I never read it. It is a publisher's advance copy from my days at Barnes and Noble. I don't even know if that one made it to print. Along with these are myriad cartoon collections as well, The Far Side, Forxtrot, The Simpsons, Life in Hell, Calvin and Hobbes. Several of these are actually my wife's, but this is my blog, so for our purposes, they're mine.

So what do we know so far about the person who owns these books? Well, he is someone who is very interested in people and how to manage interactions with them. He also values humor in a variety of different forms and likes to apply the latter while executing the former.

So far, so good, but now is where it gets weird.

There are a dozen, maybe more, books about various serial killers, mass murderers, unsolved cases involving violence and other unsavory things. This is but a small smattering of the number of books on these topics I have actually read. Mixed in with these are all the books regarding war and conflict. there must be 50 of these. Mister happy-go-lucky manager man is starting to look a little creepy. My fiction titles don't make me look any better. A few choices in the fiction section include, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Mr. Murder, Shutter Island, the 'Dexter' series, Rosemary's Baby and a metric ton of Stephen King Titles.

Who is this guy?

Well I think it's clear, he's an affable management type who loves a laugh while performing exorcisms and ordering the murders of his enemies while plotting to kill other serial killers all while ensuring the health of a prenatal spawn of Satan. You got a problem with that? For your sake I hope not, because if we can't work it out in a couple brief lighthearted interactions some bad shit is gonna go down.

So the old adage states that you can't judge a book by its cover, but can you judge the person by their books? My wife has a hundred books or more about architecture and art, which is very reflective of her education and general interests. She also has a bunch of lady fiction referencing deep embraces, dark secrets and throbbing body parts. But she also has a ton of books about the Bible and religion. What are we to understand of my wife? She's a deeply religious sex maniac who lives in a fabulous house filled with priceless art. I can't even begin to tell you what's wrong with that description.

As for music, don't get me started because I literally have a selection ranging from Abba to Zevon stopping at every genre in between. Yes, this includes Gregorian Chants, Chilean throat singing, the Kodo drummers, and just to make sure you understand how highly I think of myself, a CD of my college choir featuring some of the craziest wacko shit ever performed live or otherwise. I defy you to glean any usable information about me from my music collection other than I am eclectic which is so obvious even a T.V. psychic could see it.

Each year, one of my endeavors is to read a book a week, plus or minus with the overall goal being 40-50 books in the year. I typically end up with 20 or in a good year, 25. This topic came up because I got the Facebook thing about the BBC's top 100 books everyone should read. I did not do well. In my defense, there was a lot of chicktion (another new word!) that I will never read outside an academic setting. Come to think of it, I can't imagine the setting that would move me to read Jane Eyre or Sense and Sensibility. My wife is reading Vanity Fair and 2,800 pages into it can only tell me it's about some society type people. What kind of list doesn't include one book by Ayn Rand? In the end it is clear that you can't judge a book by it's cover, or the person by the books he or she keeps, but it sure is fun to try.