On the shelf...

...and that's not a self-evaluation, though I admit to feeling twinges of a placed-in-storage-unused attitude tonight....

Instead, this is an idea I have brazenly stolen from a friend who can see me and raise the pot when it comes to education, erudition and, alas, talent.

She listed the books on the top shelf of one of her bookcases. One or two struck me as odd choices, but then I realized she, like me, may have simply placed books up there somewhat at random. When I moved recently, I simply pulled books out of boxes and tossed 'em on the shelves until each row was filled.

I have room for four bookcases only, and three are mainly devoted to work. This is my "recreational" bookcase...



The top shelf contains the following, listed by subject and with explanations where I think they are helpful. You will notice I am interested in biographies; I'm guessing they make up the majority of the books I have in this case, and dominate the top row. From left to right:

Jim Tully's A Dozen and One, 13 character sketches of people he knew, including Charles Chaplin, Clark Gable, Diego Rivera (the brilliant Mexican muralist and Communist), Paul Bern (the husband of Jean Harlow), columnist Walter Winchell and H L Mencken;

Jack Warner's (one of the Warner Brothers) autobiography;

Jack Kerouac (Ann Charters);

Harry S Truman (David McCullough);

Burt Kennedy (who? He was a producer of "B" movies, primarily Westerns) (autobiography);

Winston Churchill (Roy Jenkins);

David O Selznick (producer of, among other movies, Gone With the Wind) (David Thomson);

Nikita Khruschev (Walter Taubman);

General H Norman Schwarzkopf (autobiography);

Howard Hughes (Richard Hack -- and a "hack" job it is, too!);

Samuel Goldwyn (L Scott Berg);

W C Fields (James Curtis -- a superb job!);

Mao Tse-Tung (or, in the new politically correct spelling, Mao Zedong) (by his personal physician, Dr Li Zhisui);

Franklin Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt is two shelves down...I need to swap them) (Conrad Black);

Lyndon Johnson (Barry Goldwater is on the third shelf also...another swap needed!) (Unger & Unger);

Edward D Wood, Jnr (do I need to tell you he produced Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda?, two of my favorite movies?) (Rudolph Grey);

"Uncle Joe" Stalin (Edvard Radzinsky).

I am so glad she came up with this idea! If challenged, I might reveal other shelves, too! In fact, I'll match her, row by row, even if the results merely confirm my weirdness....

By the way: that lumpy gray object on the top of the case is my helmet, safe in its bag....