What our bookshelves say about us

I grew up surrounded by books: every room of our small house, including the utility room, contained yards of shelving laden down with books. Naturally the first thing I do when I cross someone’s threshold is head for their bookshelves – or notice their absence.

The most fun is scanning the shelves when I’m allowed into someone’s home to interview them. Savvy celebrities know the score. When Isabel Fonseca nipped downstairs to make cups of tea she joked, “I’ll leave you here to judge us by our books.” You can bet I leapt to my feet quick as a shot to find out which “worthy tomes” she and husband Martin Amis had in common with my own library. I’m just as bad when I read magazine pieces and the subject of the story has been photographed against their bookcases – I turn it on its side and scan the spines.

Because let’s not beat around the bush, the point is to compare the bookshelves of the rich and famous (not to mention famously intellectual) with our own, is it not?

Scanning bookshelves is like opening a window on someone’s psyche. So this is what they think about, and this is what they’ve absorbed! Who knew he’d have 12 books about the invention of the automated chicken plucker? What a surprise that she owns the complete works of Mickey Spillane!

Unpacking My Library, a new book from Yale University Press, is a double treat, not only satisfying my inner Peeping Tom, by letting me see the libraries of some of America’s most esteemed authors, but satisfying my intellectual curiosity as well. I’m as intrigued by Jonathan Lethem’s glossily painted custom-built shelves as I am by the fact that his copy of Michael Gray’s The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia sits next to Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball – which is flanked by Pat Barker’s Regeneration on its other side.

Elsewhere, Edmund White talks about giving away much of his book collection when he left Paris after 16 years, and the married couples interviewed – Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker; Lev Grossman and Sophie Gee; and Claire Messud and James Wood – describe the politics of merging their book collections, and the discussions that ensue.

As a journalist I’m always looking for a fresh approach that will yield new material and steer an author away from the much-quoted remarks about their favourite authors, to cover new ground. This book certainly achieves that. My only complaint is that it’s too short.

• Unpacking My Library, Writers and Their Books, edited by Leah Price, is out now from Yale University Press, priced £16 hardcover.

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