They say that you can tell a lot about a person by the books that they read. If this is true (which I fully believe it is), then I’m about to reveal a large part of myself that my readers and friends may or may not already know.

Here are two pictures of my bookshelf (well, one of my bookshelves). I have several shelves full of books, and several more boxes in the attic of books that I don’t have room for right now. One day I want to display them all in my own library. Anyone remember Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and that enormous library that stretched to the heavens? Yeah, that’s my dream library.

But I digress. Until I’m able to have the Beast’s awesome library and show it off to my friends and readers, then we’ll all have to be content with the skinny shelf that’s next to my closet door.

The top two shelves:

Bibles go on the top shelf. It’s something that’s important to me, so I want them displayed for prominent visibility and easy access, because I use them a lot. And no, I do not equate The Chronicles of Narnia with the Holy Bible (despite its Christian message). There just wasn’t room on any of the other shelves for it. Lame reason, yes, but that’s what I did.

The next shelf down features some books that I deeply enjoyed reading and have gotten a lot of meaning from, and some of them I’ve read many times. It’s a random assortment of books, the arrangement based on a combination of importance in my life and space on the shelf.

The next three shelves:

The first shelf has a lot of my favorite fantasy books on it (Lord of the Rings and Narnia encyclopedias, the Bone series). Other assorted cool books fill up the rest of the space, like the Norwegian collection of  Beatrix Potter’s stories and the picture encyclopedia of musical instruments. This is also the tallest shelf, so again, it’s mostly about space issues.

The next shelf has all the littlest books on it, which conveniently are mostly foreign language dictionaries and other non-English books (some of which I can sort of read, others I’m clueless). Sadly, the tall Norwegian Peter Rabbit book wouldn’t fit on this shelf.

Then there’s the shelf of total randomness. Again, some of my favorite books, and ones that I enjoy looking at or re-reading. It’s everything from a collection of stories about Inuit women to 17^th century religious poetry to historical fiction about ancient Egypt. And, of course, another Narnia book.

Not pictured is the very bottom shelf, which houses my atlas, some photo albums, other assorted oddities, and is shielded by a cardboard box to keep my rabbits from chewing on the books.

So there you have it—one of my bookshelves. Interpret this how you like, but it’s me, for better or worse. Hopefully I didn’t hit a TMI level with this.

And what about you—what does your bookshelf say about you?