Hazel & Wren Staff Shelfie: Josh Johnson

 

Editor’s Note: Dear readers — today, we share with you this staff shelfie installment, from another one of our newest staff members, Josh Johnson. (Aaron, Wren, Jessica, Taylor, and Cassidy have previously shared their shelfies.) We’re so happy to have Josh and his slightly flammable reading habits on the Hazel & Wren team. Read on!

I was tempted to clean up and (re)arrange when taking the photos for this post. Many of my shelves have fallen into states of chaos or unrest. The chess books are getting a little too familiar with speculative fiction, and I suspect fraternization between the poetry and non-fiction books. It’s a mad house.

Here’s a bookcase plunked down in the corner of the office. It was meant to house our sci-fi and fantasy books (or at least some of them). It has favorites of mine from various points in my life: The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander (top shelf, to the left), Ted Chiang’s incredible Stories of Your Life and Others (second shelf, right side), and Stephen King’s The Stand (down on the bottom, which seems to be the Stephen King shelf. The bookcase seems to be pretty consistent, but on closer inspection…

Here’s the fourth shelf down, and we have some of John Green’s books next to a biography of Tesla, which is next to the start of a fantasy series. I love all of these books equally, but I have no idea how they ended up on the same shelf together. I suspect midnight migrations.

One of my favorite things about our new house is all the cool, original woodwork. This cabinet, conveniently located next to our fireplace, has come to house new books and scotch. And I’m just realizing now how strange it is to keep bundles of paper and bottles of alcohol in an old wooden box next to the place where fires happen.

Here’s a slightly closer look. This is the place that has been getting all the new acquisitions in our household. Down there on the bottom—that blueish one with the red lettering—that’s the incredible and incredibly fun Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer. It’s a writing craft book, but it looks like this on the inside…

The title of this spread is “A Tale of Resurrection: The Beatification of a Failed Idea.” The perfect kind of book to enjoy while drinking scotch next to a burning cabinet.

To the right of that bookshelf is this little fella. Purchased from Target probably, this shelf holds up our unbelievably old radio and houses many of my chess books (the top shelf, left half) and a random assortment of literary fiction, non-fiction, and speculative stuff. Next to the radio is a copy of Kelly Link’s recent collection Get in Trouble, not shelved yet due to either my laziness or its unwillingness to play nicely with others.

This one is my favorite bookcase in the house. It’s right next to my side of the bed and holds a few different groups of books. The first, there at the top left, is the growing collection of review copies I’ve received for Hazel & Wren!

I’ve only received three review copies so far, but I’m still not over how cool it is to have someone send me a book so that I can read and write about it. Heck yeah!

How the States Got Their Shapes is a book acquired during a game Rachel and I like to play in bookstores. We go in and each try to find a book the other person would probably never buy/encounter/read in their life, and then we buy it. Browsing a bookstore with someone else in mind (especially when he or she is there, also browsing with someone else—you—in mind) is a lot of fun. Rachel bought me this book, partially because it fit the requirements of the game and partially because my grasp of even basic geography is shockingly bad.

The other books in this bookcase are all of my most immediate To-Be-Read books supplemented with books I’m sort of constantly reading or rereading. It’s a weird smattering of things, but if there’s a shelf (or case) that best represents me in the house, it’s this one.

And down at the bottom of the case are a bunch of the journals and notebooks I’ve kept over the years. Including this one…

I picked up this notebook when I was in England several years ago. It’s still easily one of my coolest possessions. I filled the first few pages with a novel idea that never went anywhere, and I’ve been waiting for the right idea to come along for the rest.

What do your shelves look like, reader? Are they carefully monitored or do you have intergenre mingling as I do?