Have you ever snuck up to your bookshelf and pretended to see through a stranger’s eyes, imagining what someone who didn’t know you would gather from the titles perched there, the spines pristine or riddled with the worn lines of multiple reads? Do you ever look at the books on a friend’s shelf and strain to envision when in their lives they might have read a certain title for the first time?
Abigail Deutsch writes for The New Yorker about the books in her room, the where and when of certain titles, her history laced among the spines.
