Hi and welcome back to Our Hobbies, Our Shelves, the new A+ series featuring tours of our home libraries.
Riese and Carmen provided very cool spreadsheets for their respective book tours, but I’m not going to do that! Sorry! But listen, I’m actually working on a very cool top secret (for now) project that involves spreadsheets and books, and whew, if I have to make another books spreadsheets, I might die???? I also already did a deep-dive on my home’s bookshelves earlier this year for Meg’s excellent Spaces & Places series. In case you missed that essay, the gist is: Dating a librarian rules and also the best system for organizing books is whatever the fuck makes the most sense to YOU.
Now, since I already did that first look at my bookshelves, let’s zoom in a little more, shall we? Given that I am a dyke writer in a relationship with another dyke writer, our home has…a lot of books. And more specifically, a lot of dykey books. For Our Hobbies, Our Shelves, I’ve gone on a quest to determine the top 8 dykiest things on our household’s bookshelves—some books, some not!
Double Doorframes
I regret to inform you that upon moving in together, my girlfriend Kristen and I had not two but three copies of Adrienne Rich’s The Fact Of A Doorframe—and that was AFTER KRISTEN ALREADY DONATED A COPY. We could have had four!!!!! Perhaps that would have made our shelves…too powerfully homosexual. The reason I ended up with two personal copies was because Kristen gifted the book to me twice back when we were Long Distance Lesbians. She forgot she’d already bought it for me when I was still living in New York and then got another one for me for Christmas. Incredible, really. We did end up giving our third copy away, because our friend lost her copy in a breakup, so you know, just really gaying it up with Adrienne Rich over here.
(On the topic of doubling, we try to donate when we can! But also, some of our double-copies have lingered. Here are some of my favs we currently have doubles of: In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado; Long Live The Tribe Of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden; Marlena by Julie Buntin; The Office Of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans, My Body Is A Book Of Rules by Elissa Washuta.)
The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For
I mean, duh. Like, listen, we have a lot of gay books on our shelves, so I’m not going to highlight ALL of them here, but it felt important to include this one since dykes is literally in the title.
The King Shelf
Stephen King, famously not a dyke. But I’ve been on a King journey ever since I started dating Kristen, who grew up reading these books in secret. And I’ve recently realized I’m friends with a lot of queer and trans folks who grew up obsessed with King’s ouvre (okay literally every time I use that word I think about Desiree Akhavan’s line about Judd Apatow in The Bisexual. And sure, King is like one of the bestselling authors of all time so of course I know a lot of queer and trans folks who grew up obsessed with his books, because I know a lot of queer and trans folks and also King is wildly popular. But I am specifically interested in talking about these books with my fellow queers and have had a lot of really fascinating conversations about them in recent years! My girlfriend re-reads The Shining annually, and I haven’t read it since high school so I need to GET! ON! THAT! But I was recently blown away by The Dead Zone and also Gerald’s Game, the latter of which is a pacing/structural marvel that should not be possible to pull off and yet! Horror in real-time. I feel like I read the whole thing in a clench.
The Tragedies of William Shakespeare / The Comedies of William Shakespeare
These are Kristen’s compendiums, and they are the Modern Library versions. I used to own the Barnes & Noble Complete Works of William Shakespeare that was leatherbound and had those fancy gold-edged pages. Billy boy was famously also not a dyke, but the fact that Kristen and I both asked for these as gifts as closeted teens? Gay! Specifically, she was a choir gay who sometimes did theater, and I was a theater gay who sometimes did choir. There are subtle differences—iykyk.
Gay Florida Sign
I commissioned this custom el wire neon sign from a very rad queer artist who is now v v v popular, so if you want to get in on this action, you have to follow them on Instagram to watch for updates and try to get on their customs waitlist. But I highly recommend working with them!
The V.C. Andrews Shelf
This is another one of Kristen’s contributions to our shelves, and I can’t wait to take the plunge (but I also know that once I start reading these, I won’t be able to think about/do anything else, because that’s how I roll). IS there any historical evidence to suggest V.C. Andrews was NOT a dyke???? I don’t think so, and if there is, don’t tell me! Also, this “real butch” postcard is perfectly placed here. Just a great shelf corner all around.
Someone’s Teeth
Okay, so these are a mold of someone’s teeth and not their actual teeth. But these are indeed a simulacrum of the teeth of a stranger! It was a gift given to Kristen at an event for her novel With Teeth, and I’m frankly shocked (disappointed?) she did not receive more teeth—human, animal, etc.—while promoting that book! (Pls don’t mail us teeth.)
My Copy of Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
Okay, I am always talking about my copy of Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher, because it is from high school, and it has been dog-eared within an inch of its life. But specifically, I marked…every page where she wrote the words “gay,” “homosexual,” and “lesbian.” It’s as if it was my first time ever encountering these words in a book, but surely that cannot be true! Also, it’s not like this is even a book about being gay! It’s mostly Carrie Fisher being like “my gay friend” and stuff like that! I do remember the first time I read the book, but I do not remember the exact impetus behind earmarking these pages. A little dyke mystery.
I love this series so, so much. Thank you Kayla! And as someone who’s a book queer but definitely not a book-spreadsheet queer, I’m kind of glad you didn’t include a spreadsheet.