Thank you all for letting us browse your bookshelves. I'm sorry I can't oblige until I figure out how to do it. In my tiny office here I have three overstuffed IKEA Billy bookshelves, wallsfull in other rooms. Boxes and boxes in a basement elsewhere. Each book contains a time and place from sometime in my life -- even if I did not read it - and yes, there are many unread books.

Sometimes I'd write inside the cover the date and city where I found the book. Sometimes I'd read with a highlighter. For example, I went looking for some Plato in my shelves this morning to see if I could unite with the rest of you. Instead, I found two Aristotle books and a copy of Jean-Paul Sarte's The Age of Reason. Many years ago, I highlighted this passage:

When Mathieu had pledged himself to Marcelle, he had forever renounced all thoughts of solitude, those cool thoughts, a little shadowy and timorous, that used to dart into his mind with the furtive vivacity of fish. He could not love Marcelle save in complete lucidity: she was his lucidity embodied, his comrade, his witness, his counselor, and his critic.

Was I between relationships when I highlighted that? I don't know. Was I longing for lucidity, for someone to embody it? Was I longing to be that for someone? Or was I missing solitude?

Do you highlight? Open a book from your shelf and quote me a passage.

demure Owl flagamuffin AshShields elizabeth thenewgreen dead5 insomniasexx bfv humanodon sounds_sound and most of all wasoxygen