The Sunday Salon: My Ideal Bookshelf 2013

In curating your ideal bookshelf, you are constructing an expression of yourself in that specific moment: what’s important to you right now? The contributors to My Ideal Bookshelf have different ideas of import. Some focus on reference, others on beloved texts, others on texts they haven’t read yet but want to or think they need to. As an editor at heart, curation comes naturally to me: my spring cleanings are more ruthless culls. With my birthday on Tuesday, I thought this would be a good time to start a new tradition: to celebrate my nativity each year, I will curate my ideal bookshelf, so that I may count my rings in the future. The rules? Ten books I would actually use as reference material. Commence shakedown.

Review: Boldly Writing

Boldly Writing by Joan Marie Verba

As you may have gathered from past posts, I am not only a huge proponent of fandom, but also hugely fascinated by the history of fandom. As someone who does not remember the world before the Internet (but definitely the world before wi-fi), the sheer effort involved for fans to do what I have always taken for granted is downright inspiring. On top of that, I am constantly fascinating by the fact that fandom is such a female-dominated space and that it is rarely depicted as such in mainstream culture. (And if it is… well… Supernatural fandom, I’m looking at you.) In any case, a recent foray into fandom history led me to Joan Marie Verba’s Boldly Writing, and further down the rabbit hole I joyfully leaped.