My Bookshelf is my Altar

One of the most personal things I can share about myself is my bookshelf. Like beads, the books, photos and objects on my shelf tell a story, they celebrate people and things I love, they house my memories, my travels, reveal my interests of the past and the present, my struggles and my growth, my journey as a mother, wife, woman… of me, Suzi. They are a tangible reminder of my prayers.
My bookshelves have always been my altars.

I’ve always been a reader, or I guess I should say, a lover of books. I still get excited, on the very rare occasion, when I walk into a library, and feel my spirit light up when I step foot into a Barnes & Nobles (yes, they are around too). I used to dream of building a full library in my house with all 4 walls climbing with books from floor to ceiling. I must have a real, physical book in my hands so that my fingers can turn the page, or my highlighter can help me remember the lessons I am seeking to understand. Holding, touching and looking at the actual book is part of the full and memorable experience.

“I don’t remember the details of a book very well, but what I do remember is how that book made me feel and the time in my life when I was reading it. ”

I have given away many of the books I have read, but have kept the most treasured ones for myself. In fact, my books are the inheritance I have already started passing on to my children. For many years, I thought I was holding onto my favorites because I would reread them one day, but I learned that I rarely read a book twice. I love seeing them displayed on my bookshelves surrounded by family photos. I thought perhaps that the main reason I was holding on to them was so that I could pass them along to my children or share with interested friends and family. It took some time, but I eventually realized that I keep certain books and treasure looking at them because they have captured the memories of some of the most significant times in my life, just like the framed photographs sitting beside them.

In fact, I don’t remember the details of a book very well, but what I do remember is how that book made me feel and the time in my life when I was reading it. My bookshelf is akin to a timeline which tells the story of my life, or at least a part of it. I seek books to support my spiritual, personal and professional growth, to help me work through challenges in life, to inform and educate, to simply entertain and sometimes to just help me escape from the stress and worry of everyday life.

I’m slightly embarrassed to reveal that one of the earliest memories I have of experiencing the power a book possesses to take us to a different place, is reading Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews as a young teen, and Sidney Sheldon’s Bloodline on the beaches of Cancun when I was 19 years old.

A quick look at my books helps me feel like I am home. They are a part of my nesting process. Every time I have moved into one of the 5 different homes I’ve lived in over the past 3 years, one of the first things I do is set up the handful of books and photographs I’ve carried with me to Baja, so that I can create, in some small way, a memory of the home and life I’ve loved and lived…. and am still living, just in a very different way. I miss the tall, wooden bookshelf from the home I lived in for 20 years in California, and all the other books I have in storage, and I look so forward to when we reunite.

I love getting recommendations from other people, as well as giving and receiving books as a gift. So my gift to you is a short list of the titles I treasure so deeply that have helped shape the woman I am still growing to be. Some are in the photographs but most are not, and I know there are many I am forgetting.

Historical Fiction:

Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Change

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini