How a Decor-Loving English Professor Displays Her Book Collection

I moved into my 1920s shingled house in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 2013. Since then, the house (which I call "Maud") has become a home for my collections, including paper weights, fridge magnets, skulls (not real ones), souvenirs, dishes, and - of course - books. I’ve been acquiring books for 20 years and can’t imagine my house without them. This is one of my favorite bookshelves. It’s an old shelf I found at an antiques store, and it’s very shallow, which is nice. I thought it would be perfect for my old editions of Shakespeare. I put these books in my guest room, in case a visitor is seized with an uncontrollable desire to read King Lear. I teach Shakespeare, but I don’t teach with these editions; I just think they’re pretty. A lot of them were gifts, but I bought the little blue set when I lived in New York City a decade ago, from a bookseller on Broadway in Morningside Heights, near Columbia. Those booksellers always had good things.

I like it that some of these editions are really tattered. I know that some people would worry about book spines peeling or bindings breaking, but I just think it show the books’ age, which reminds me that they had a long history before I acquired them. The little ceramic Titanic box is a souvenir from the Titanic Museum Attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I wrote an essay about the museum years ago, and I bought this in the gift shop. I have always loved souvenirs. The polka dot pig is a Jonathan Adler butter dish. I found him at a TJ Maxx in Pasadena, California, so he’s also a souvenir of sorts.

This is also in the guest room. I’m a big fan of this tiny French dictionary because I have always loved France, and I’m absolutely convinced I’m going to move to Paris one day. The four books here are Coralie Bickford-Smith’s Penguin editions. I have collected a lot of these editions over the years. They’re beautifully designed, and they have red ribbon bookmarks. I wish that all books had ribbon bookmarks.

This bookshelf is in my sitting room. It was made locally, and it holds a lot, even if it is overflowing a little at this point. I love bookends, and you need bookends for a shelf like this. This shelf is mostly nonfiction. I put a lot of my travel books here: both books that I have read for pleasure and books I read when I was doing research for my book Luggage. I found the big fabric wall hanging at a vintage store, and the wooden roses are from a gas station in the mountains in Virginia.