Uniqueness

"A bookshelf is a particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot." - Alan Bennett

This weekend I came across this beautiful quote by Alan Bennett and I've not been able to forget about it ever since. The quote truly got me thinking about how unique our homelibrary can be, whether it is big or small, organised or messy, only filled with books or with a dozen other trinkets as well. To me, my bookshelf used to simply be a place to store my books, but I've come to take a different look at it.
Everything about my bookshelf is unique. Someone can create a similair design and place the same books in the same place, but it still would be different. The way I organise my shelves might be extremely logical and aesthetically pleasing to me while someone else may think of it as an illogical mess. The uniqueness of my shelf, obviously, isn´t due to the fact that I collected different books than someone else, nor is it the placement of my books and all the objects around it, it´s due to smaller things.


I have collected a few small Marvel-heroes and placed these on my shelf. I've also got a bunch of stickers and postcards laying around. And I've got YA-buttons to decorate my shelfs. Even the small layer of dust that seems to immediately form after I've cleaned up, makes my shelf unique.

The other way in which my shelves differ from other peoples shelves, is the way my books look and lay. My books are all slightly scratched or dented. The books I've read sometimes have bend pages and broken spines, the books I haven't read have small scratches on the cover. No book is in perfect condition, but they are all still perfect. Take my copy of New moon (by
Stephenie Meyer) for example, the back is broken beyond repair, the cover is partially ripped of and I'm pretty sure a friend of mine used it to put her cup of coffee down on. Obviously I minded the damage done to it when it had just happened, but right now I feel like it gives the book a character. Most books are printed the same, but their journey afterwards is unique. In a way, our bookshelfs represent us. When we write in a book, our handwriting and notes differ the book from the rest, when we carry our book with us, the damage represents its journey. The state a book is  in tells as story sometimes far more interesting than the words printed inside it. The shelf it is placed on tells a story about who we are and who we want to be. The casual way in which we organise our books, is what makes it personal. No one is watched and you do what you want to do. And I think it's beautiful.