I really like reading, and being a designer I most certainly judge a book by its cover. There is something so much nicer about reading a book that looks good, it feels right and has more authority. This is not a new notion.

In conjunction with my love of reading, and adding a layer of a beautifully designed cover, I find the arrangement of the book on the shelf an important factor in my reading enjoyment. Putting the right themes or authors together allows the ideas of one book to flow into the next. For example it becomes obvious that ‘No one belongs here more than you’ by Miranda July leads to ‘A moveable feast’ by Ernest Hemingway via ‘Eleven stories about loneliness’ by Richard Yates. These are authors I may not have put together without being actually able to see them together.

Currently my bookcase starts at the top with Japanese authors, and the English classics. There might not be an instant link between these genres, but at the moment I find the measured pace of the works quite similar. This is how I can read from ‘The sailor who fell from grace with the sea’ by Yukio Mishima to ‘The pilgrim’s progress’ by John Bunyan. This is no obvious link, but is a very nice coupling. Trust me.

The next shelf down is for contemporary English fiction, and below that is American contemporary fiction. Seeing one above the other means it is easy to read from ‘The ragged trousered philanthropists’ by Robert Tressell to ‘Babbitt’ by Sinclair Lewis. Both are stories with themes concerning the “Worship of the money god” as written in Babbitt (I think).

The next two shelves down are for more modern American fiction. The arrangement here, with the journey from more classic to modern means that the relationship between father and son in ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ by Robert Pirsig can be echoed by ‘The road’ by Cormac McCarthy.

The penultimate shelf is for European classics. The links between the modern American classics above and this shelf are fascinating. ‘Steppenwolf’ by Herman Hesse to ‘American psycho’ by Bret Easton Ellis.

The last shelf is an oddity. A smattering of science fiction with the Lord of the Rings, and the as yet un-read ‘Gravity’s rainbow’ by Thomas Pynchon. I think I will have find a truly inspired literary route to ‘Gravity’s rainbow’ before I can tackle it.

I don’t read with an e-book reader yet, but I am strongly considering it. I am hoping that I can arrange my digital library in varied and non-linear ways to find new paths between authors and themes.