My Ideal Bookshelf

Though "My Ideal Bookshelf" isn’t a work that requires reading it cover to cover – like any book shelf, perusing it at your leisure is far more fun – one of the interesting things that emerges when you go through the shelves in order is the conversation between the writers featured in the book. Atul Gawnde has a book by Malcolm Gladwell on his shelf, and Lorin Stein has a copy of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead on his. The complex dynamics of influence are on display as much as the volumes themselves. “These are conversations between books and readers that would be hard to envision taking place anywhere else,” La Force writes.

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Of course, part of the reason for the common influences is the narrow scope of celebrities in the project. Though there are outliers – grocery store thriller writer James Patterson, movie maven Judd Apatow, and professional skateboarder Tony Hawk among them – for the most part, "My Ideal Bookshelf" features a laundry list of East Coast literary scenesters.

This makes a certain amount of sense: La Force, having worked at magazines like The New Yorker and The Paris Review, presumably has more access to these writers and their friends. It’s also true that it’s more interesting to contemplate the bookshelf of someone deeply invested in books than otherwise – Malcolm Gladwell makes a better contributor to this book than would, say, Mike Tyson. But flipping through the book, one longs for a larger variety of shelves, if only for greater contrast in the sea of Fitzgerald and Woolf-worshippers. "My Ideal Bookshelf" sometimes seems like an encyclopedia of a particular kind of taste, a go-to guide of the books that you should have at least passing knowledge of to get by at a cocktail party on the Lower East Side.

But "My Ideal Bookshelf" isn’t meant to be a compendium. It’s meant to be a look into the literary touchstones of dozens of tastemakers, and that it accomplishes beautifully. It will inspire you to rearrange your library, to run out and purchase a dozen of Jonathan Lethem’s or Dave Eggers’ favorite favorites. And, as La Force and Mount no doubt intended, it makes a lovely addition to your own shelf.

Margaret Eby is a freelance writer in New York.

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