Project Bookshelf: From the Bookshelves of Mary Ellen Knight

Ah, the bookshelf. A writer’s most prized possession. This week Sundress Publications is showing our bookshelf love by inviting you all to snoop around our bookshelves and learn the back story on all the odds and ends that make our shelves, well, uniquely ours.

The bookshelf was built by Andrew’s grandfather and has been used by at least three generations for the storage of books, etc. As you can see in the pictures, the shelf occupies a space on top of the dinner table. Although this arrangement was necessitated by the tight spaces the apartment affords, it has now become my opinion that every dinner table should also have a bookshelf. It makes one feel so f’ing literary! Also, it brings every row of books up to eye-level, forcing you to consider each row of possibilities instead of having that one bottom row of shit you no longer want to look at, but can’t bring yourself to dump off at the used bookstore.

There are several prized possessions in this particular bookshelf. There’s a copy of A Wrinkle in Time that was autographed by Madeleine L’Engle. There’s also a book called Jesus of Nazareth written by Paul Verhoeven (to explain, this is a book in which the director of such films as RoboCop and Basic Instinct pontificates on biblical truths. He suggests the only proper way to open a film about Jesus’ life is with the brutal rape of a teenage Mary by a Roman centurion resulting in her pregnancy with the Messiah). And we can’t forget to mention the copy of Fodor’s Woman’s Guide to Europe from 1953. In France, evidently, “women no longer try to organize social clubs, because the meetings all turned into ‘husbands’ night;’ the men couldn’t see why their wives wanted to spend so much time with women when they could be with men! And the women, never unduly loyal to their sex in France, agreed.”

Mary Ellen Knight is a student at the University of Tennessee where she has earned Bachelor of Arts in Art Education, as well as a degree in Painting and Drawing. She is currently working towards earning her Master of Science in Art Education and works as a book designer for Sundress Publications.