Project Bookshelf: Caitlin Mulqueen

I do not just have a love for reading, but a love for books as well—the physical embodiment of the story in paperback form is my favorite, but I don’t mind a hardcover either. I admire the people who do not walk through life with back pain and bad posture because they are content with a kindle or ebook. I, however, am not that type of person. To me, my bookshelves stand almost like a work of art.

I am currently a senior in college, but when I return to my childhood home for breaks, I always look at my first bookshelf as the truest masterpiece I have ever curated.

“The Masterpiece” has been read many times over. It is four rows, stuffed without order, to hold 98 books. In addition to literature, there is a shocking amount of dust and trinkets (seashells, a high school diploma, the original box from the box set of The Selection series, etc.). Of course, the centerpiece is a hardcover set of all seven Harry Potter books.

“The Masterpiece” carries stories that strictly happen “in a land far, far away.” It is littered with magic, superpowers, and world-saving teenagers that possess some sort of extraordinary ability that they were unaware of until the first, maybe second, chapter of this trilogy (it was always a trilogy). There are diamonds in the rough, here, that have withstood the test of early adulthood (Red Queen, Cruel Prince, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games), but the majority of them are books that you only realize are unintentionally hilarious upon forethought. This recognition only makes it more amazing and magical that I held them so close to my heart, and with such sincere care as a kid.

A moment that is not rare amongst those who love books is the moment you realize that you need another bookshelf. Mine did not come to me, but rather to my mom, no longer delighted with books splayed across various random surfaces. Thus, I was gifted two more bookshelves to reel in the damage, and they are towering.

Half way through filling up one shelf, I suppose I was no longer satiated by tales of magic and happy endings. Mysteries, contemporaries, biographies, and historical fiction are stacked towards the bottom. They are all sun bleached, the borders yellowed, the covers lighter, and the pages softer. This is because when I was 16 I got my first job as a lifeguard. The change in genre preference most likely came as a result of me not wanting to explain to my coworkers that I was on the seventh book in a nine part series about fairy warriors overthrowing the corrupt fairy government in a fantastical land, that is actually part of a much broader fictional universe, when they casually asked me “What are you reading?” For all parties involved, it was much easier and more normal to answer, “Michelle Obama’s memoir.” And so, my bookshelf began to be filled with realistic fiction, and even nonfiction (a concept that would have made fifteen-year-old me shudder with boredom).

The books that I read as a sweating, miserable, and overly dramatic high schooler, sitting in 100 degree heat at my first job, are stacked together in unity and remembrance of that time. Paper Towns by John Green became an important book to me that summer because the concept of a literal paper town encouraged—and gave importance to—my feeling that fiction could be powerful, and that it had the ability to embed itself into reality. The story took place in a suburb of Florida, and I, as the characters, grew up in a suburb in Florida and wanted more than it could offer me.

Deciding which books to bring to my first semester of college was a month-long thought process. Should I bring just the ones that I haven’t read yet? Should I bring the ones that I know I love so things can feel a little bit more like home? Should I trust the library and pack sparingly; it’s hard to move everything you need for college in the first place?

I cannot even describe the emotional toll that leaving the Twilight series behind took on me. I would bring it back with me after I came home for winter break because me and Edward Cullen just could not spend another semester apart.

As I said, college complicates life for a book lover because your books exist in a sort of liminal space—some come with you, some stay back, some are acquired here, there, in airports, on road trips, and then you bring them home to your childhood bedroom and just start stacking.

When I look at my bookshelf at home, I think of where I was when I read it: physically, mentally, what my favorite song was, where I started the book, where I finished it, what it meant to me back then and what it means to me now. I am reinvigorate with reading, reminded of the many ways these books have changed me, and reminded why I came to love reading in the first place.

When I look at the stacks of books I have in my college apartment, compared to the ones I grew up surrounded by, I see that I now read to understand the world around me, rather than to take a break from it.

I suppose that is what growing up is, and I suppose my shelves, stacks, and piles of stories tell a bit of a story about me. For that, I am content with the back pain that carrying a book gives me, and will continue to avoid the temptation of the ever-appealing ebooks.

Caitlin Mulqueen is a senior at the University of Tennessee majoring in English and Journalism. She loves reading, playing piano, watching sports, and the Oxford comma. She has worked as an Editorial Graphics Production intern at ESPN, is a copy editor at The Daily Beacon, a student writer for Tennessee Athletics, a graphics and video operator for the SEC Network, and a marketing/social media intern for the Knoxville Ice Bears. With the majority of her undergraduate work being in sports media, literary media has remained her sincerest passion, finding stories that come out of sports to be as moving as those from literature.