Project Bookshelf: Annabel Phoel

I’ve gotten to live in about five different places over the last three years, which means my bookshelf has become almost a capsule wardrobe. I add and remove books based on what I’m interested in or reflecting on at the time. Because I’m never in one place for too long (and often do not have the qualifications for a library card) I enable myself to collect and collect and collect. I’m especially bad in the UK, where books tend to be a bit cheaper, and I convince myself I’m saving money even though I’m definitely not. I’ve kept about 10-15 books in each era divided by Asheville, London, Williamsburg, and St Andrews. Each collection marks an era of personal growth and exploration.

My library’s homebase is my Washington D.C. childhood bedroom and, having transcended the bookshelf, has spread itself across the floor. They continue to sprawl to the nightstands, windowsill, and desk drawers. There, I keep older academic or out-of-season books. It’s become a sort of library for my friends. My parents still talk about the times I have been out of town and friends of mine have come into my house, run up the stairs, and changed one book for another.

The first bookshelf of the last three years was in Asheville. I was 17 and had scored a summer internship out in Appalachia. The books I kept migrated as I switched houses every other week, and remained stashed largely on the floor. But they told stories of adventure and self-discovery. I was a teenager living by myself for the first time in a new city and my books helped me navigate that experience. I whipped through The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I held Klara and the Sun particularly close.

Several weeks later in London, I would recommend to a friend of mine Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. He hated it. A well-connected musician himself, he would send me songs and ask for my notes as to how they could be improved. In a similar vein, he sent me notes on Klara and the Sun. I tried to defend it and we fought. He’d picked it up in Shoreditch walking by a stall in a market selling a few of the more highly-rated books at the time. Based on the notes he gave me, he would have done better with my London bookshelf. A smaller collection, but it included a very waterlogged East of Eden by John Steinbeck and a muddy Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari. I felt very critical in London. I was studying anthropology down the street from the British Museum, so it was hard to not feel critical.

Less critical in Williamsburg, VA; but feeling quite angsty, I read books about escape. Take Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, which stuffed itself into my nightstand alongside several Norton anthologies and Brontë sister novels. When studying “The Slough of Despond” in Pilgrim’s Progress I read The Upstairs Delicatessen by Dwight Garner to lighten the mood. The latest semester I spent at William & Mary had me fall in love with uniquely American literature through a class I took on Paterson, New Jersey. It turned me on to a critical analysis of America through writing. I spent the following Washington D.C. summer with Patrick Radden Keefe, biographies on Boston mob icon Whitey Bulger, and more William Carlos Williams. These library books accompanied me on the metro each morning and kept me busy as I killed time between my internship and my restaurant job in a variety of D.C. cafes.

Now, in St Andrews, I use about one shelf’s worth of space adding up to about three feet. From Oxford’s Major Works of Francis Bacon to Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, to Allen Ginsberg’s The Best Minds of My Generation; the books on my St Andrews bookshelf explore our relationship to the cosmos. I like the way Ginsberg words it as a cosmic vibration for each particular being. I love the way Tokarczuk argues for the souls of non-human beings as well. Our relationship to the earth and the sky is easy to wonder about when living in a place so blessed by history, the Northern Lights, and the North Sea. I’m increasingly happy that St Andrews introduced me to the cosmic line of questioning.

Whether rooted in my studies or my work, my books help me find clarity in conflicting thoughts. Their sage wisdom has become a part of me and I look forward to coming home and stuffing the D.C. bookshelf with my newfound intimations each holiday.

Annabel Phoel is a junior studying English and Government/International Relations between William & Mary and the University of St Andrews, where she currently resides. She is a staff writer on St Andrews’ Not Applicable Magazine and helps on their editorial board. When not writing or studying, Annabel is rowing on various lochs in Scotland.