Magical Words, Megalomanical Jedi Masters, and a Mercedes-Benz

In the captivity of the local Borders or even at the library, bookshelves are carefully segregated, their contents painstakingly maintained by reference to title, genre, category, or Dewey Decimal number. Even in the private realm of individual homes, there are some bookshelves which must suffer the ultimate ignominy: to have their innocent dependants organized by height, width, or color; or to see otherwise worthy entrants discarded because the cover is ugly or because the book simply doesn't "fit" either the shelf or the general decor of the room.

But in the wild it is a different story. Left to their own devices, the contents of bookshelves frequently migrate from place to place, cross-pollinating discourse and unexpectedly piquing the interest of passers-by. They become haphazard mounds of literate thought, with Dashiell Hammett nestling comfortably beside Will Shakespeare and both face-to-face with the latest issue of Spiderman and Homer's Iliad. Raymond Chandler walks the mean streets not just with James Lee Burke but Neil Gaiman, Patricia McKillip or even James Frey. Jane Austen hangs with Mickey Spillane and Chaucer and Beowulf are checking out the latest Anne Rice.

Here, Victor Davis Hanson lectures on the enduring legacy of the Peloponnesian War and a host of historians document everything from the vivid history of the color red to the spices that undoubtedly launched more than a thousand ships and certainly sent Columbus westward. The old and the new wrestle playfully together, and the sterile confines of genre or category are happily left behind, to the tender mercies of those who find meaning not within the pages of the book but rather by the bookstore section in which it is found.

There are many who have recommended that new books ought to be read alongside the old; that it is far better to mix-and-match one's literary pursuits than to simply look for the latest entrants onto the "New Books" rack or to limit oneself to the confines of a particular genre. The Eclectic Bookshelf is intended as an homage to those wild, untamed bookshelves that seek less to categorize and more to enjoy whatever may be placed, accidentally or otherwise, within, atop, or beside them. Here, then, are the inaugural reviews from a wildly disorganized bookshelf.

Article Author: W.E. Wallo

W.E. Wallo is a book and movie junkie whose writings have appeared in a variety of print and online publications.

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