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Hello, welcome to this window into my bedroom. It’s a blog sure –– but it’s also a window. What can you see?

Today’s a bit different. For the first time in a long time I’m writing with the anticipation that these words might land somewhere

With you I mean. Like I’m even crafting them towards you right now as opposed to what I usually do which is aim them at some distant point beyond your head (not in an intellectually superior way just like don’t know/don’t care) even though YES. Hypothetically ecstatic if & when somebody in my email list does decide to look up at the very moment a blog post passes and something actually resonates … (uhhhhhhh)

But for the first two years of writing this blog I was hardly thinking about you at all. I was admirably perhaps but mostly egotistically throwing paint onto a canvas… which is fine, I think it’s how you start? (Because how else are you supposed to talk to anybody before anybody is actually there?) Suddenly though I want to speak to you. It seems way more attractive than sounding good.

So, I’m writing from my bedroom

The laundry hanging up is looking fire

I’m doing the daily dance of delaying the morning dog walk –– I have not yet had a coffee… –– I have not yet written the day plan…

Clue: as I discovered with Stephen Romer, you make the day plan to the minute/snaky hour and then you usually, heavily, and with absolute awareness SWERVE from the day plan. I can’t explain why it feels good but it does. (It’s like time-BDSM for self-employed/creative people.)

The best way I’ve found to engage with somebody else’s writing is to find out why it exists in the first place… (as if writing for writing’s sake wasn’t enough — it is,) but I’m prescribing to the demands of the Internet here, and your attention (and your day plan.)

3 reasons why Tilly’s Bookshelf exists:

1. I’m driven by a personal vision of order to sort out my bookshelf (i make it public to better keep myself on track);

2. My relationship with books is a kind of Stockholm syndrome post-university (i’m very attached to my identity as a reader and a writer and i’m not willing to let go of it without a fight or a sacrifice);

3. “KNOW THYSELF” but it’s a very confusing one because they never tell you how to do it. They might elaborate by saying “observe yourself” but observe yourself doing What to Whom? (This is where the miracle of books comes in.)

So that’s why it started… but as to what you'll actually find here?

A) SEVENTEEN BOOK REVIEWS

The Broken World by Tim Etchells; Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout; Porno by Irvine Welsch; All My Cats by Bohumil Hrabal; Nexus by Henry Miller; A Sport and a Pasttime by James Salter; Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami; Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami; Quicksand by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki; Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata; The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai; The Island by Ana Maria Matute; Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo; Herzog by Saul Bellow; Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai; Siddhartha by Herman Hesse; Minor Detail by Adania Shibli…

&,

B) ONE MILLION (pesky) MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS…

To be continued, I hope

With love and language,

Tilly

p.s. subscribe if you’d like to freak me out.