The Bookshelf Report

Bookshelf Report: Books, Knick-Knacks, and a Cat

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where a Bushwick reader shares a little bit about the books that occupy their shelves.

Today’s bookshelf comes from the loveable Lisa Marie Schattenkirk. By now you’ve probably seen her at one of our shows, she is a frequent attendee. Her photography skills are off the charts. You should hire her to take pictures of things – check out her portfolio when you get the chance.


 

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How do you organize your books?

I don’t have a bookshelf at the moment, but when I do I organize them by size. I like my books to be mixed in with chachkies, knick-knacks, and my cat!  She’s been known to get cozy on a shelf or two.

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Bookshelf Report: More Music Books Than You Can Shake A Drum Stick At

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask 5 questions and share 5 pictures of a bookshelf  belonging to a Bushwick reader. Today’s bookshelf comes from long time Seattle music journalist Travis Hay. He has written for many notable publications such as MSN Music, the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, and Seattle Weekly, and is the creator of GuerillaCandy.com, an amazing website dedicated to documenting the Seattle music community.

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What’s your favorite book on the shelf?

Asking me to name my favorite book is like asking me to name my favorite record. It’s a very tough thing to do. As you can tell, most of my books have something to do with music and I consider the music books in my collection to be good reference material. If I had to name a single one as my favorite it would have to be “Everybody Loves Our Town” by Mark Yarm. It’s a massive oral history of the Seattle music scene from the late 1980s to mid/late 1990s, aka the grunge era. I own quite a few local rock history books (“Love Rock Revolution,” “The Strangest Tribe,” “Sonic Boom” too name a few) but Yarm’s book is the definitive book on grunge and everything comes from first-hand primary sources. There’s stories about Eddie Vedder drinking bile as part of Jim Rose’s Circus Sideshow, The U Men lighting a pond on fire outside of the mural Amphitheater at Bumbershoot and tons of other really great stuff. It’s a must read for any fan of the Seattle scene from back in the day. Read more

Bookshelf Report: The Titanic Won’t Build Itself

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask 5 questions and share 5 pictures of a bookshelf  belonging to a Bushwick reader. Today’s bookshelf comes from Amy Levenson. She is one of the organizers behind Moveable Type’s: Literary Mixer, a fun social event for book enthusiasts. The next mixer is on October 23rd at The Vermillion Art Gallery.

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What’s your favorite book on the shelf?

I’m very sentimental about books, so it’s nearly impossible for me to pick just 1 favorite. How about 3?

I have a copy of Taschen’s The Pedro Almodovar Archives, which I received as a gift. I’m a big Almodovar fan, and this edition is beautifully laid out with great content. This book rarely leaves my coffee table because I can flip to any page and be completely happy.

The Alien Vault has a special place in my heart because it was a huge labor of love to get it published. If you’re a fan, it has some really great stuff like Ridley Scott’s storyboards and some of H.R. Giger’s early concept designs.

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee is another one of my favorites. After I read it for the first time it took me a while to pick up another book. There’s nothing quite like the terror of human nature. Read more

Bookshelf Report: An Unhypothetical Library of Goodness

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask 5 questions and share 5 pictures of a bookshelf  belonging to a Bushwick reader. Today’s bookshelf comes from Elizabeth Cohen, author of the new book The Hypothetical Girl, a delightful collection of short stories that captures the magic within the wonderfully awkward world of online dating.

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What’s your favorite book on the shelf?

My favorite book is The Black Cauldron, by Lloyd Alexander. A kid’s book that was incredibly important to me as a child and into adulthood – a coming of age story about an assistant pig keeper (that he was an “assistant” was important to me, who became, of course, a king of a magic land). I was read it by my dad and then read it alone and later had a series of “assistant” jobs in which I often thought of that book.

The job does not define the person. That was my little life lesson I somehow need to cling to. Read more

Bookshelf Report: The Case of the Missing Photography Books

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask the same 5 questions and share 5 pictures of a bookshelf  belonging to a Bushwick reader. Today’s bookshelf comes from Seattle photographer Morgen Schuler. For the past 5 years Morgen has been using her camera and creative eye to put her own artistic spin on Seattle’s music and arts community.

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What’s your favorite book on the shelf?

Ender’s Game is my all-time favorite book and always on my shelf. I’m a big sci-fi nerd and I gobble it up like Thanksgiving Dinner. Ender’s Game was one of the first sci-fi books I ever fell in love with and every time there’s a drive at a bookstore where you buy a book for young readers, I get them Ender’s Game (it’s too bad the author, Orson Scott Card, is a huge jerk… crazy to think someone so horrible could write something so heartfelt). Read more

Bookshelf Report: Book Piles Are the Best Kind of Piles

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask 5 questions and share 5 pictures of a bookshelf  belonging to a Bushwick reader. Today’s bookshelf comes from Hollie Young, Bushwick Book Club Seattle volunteer extraordinaire and all around sweetest person to ever exist EVER

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What is your favorite book on this shelf?

My favorite book on the floor is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. This book is mysterious and  captivates me in a way I have yet to experience from any other book. It is weird and intriguing. The characters are greatly developed and complex. I also love that you need an active imagination to truly see how the story unfolds. Read more

Bookshelf Report: Library Guy with a Joint Collection

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask 5 questions and share 5 pictures of a bookshelf  belonging to a Bushwick reader. Today’s bookshelf comes from Levi Fuller, a veritable veteran of the Bushwick Book Club Seattle. Over the years he’s performed songs inspired by The Shining, 1984, Dr. Seuss, Alice in WonderlandLust by Ellen Forney, and many others.

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What is your favorite book on these shelves?

I will give you two answers: My current favorite book on these shelves as a possession is a recent edition, my signed copy of Ellen Forney’s Lust. It will always remind me of how much fun it was to play the Bushwick show for that book, and how gracious and wonderful Ellen was. My favorite book just as a thing to read is probably David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, although that’s tough to answer, as I pretty much only hold on to books that I really love or have some other attachment to. Read more

Bookshelf Report: Who Needs Clothes?

The Bookshelf Report is an ongoing series where we ask the same 5 questions of Bushwick readers who share 5 pictures of their bookshelf with us. Today’s “bookshelf” comes from Noah Skocilich, a Bushwick fan currently living in China. Noah showed us his traveling books on a recent visit to Seattle.

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1. What is your favorite book on this shelf? 

Easy. Infinite Jest. Best novel ever. Simply in a class of it’s own. I almost had to stop reading altogether for awhile after finishing, just to let the pure essence of that novel fully settle into my mind. I brought it with me from China thinking that I would give it as a gift to my mother. That didn’t work out, and I’m actually glad, because this is one book I really just do feel a sentimental attachment to; I mean, even to this physical copy, that I physically read over the course of a couple weeks in Jan and Feb 2013. Read more