In the Wall Street Journal, likely some time ago given my reading habits, columnist Joe Queenan says Those Bogus Bookcases for Zoom Calls Aren’t Fooling Anybody:
When house-bound experts appear on TV interviews via Zoom, they are almost always seated in front of a large bookcase studiously purged of the usual trash. Whether an expert is deploring executive-office overreach or dissecting the baffling enigma of structural unemployment, you will usually see a gargantuan biography of Ulysses S. Grant or Winston Churchill perched over their left shoulder. Slightly to the left you may spot a three-volume history of the Civil War or something with the ancient Roman abbreviation “S.P.Q.R.” in the title.
If the person being interviewed is a scientist, the bogus bookcase is likely to sport a dog-eared copy of Thomas S. Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” and either “Chaos” or “Genius” by James Gleick. Some showoffs might even have Isaac Newton’s “Principia Mathematica” strategically positioned to face the camera. Not to mention one of their own books. Or six. Or the remaindered books by friends they owe a favor.
But no matter what luminary is being interviewed, the background bookcases will include nothing by James Patterson or Lisa Scottoline, no thrillers by Tana French or Jo Nesbo, and definitely no autobiographies by Miley Cyrus.
We all know bookcases can get gussied up this way in a hurry. Something earthshaking has happened, but the first guest booked to talk about it has canceled, so Sanjay Gupta will be calling for an emergency Zoom chat in 30 minutes. The flummoxed, totally unprepared expert immediately panics. “Quick, get all the Clive Cussler and V.C. Andrews books off the shelves,” he cries out to his quarantined loved ones. “And somebody hide that Ozzy Osborne tell-all!”
You know, when I am doing a video call, I like to see if the other person / people have more books than I do. Spoiler alert: They don’t. But I don’t know what kind of cameras people with whom Joe Queenan video-conferences have, but I have yet to see a camera that shows titles very well. Although, again, that might just be me. Actually, although I glance at the monitor when I’m doing a video call, I tend to look at the camera, so I only get a glance anyway.
To spare you the bother, gentle reader, I have provided a handy guide to the real book backdrop of Nogglestead. Most of you won’t see me in a real, live (or fake for that matter) video call anyway. And the view has changed a little since 2010.
Remember, gentle reader, I have not read the books on these shelves yet. After I read them, I shelve them with the mass market paperbacks on the other shelves in the office out of the frame or on the shelves in the family room (which are now far more stuffed than ten years ago as well).
On the shelves behind me, we have:
- Three volumes of interview/memoir with Pope Benedict. I saw a favorable review of the last, so I ordered all three.
- A diminishing set of Executioner paperbacks that I will someday have read all of. Unless I buy more in the interim.
- As you can see, I am not following my own advice in making sure that my bladed weapons are not visible. However, I am more careful about this in actual video calls. And in all my video interviews this year, only one person has asked if those were really my weapons. Which means only one person has looked beyond my resume. Unfortunately.
- The complete works of George Bernard Shaw. I bought them in 2007.
- My collection of Classics Club editions. Well, I’ve read a couple of them, and most of them are hidden behind the other books on that shelf.
- A shelf full of fat Stephen King books that I kind of avoid because they’re long and disappointing; I think seven of nine Dark Tower books are in there as well. To the right are the sequels to 2001–I bought the Arthur C. Clarke novel the same weekend as the George Bernard Shaw and read right away, but I haven’t gotten to the sequels yet.
- A number of partial sets of Time Life ancient civilizations and other history-type books. Not really deep reading, actually, but sets look nice. And these kinds of summary books can be intros to further research.
- Some Reader’s Digest Select Editions, small paperback equivalent of Condensed Books. I actually signed up for the club once or twice and quit right away, but not recently as I have found other sources for buying large quantities of books than book clubs.
- A shelf full of Detective Book Club books that I bought some years back at a church on bag day. In my case, it was box day, as I bought several boxes of books. I’ve actually only read one volume of these books (Dark Bahama/The Book of the Crime/Strangler’s Serenade). One wonders if I’ll ever have the time to read another.
Not depicted: Short stacks of things on the floor–in addition to framing the bladed weapons out, I know exactly how high I can stack crap on my floor to keep it out of the background. And I take advantage of that.
So the book backdrop at Nogglestead is real, and it’s glorious, and it’s unabashedly eclectic.
