Most recently finished shelves. These are up against the back of the sofa and help define the breakfast “room”. On the left are histories of literatures, books about certain periods, anthologies, and the like.

Here’s what happens during the non-book cleaning time of year. I will get a crappy old book, or discover one in the apartment that needs to be in the big house, or just find something out of place, and I will shelve it someplace that’s a close approximation to where it should permanently live. When I do the yearly book cleaning, I try to do find it a new home.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003) is a hilariously serious book about punctuation, including some history of punctuation. ! And there are a handful of grammar texts on those shelves. But as you can see, Eats, Shoots & Leaves doesn’t really go on there. So… I brought it back to the Den and put it on a shelf where it also doesn’t quite go.

Picked it up a bit ago. Turned to the chapter on commas because who isn’t fascinating by the controversy surrounding commas?

The Years with Ross (1957). There it is right there! And there went two hours of my day. Well worth it.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves?

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”