Neil Gaiman's Bookshelves

Shelfari has always been a place where people come together to talk about their books.  A place where you can show off your virtual bookshelf and where communities form around your favorite books and authors.  It’s no surprise to us that you can learn a lot about someone by seeing what’s on his or her bookshelf.

Which is why we thought it would be fun to take a look at what’s on the bookshelves of some of our favorite authors.  What books do they love, or consider to have been particularly enlightening, informative or just plain fun? What books do they keep?

So we asked one of our all-time favorites, Neil Gaiman, if he’d be willing to give us a peek into his personal library, and he graciously agreed. 

Gaiman first gained wide acclaim with his complex and literate 75-issue comic series The Sandman, and has since broadened his scope to write award-winning and bestselling novels (American Gods, Anansi Boys), screenplays (“Beowulf”) and yes, he still continues to write comics. His books Stardust and Coraline were both adapted for the screen and his most recent novel The Graveyard Book was awarded the Newbury Medal and, just last month, a Hugo Award for Best Novel. (See the Shelfari author page for Neil Gaiman for many more details.)

Naturally we’d assumed that someone whose work is filled with references ranging from literary to mythological would have a fairly extensive library but even so, we were a bit unprepared for the scope of what he sent us.  In the basement of his house of secrets we find a room that’s wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with books (along with a scattering of awards, gargoyles and felines).  The photo above hints at what’s there, but here are a few close-ups:

Click here for the complete set, and click on any thumbnail to see a high-resolution image (where you can read the titles on the individual books).

One can’t help but look for books in common with our own shelves, or wonder which books were most influential on Gaiman’s own work.  With that in mind, we’ve created the Neil Gaiman's Bookshelves group where everyone can chat about these questions or anything else related to Mr. Gaiman’s shelves.  Any member of the group can add to the bookshelf so feel free to help build up a virtual equivalent of what’s shown in the photos!

(Special thanks to photographer extraordinaire Kyle Cassidy for taking these photos for us.  See more of Kyle’s work at www.kylecassidy.com, buy his book Armed America on Amazon, and if you’re a SF/Fantasy fan you should definitely check out Kyle’s ‘Where I Write’ project at http://www.whereiwrite.org )