Shelfies: My Mom and Dad
from my email newsletter | issue no. 22 | September 29 2025
I’m not on TikTok (thankgoodness) or on this particular “side” of Instagram, but I know that “Day in the Life” content is popular. Everyone likes a good, soup-to-nuts look at the benign details of someone’s life, because — let’s face it — it’s the supposed “benign details” that provide the structure for everything. This is why mommy blogs were so successful in the early 2000s (“What does her kid’s sleeping schedule look like?”); why YouTube is full of videos showing everything from how someone organizes their desk/closet/garage, to how they most efficiently use their credit card points, to what’s in their fridge; and why home tours exist. (Btw, I'm excited to go to Charlotte's Mad About Modern tour in November!)
Humans are nosy beings, but I think that is not all bad. Learning about someone in a specific way like the above can be motivating, educational, or simply entertaining.
So that brings me to what may become a series here. Or maybe not! I’m just winging it. But everyone loves a book recommendation, right? Similarly, I have a hunch that some of us are interested in other facets of people’s reading lives. Instead of focusing on extremely quantifiable “reading challenges” (which was the subject of this newsletter), how about getting a bird’s eye view into someone else’s reading life and maybe picking up a nugget or two of inspo?
[Cue fanfare trumpet]
I bring you the first installment of Shelfies, which was a very of-the-moment term in the book world about 10 years ago. When I worked with the Dublin Book Festival, I recall someone tried to be clever and have people submit their “shelfies” (selfies taken in front of their book shelves) for some contest, but I don’t think it ever really took off. This is different, though. I’m not going to be asking anyone for a literal picture (selfie). Rather, consider this someone’s reflection (a figurative “snapshot”) of their reading life. For this newsletter, I sent some questions to people I’ve known for, um, a really, really long time. Like, the longest time possible for me! It’s my parents, Bob and Nancy Wilson.
Here are my parents in front of the The Library of Celsus in ancient Ephesus, Turkey.
My mom:
Have you always been an avid reader?
I was not a natural reader as a child. I had a terrible time learning to read and couldn’t sound out words. So, I really started reading for pleasure after I got married and Dad worked late or was out of town. At that point, I read a lot of the classics — especially Russian classics. That was a big jump for me.
What’s your reading life like?
Well, I am in three book groups! My longstanding book club always picks really fabulous books, such as James by Percival Everett. We all take turns picking the book and then hosting everyone. Dad and I are also in a couples book group with good friends. We all have different tastes in books, but we always keep going and once in a while we find something that everyone loves. But even if a book doesn’t click with everyone, it’s interesting to see what books strike a chord with others. All 6 of us loved The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig.
What books — recent or otherwise — have you enjoyed?
I enjoy a variety of books. Recently I’ve enjoyed Claire Keegan’s books Foster and Small Things Like These. They don’t have tidy endings, but you are left thinking of what an ending might be. Beautifully written books! The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese is a beautiful book. Long, but worth the time. I also just finished The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell. It’s over 600 pages long, but this is the real-deal book on the Mitfords. It’s well-sourced and historically accurate. It’s fascinating! Don’t read any of the quickie versions. One of the sisters — Nancy Mitford — was an author herself, and I'm working through this edition (pictured below) that contains seven of her books.
Otherwise, I’ve enjoyed anything by Ken Follett because his books grab you and transport you to different worlds. I’ve given The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames to lots of friends. No one seems to know about this book, but everyone who’s received it loves it. I love reading about artists. Two favorites are Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe by Laurie Lisle and Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (pictured below).
Ninth Street Women
Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frakenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art.
My dad:
Fiction or Nonfiction?
Well, I lean heavily toward fiction rather than non-fiction. As the author Abraham Verghese says in his latest novel, The Covenant of Water, “Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives.” A lot of non-fiction tends to be fact- and historical-oriented, whereas I think good fiction does a better job of exploring universal truths about the human condition through make-believe characters.
What do you look for in a good novel?
Two things:
1. The beauty of the prose, no matter the subject or storyline. To me, the craft of great writing consists of the choices of words and the weaving of those words together like in a complex, multicolored tapestry.
2. A narrative arc that is heavy on character development and light on plot line. This gets to my point above. I don’t want the author to explicitly serve up a main character's desires and motivations like pablum. I want to be made to probe and discover on my own. I want to have “a-ha” moments of understanding about what makes a character tick and to see or discover something of myself in him or her. Moments of self-reckoning.
The Covenant of Water is a good example of a novel that covers these two bases very well. As a sub-genre, almost all writing by contemporary Irish novelists does the same. Authors like Claire Keegan, Niall Williams, and Donal Ryan are three that come to mind.
What are some of your reading habits?
As far as reading habits, I tend to go on an occasional author tangent and binge. For example, three years ago, it was reading off a list of the best 100 20th-century American authors. It included Norman Mailer, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, and others. Of course I came nowhere near reading all 100. (Maybe some other time!)
Two years ago it was all things contemporary Irish, as per above, and a few other Irish authors.
A year ago it was Ivan Doig, a well-regarded Pacific Northwest author, whose numerous novels capture the frontier ethos in early-20th-century Montana.
This spring it was John Steinbeck, which culminated in a pilgrimage of sorts to the central coast of California (Monterey, Salinas) which was Steinbeck’s home and the setting of most of his writing.
I intersperse these with book club required reading and other books that capture my interest for one reason or another.
Have you always considered yourself a “reader”?
Until the last five years or so, I had not been an avid reader. I was too busy building a career and convincing myself that time spent on a good novel was a time suck away from business-technical reading that could advance my career goals. That’s my one piece of advice for early- and mid-career professionals. DON’T DO WHAT I DID. I am lucky: I discovered the joy of reading great make-believe writing late…but not too late!
***
So there's installment 1 of Shelfies. Maybe there will be more! In the meantime, DON'T DO WHAT [BOB] DID!
(Thanks, Mom and Dad! xo)
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