Sunday Shelfie with Jennie Godfrey
Here's the first of our guest authors showing you around her bookshelves
Thank you for the warm welcome you gave my new biweekly series Sunday Shelfie which kicked off two weeks ago. If you haven’t caught up with that post and its introduction to this new series you can do so here.
Every other week a different author will share with you a photo (or photos) of their bookshelves and answer a series of probing questions about all the little gems they have there including: favourite books from their genres; the books they buy their friends; their guilty pleasures; and how they organise their bookshelves – always a controversial topic!
This week, kicking off our guest authors, we have novelist Jennie Godfrey.
Jennie was raised in West Yorkshire and her brilliant, Sunday Times bestselling debut novel, The List of Suspicious Things, is inspired by her childhood there in the 1970s.
Jennie is from a mill-working family, but as the first of the generation born after the mills closed, she went to university and built a career in the corporate world. In 2020 she left and began to write. She lives in the Somerset countryside and has an excellent substack herself, The Crow’s Nest and you can find it here.
But what we all want to do is have a poke around her bookshelves right? And here they are:
How would you describe your collection of books? Any favourite genres?
I would definitely describe my collection of books as eclectic. It swings from classic to contemporary and from commercial to super-literary but if there was a genre I lean towards it would be crime.
How many books do you estimate you have and how are they organised, if at all?
The bookshelves I’ve taken pictures of are a literal snapshot of the books I actually own. I have so many on my Kindle I wouldn’t know where to start, and in the last year I’ve amassed a pile of proofs so high I now have a spreadsheet documenting them and their date of publication. I am also of the view that book buying and book reading are two separate things so there are a fair few on my main bookshelf that have never been read. I’d estimate I have a thousand in total (but this could be wildly out).
In percentage terms, how many of the total books on your shelves have you read?
I’d say 75% have been read and 25% not. This is growing as I now get a lot of books sent to me, and sometimes the books I’ve actually bought get neglected. This is something I am planning to re-balance.
Which three books are top of your TBR (To Be Read) pile at the moment?
Costanza by Rachel Blakemore (Historical Fiction)
Ice Town by Will Dean (I am obsessed with his Tuva Moodyson series)
The Drownings by Hazel Barkworth
Which book on your bookshelf is the most well-thumbed/do you return to the most, and why?
Persuasion by Jane Austen. I have read it upwards of twenty times and every time I do I see something new in it. It has everything.
Which book on your bookshelf do you most often buy as a gift for others, and why?
This is a more tricky question. I am a part-time bookseller as well as a writer, and pride myself on matching books to people’s personalities and tastes - so I don’t really have a ‘go-to’ present, but I absolutely can name a book for anyone!
If you have a collection of writing craft books, which is your favourite and why?
I have two favourites, the first is Stephen King’s On Writing – basically because it changed my life! Before I wrote The List of Suspicious Things I had tried to write a psychological thriller, but I didn’t get very far as it was terrible. I couldn’t get why it wasn’t working but I knew it wasn’t, so I shelved it and spent two days listening to the audiobook of On Writing. A week later I had the idea for The List of Suspicious Things and the rest is history! I will always be grateful to Stephen King for that. My second one is
’s In Writing (which is out in November). Hattie’s podcast of the same name held my hand while I wrote The List of Suspicious Things and I was lucky enough to get an early proof of the book version, which lifted me out of a serious writing slump. It’s excellent.If you write within a particular genre, can you tell us your three favourite books within that genre (classic or contemporary) and why? I don’t know that I do write in a genre. I’ve seen The List of Suspicious Things shelved just about everywhere except science-fiction! But I will give you my three favourite/classic coming of age stories.
To Kill a Mockingbird – sits alongside Persuasion as my most-read book of all time. I just love a small-town book that shines a light on the human condition.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ - one of the funniest, most poignant novels of all time. Captures time and place so wonderfully.
The Secret Garden – my favourite childhood book which showed me that Yorkshire people with Yorkshire accents could be lead characters in stories.
Which book on your bookshelf is your guilty pleasure?
I don’t believe in guilty pleasures.
Which book on your bookshelf do you feel most guilty for not having read yet, and why?
Going Home by Tom Lamont – which I have been dying to read for months, and had a copy sent to me before it was published but haven’t yet go to and I KNOW I am going to love it. It makes me cross with myself that I am holding onto it!
Which book would we be most surprised to find on your bookshelf?
I am such a bookworm/voracious reader I genuinely don’t think anyone would be surprised by the books I have on my shelves except maybe the amount of books I have on make-up and skincare (my other hobby!) or maybe the four copies of Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes I have and can’t bear to part with (another of my favourite books of all time!)
Which book on your shelf would you take to a desert island, and why?
Persuasion (as discussed!)
Which book is on your wishlist currently to join all the others on your bookshelf?
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
• Thank you so much
for taking part.Let us know in the comments what you think of Jennie’s choices, how many of them have you read?
Well this was a lovely Sunday treat in my inbox 😊