Sunday Shelfie with Joan Smith

Hello everyone, you have been so awfully patient with me while I have been raising these puppies, but I’m pleased to report that the last two found their forever homes yesterday and so they will be leaving me next weekend and normal service on White Ink will resume.

In the meantime, I am pleased to share with you this week’s Sunday Shelfie, my series where authors show us their bookshelves and talk us through what little gems they have there.

Joan Smith is an author and journalist, she has written columns for most national newspapers and reviews crime fiction for The Sunday Times. One of her earliest successes was the feminist classic Misogynies, and two of her novels were made into films by the BBC. She was Co-Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board from 2013 to 2021. Her book Home Grown drew on that experience, revealing the links between domestic violence and terrorism.

On Thursday, her new book, Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in hardback, it documents the hidden stories of the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the first five Roman emperors who have so often been portrayed as murderers and nymphomaniacs but, as Smith discovers, were actually victims of everything from child marriage, marital rape and separation from their children to exile and murder.

Here’s what

Julie Bindel

had to say about it: “Joan Smith digs up long buried misogyny and man-made mythology with the deftness and determination of a truffle hound. This book honours its female subjects with the truth in a way only a brilliant storyteller can do.”

You will see that she has many thousands of books, but obviously she can’t fit them into a photo for us to feast on, and so, here is a snippet of what she has on her shelves, and below you will find the answers to her Sunday Shelfie questionnaire.

How would you describe your collection of books? Any favourite genres?

Huge and getting bigger all the time. I even store books under beds. I particularly love my collection of Roman authors, the Loeb editions in their distinctive red jackets. I’ve owned some of them since I was a student.

How many books do you estimate you have and how are they organised, if at all?

Several thousand. When I moved from Oxfordshire to London, I apologised to the head of the removal company about the number of books I then had. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we moved that Tolkien.’ I’ve got even more now.

In percentage terms, how many of the total books on your shelves have you read?

I haven’t a clue. Sometimes people stare in astonishment at my bookshelves and ask if I’ve read all of them. Obviously not.

Which three books are top of your TBR (To Be Read) pile at the moment?

Because I review crime fiction for The Sunday Times, my TBR pile is a great deal bigger than three, and most of them are for work. I did have three on the list I was really looking forward to and I’ve just finished all of them, which feels like an accomplishment, so I’ll mention those.

1. The Women of Troy, Pat Barker

2. The End of the World is Flat, Simon Edge

3. Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars, Jenny Lindsay

Which book on your bookshelf is the most well-thumbed/do you return to the most, and why?

The Latin texts because I’ve just spent two and a half years writing a book about ancient Rome. My ancient edition of the Annals of Tacitus has literally fallen to pieces but I can’t bring myself to throw it out. 

Which book on your bookshelf do you most often buy as a gift for others, and why?

I rarely give books as gifts because taste is so individual. I’m more likely to give chocolate.

If you have a collection of writing craft books, which is your favourite and why?

I don’t. I’ve been writing since I was at junior school and I think one of the jobs of being an author is working out your own approach and style.

If you write within a particular genre, can you tell us your three favourite books within that genre (classic or contemporary):

1. Beast in View, Margaret Millar

2. No Way Out, Cara Hunter

3. The Galton Case, Ross Macdonald

I don’t really have three favourite crime novels but these are what spring to mind. All strong psychological thrillers, the kind of novels where you trust the authors because they know exactly what they’re doing. And how the story ends,

Which book on your bookshelf is your guilty pleasure?

I don’t have guilty pleasures. I can’t imagine reading self-help books but if I did, it wouldn’t worry me.

Which book on your bookshelf do you feel most guilty for not having read yet, and why?

There are loads of books I’d like to get round to but even reading around 200 a year, as I do, I’ll never get through them all. But I have read Middlemarch.

Which book would we be most surprised to find on your bookshelf?

I have the range of books you’d expect from an author, journalist and reviewer. I get sent about 20 books every week so they don’t necessarily reflect my taste.

Which book on your shelf would you take to a desert island?

Probably The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning. Or the Annals of Tacitus, if it hadn’t fallen to bits.

Which book is on your wishlist currently to join all the others on your bookshelf?

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

• Thank you so much to Joan Smith for taking part in my Sunday Shelfie. If you are new here, press the subscribe button to sign up to more of these posts:

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