Sunday Shelfie with Marianne Power
Apologies that this week’s Sunday Shelfie is hitting your inboxes in the evening and not the morning, it has been a super busy day with the pups, lots of people coming to choose who they want, and the usual feeding, cleaning, stroking, cuddling routine.
But anyway, here we are and I can promise you it’s worth the wait. For those who are new to Sunday Shelfie, every other week an author gives you a poke around their bookshelves and answers a series of probing questions about what they’ve got gracing the shelves.
This week,
is sharing her bookshelves with you. Marianne is a journalist and the author of two books, Help Me! – How Self Help Has Not Changed My Life and Love Me! – One Woman’s Search for a Different Happy Ever After which was published in August and received rave reviews.
Marianne also has her own brilliant substack which you can find here.
But what we really want to see are those bookshelves, right? And here they are:
How would you describe your collection of books? Any favourite genres?
My book shelf suggests that I am a woman with issues! There is a lot of self-help, a lot of books on relationships, love and sex with names such as: Pussy A Reclamation, The Ethical Slut and Come as You Are. I think it’s quite full on for people coming into my flat for the first time. Most of them are books I’ve read as research for my own writing. My first book, Help Me!, was about my year spent following the rules of self-help books to see if they make you happy. My follow up, Love Me!, is about me exploring how to have a life full of love and sex as a single woman.
How many books do you estimate you have and how are they organised, if at all?
I throw out books often (to charity shops) and I recently did a big cull… maybe 70 books on my shelf at the moment.
In percentage terms, how many of the total books on your shelves have you read?
Maybe 50 per cent.
Which three books are top of your TBR (To Be Read) pile at the moment?
My last book was me exploring sex and relationships - hence all the books about orgasms. My next book will be about money so these are the ones that are on to read pile:
1. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
2. The Psychology of Money by Morgan House
3. The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth
I've also been dealing with long covid the last year or so and always have a health book on the go. I've been reading a lot by Caroline Myss who describes herself as a medical intuitive - she investigates the emotional triggers for illness.
Which book on your bookshelf is the most well-thumbed/do you return to the most, and why?