Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Shelfie
My books are not arranged in any particular order. Copies of my own novels are stuffed next to history books or yellowed 1980s paperbacks. Whatever fits goes on the shelf. I buy more ebooks than physical books due to space constraints and I replace titles ruthlessly to make way for new purchases. But there are some special books that deserve mention:
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
1. One of the favorite books on my bookshelf is a hundred-year old edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination illustrated by Harry Clarke. Poe was the first horror writer I ever read and I found this edition in a tiny bookstore run from the first floor of someone's house in Texas. One of Clarke's illustrations for "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" inspired a scene in Mexican Gothic where Noemi sees Howard Doyle in bed.
2. One of my favorite books of all time is The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I have a pocket book edition that is tiny with a gilded edge. Wharton's prose is all sumptuous language and delicious drama. And I love her so much, at one point I had two copies of Ethan Frome. Seldom does a writer get the multiple edition treatment in my home.
3. When I was working on The Seventh Veil of Salome I walked into a small used bookstore and bumped into a copy of Flaubert's Trois Contes, which contains the short story “Herodias”. I considered it a divine sign that I needed to keep working on my book. My spoken French is rather shabby, but I do better reading it so I read “Herodias” in the original French. C'est génial.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of The Bewitching, The Seventh Veil of Salome, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Mexican Gothic, and many other books. She has won the Locus, British Fantasy and World Fantasy awards.
Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin.
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