You Are What Your Read (by Roland Soong)

There is a famous saying from A. Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826): "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es" (translation: Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are).  The assumption is that your physical being is the sum total of all that you ate and drank.  Likewise, the assumption might be that your cultural being is the sum total of all that you read.  It may be for this reason that this previous post What Is On My Bookshelf generated so much interest.  However, that bookshelf in Hong Kong belonged to my father.  My own bookshelves are in New York City.  And so this particular page is about what is on my bookshelves.

My New York City apartment has one living room and one bedroom.  That is significant in terms of where my books are placed.  Once upon a time, I ran a home-based business, which entitled me to include rent and utility expenses as business tax deductions.  However, the deductions are not 100%.  Rather, I would have to state that my office area is in the living room (40% of the total area of the apartment) and I can deduct only that portion.  As such, this meant that I kept all business-related materials (such as computers and reference books) in the living room and my personal materials (such as literary books) in the bedroom.

The following two parts contain a lot of photographs, which means that they will take a long time to download.