While out with SLJ today we brought two paintings to her friend Mork's house. I got to feed my junkie habit of looking at strangers' bookshelves and trying to extrapolate their whole personality and life history from that. Mork's was "sf nerd with good taste, daring erotica and how-to-write books mixed in" and there were much subtler points to be appreciated which I have already forgotten. His gf's books also placed her firmly in my mind: heavy on the cool sex/feminism, yoga/spirituality, knitting, veggie cookbooks. I know this is a game and not really accurate and people are people. But I like playing it. Can't you picture them? Don't they go together well?
Mork was fun. We hung the paintings. He sweetly gave me a book, Humility Garden, which he suddenly felt that I must read. Woot! People should just give me books all the time.
as an exercise you could select not-quite-random books, maybe first randomly pick 3 main categories or subjects and then randomly within those categories pick an assortment of books to fill out a book collection of a particular size. Then, do a writing exercise to describe what that person would be like. Character creation from the books they keep.
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