Flex Mentallo

As an afterthought, my favorite comic artist [haven't opened my Art Edition yet, but found these on the net]. I wish he produced more!

I used to be a professional artist, until a severe back problem did me in. Books compensate somewhat for that. For me, fine art, natural history illustration, sci fi, fantasy, etc all relate to and connect with the collected editions in my other rooms. In retirement, I thought I would focus on reading my collected editions, yet so far, it has been mostly the non-comic-related books in my living room instead. Go figure. But I love both the idea and the reality of 'living in a library'! The Japanese have a term, 'tsdundoku', which roughly speaking means 'one who accumulates more books than they can ever read'. That's me, I suppose, but my book buying has fallen to a trickle, so maybe I do have a fighting chance of reading my way through everything I have! But I also remember what Mark Twain said to the person who visited his extensive library - in answer to the obvious question, he replied 'What's the point of having a library if you've read all the books?'

The so-called Flemish Primitives - a misnomer if ever there was one, as they were far ahead of their Italian contemporaries.

Orientalism...

Some particular interests include Japanese prints...

And to finish off, a few details of these...

Last but not least, Fine Art - my latest project, now nearly as complete as its going to get [in the sense of covering my particular interests]. From prehistoric cave painting to abstract art. I hacked Ikea's Kallax shelves to build a better version.

I keep the Small Press Fine Editions behind glass doors.

Fiction, and a poetry [very little of the latter]

History et al [I used to have a lot more, but I traded most of them for art books - see below.]

Mainly palaeontology

Okay, so, begging everyone's indulgence for straying off topic, I hope no-one minds if I post a few pics of the books in my living room. These are predominantly sci fi, fantasy, world literature, poetry, natural history, photography, cinema, mythology and world history. Still in the process of putting everything here in brodart covers. These are my biggest books, including Taschen's wonderful Little Nemo and Krazy Kat volumes, which are absolutely huge. Lots of outsize photography and natural history illustration here - I really like bird illustration.

They do some brilliant fine art books - I'll take a shot of my art book library for you.

I hope for everyone's sake they republish everything, and I think they will. For example, Marvel has announced they are republishing the first few Marvel Masterworks, after all these years!