Photo by Lori Eanes

Long-married novelists Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman are of one mind about the acquiring, handling and lending of their books — key to any successful marriage between booklovers. Michael is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and many other books, the most recent of which is The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Ayelet is the author of the “Mommy-Track Mysteries” series (with such hilarious titles as The Big Nap and Playdate with Death) and the novels Daughter’s Keeper and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. The dynamic duo spoke to me from — and about — their book-filled home in Berkeley, California.

Approximately how many books do you currently own?

Michael: 1200?

Ayelet: 1500? We’ve never counted. We just keep piling them up. We bring them in and we pile them up. We are always short a bookshelf.

What kind of shelves do you have?

M: Built-ins. Some are old glass-front art deco built-ins. There are built-ins in my office.

A: And we’re making the kids share a room, because the guest room has a huge triple bookcase and we’re not willing to give up the shelf space, so the kids have to share the other room.

Do you organize your books in any particular fashion?

A: Michael has a collection of first edition, small press, science fiction and fantasy stuff, from the 1940s and ‘50s — those are all together.

M: Other than that, hardbacks are together and paperbacks are together. And I have my reference all together in my office.

A: I have a shelf of crappy, throwaway mysteries. And my law books and reference are all together. We don’t alphabetize at all.

M: No, we’ve never alphabetized.

A: We did Mylar all our hardbacks for a while, but then we got bored. Theoretically, we are Mylaring our hardbacks. But everything else is just tossed together. So it’s a big salad. Alphabetizing doesn’t make any sense, though, because when you add a book, what? You move everything?

M: Yeah, that’s what people do.

A: We don’t do that.

Do you lend your books?

M: Sort of. Unwillingly.

A: Grudgingly. I hate lending but I have to because I want to borrow from some people; but it’s awful because I don’t give them back. Nobody gives books back. Michael’s mother is the only person who returns borrowed books.

Do you treat books as sacred, or do you write in them, dog-ear the pages, break the spines?

A: I dog-ear.

M: I dog-ear.

A: We don’t write in them. We get very angry when the children mess them up. And they do — they eat them.

M: Some books are more sacred than others, but they’re mostly not sacred. Paperbacks get very harshly treated. I have no problem with leaving books face down, cracking spines.

How do you mark your place in a book?

A: I dog-ear the page.

M: I’ve never been able to make a habit of marking my place. Ever since I was a child. I guess I mostly just try to remember where I was. Sometimes I mark it with the flap, if there’s a flap. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I dog-ear the page. Sometimes I don’t. I just can’t form a habit.

A: But I’ve never understood those bookmarks. I can’t get into that.

Where do you get most of your books?

A: We buy them. We buy them at independent bookstores. Every time I go to a signing and nobody comes, like today, I feel a moral obligation to drop a hundred bucks.

M: I’m a big used and rare bookstore person. I prefer buying old books.

A: We get some readers’ copies from publishers, but we buy way more than we get.

M: And also, when you write a children’s book, suddenly you get a lot of children’s books.

Do you have a particularly prized possession?

M:  Some of the science fiction and fantasy collection I prize. But the books I prize most were my father’s, like his old Modern Library collection that he amassed when he was young. And I have some books — like my copy of The Magic Mountain, and Darkness at Noon — those are both hardbacks that were my grandfather’s.

A: I have a paperback book called The Powers of Desire from when I was in college, and my best friend from college and I still, to this day, spend many hours giggling over passages in that book. So that’s my most prized book.

Where’s your favorite place to read?

A: Bed.

M: Bed.

Do you ever leave home without a book?

M: Yeah, and then I’m sorry. That’s another habit that I always meant to get into, but I always think of it when it’s too late. So I’m always looking around for the free paper that somebody left under their lunch, with the tomato soup stain, so that I’ll have something to read.

A: Yeah, we’re bad at that. But we never go on a trip without multiple books. That’s actually the only sort of traveling we do — we go to places to read.