Photos by Lori Eanes

Approximately how many books do you currently own?
I don’t even have a clue. I have a roomful of books that are constantly around me and then books distributed throughout the house in every room. Including the kitchen. I’ve never thought to count them.

What kind of shelves do you have?
I have Euro-design shelves that were made for my study (the room that counts). The outlying shelves are all also custom-built into various nooks. We did a remodel in 1991 and built all the shelves in ... and then of course found that there weren’t enough.

Do you organize your books in any particular fashion?
I certainly do. I separate by genre and alphabetize by author. I keep the critical books around me in my study and the poetry in our salon, and the fiction is in the other side of the house, in what has turned into our exercise room. My husband has his books in his study and I sometimes borrow a book from there but he prefers that I use his books in his study and not carry them away.

Do you lend your books?
No. I give books away, but I am very loath to lend them because I then feel that I have to keep track of them. Usually, when I finish a project, I remove the books that no longer pertain. If the project is finished then I feel I’m finished with the subject, and I like to deaccession, so to speak. I only like to have around me the books that I need for whatever I’m working on.

For instance, after finishing my Billy Tipton bio, I gave all the jazz books and such to the Stanford library when I gave them the archive of the biography — the taped interviews and drafts and so on — because I wanted to keep those materials together. Bios are a nexus of a particular kind of research; it’s historical, and it really does cluster, clump, focus on an individual. So I thought those things all ought to be together in a library where they could be consulted by other people.

Do you treat your books as sacred, or do you write in them, dog-ear pages, break spines?
I write in them, and I think that’s treating them very seriously indeed. If you write in something, you’ve really engaged in it and made a record of where you found something you felt you really learned from.

I don’t usually dog-ear pages if I think it might ruin a book — if it’s really beautifully printed or something.

But I was licensed to write in books in grad school when I was taking a course with Harold Bloom and I learned about Blake’s annotations of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Blake gets into sort of quarrels with Reynolds and writes all sorts of very interesting notes in the margins. And I thought, ”Yeah, that’s really the way to read a book!”

How do you mark your place in a book?
I have a stack of Post-its next to my bed that I use. I almost always am reading very purposefully, even in bed before I go to sleep, and when you read in bed, you very often forget things. I might be reading for research or checking out the competition and quite often come across something I need to remember for some purpose. So I have to mark down what I thought it might be good for, or else I might not remember in the morning.

Where do you get most of your books?
I buy them everywhere. I use Amazon for university press books, which are hard to get ahold of. And I use the searches for books on the Net, because that seems to me a fabulous use of search technology.

Sitting in front of me right now is a prize I found. Sylvia Plath’s very first boyfriend was Richard Sassoon and he’s kind of disappeared — nobody can find him; I couldn’t find him — but at one point it occurred to me he was interested in writing. When he was at Yale, writing letters to Plath — wonderful letters that are at the Lilly Library — he was taking creative writing courses and was kind of composing things while writing to her. So I thought, “That’s a writer’s practice. I wonder if he ever wrote a book?” I looked at Stanford and couldn’t come up with anything. Then I went to AddAll.com and searched and found a book by him. And it’s signed by him and it’s a very interesting book. That was a great find.

Do you have a particularly prized possession?
On my birthday one year (a serious birthday) my husband surprised me with a copy of a limited edition book Ted Hughes published, called Howls & Whispers, that I’d seen at the Emory University library. Reading Howls & Whispers gave me the theme of my book about their marriage, which is titled Her Husband.

I came home and told my husband about it — just in passing; it was one of those just-off-the-plane debriefing conversations — and he found the book and gave it to me for my birthday. It was really a breathtaking present. I just love it and it’s been fabulous to use it in my research.

It makes me a little sorry to say that, because I’m not very protective of my books and haven’t taken the best care of it. Its linen box has some stains on it. We had a party and I think some people dropped some crumbs on it. But it’s OK; it’s better to show people books and have them blown away by them than to lock them away.

Mine is copy 33 out of 110 and it’s signed by Ted Hughes. That means a lot to me — to become aware every now and then that Ted Hughes’ handwriting is in the room with me.

Where’s your favorite place to read?
Anywhere I happen to be. Standing up in line where I would otherwise be utterly bored, that’s a good place. I always read the newspaper in the same place, next to my coffee pot. And in bed. That’s where I read the most.

Do you ever leave home without a book?
No.