Autobiography by bookshelf

If a few shelves of DVDs are enough to see my personality beaming back at me, there is some real autobiography in the big bookshelves and the books I choose to put on them.

For the majority of the thousands and thousands of books I own, I long ago forget where I actually got them. What store, what city, what country. Were they gifts, or something I picked up at some ancient sale? I know I have them, and have had them for years, but the details of where they come from is sketchy

But there are many that I will always remember, because I imprint my own memories on the books I buy in far-off lands, and have them transmitted right back to me every time I glance at the shelves.

There's the big book about the Coen brothers that I got in Melbourne on our last ever visit overseas; the sweet Art of Grendel that the wife made me go back and buy from the comic shop in Hawaii; and the gorgeous Solo hardback that I got in Brisbane.

There's the collection of Alan Davis' Batman comics that I got in Ventura, and the Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book that I got a bit down the road in San Francsisco, and the Dan Clowes book I got at the Fantagraphics store in Seattle.

There's the heft of the humongous Art Spiegelman and Eddie Campbell books that I was convinced would put me over the limit for airplane luggage, and the tiny paperback novel by the great Joe Rice that he gave when I visited New York for the first time

I got books by Bryan Talbot from all over the world - Alice in Sunderland from the Cartoon Museum in central London, one of the Grandvilles in Iceland and another in Portland, where I also found the book full of wonderful salacious gossip, and The Art of Bryan Talbot from a store in the far north of Inverness, about as far from home as I ever really get before coming around the other side.

It's not even about where I get them - I didn't buy Book Six of the Complete Love and Rockets overseas, but I took it with me and read it on a mountain in Mongolia while getting completely smashed on apple vodka in a surprisingly successful bid to get over a stomach bug, and I'll remember that every time I crack into For The Love Of Carmen.

There's less travel now, but just as many memories. There's the ill Griffith biography of Schlitzie the Pinhead that I got for my first ever Fathers Day, and the kids are getting me books by Alan Moore and Garth Marenghi for Christmas that I will treasure forever. I got the latest Talbot book - an absolute scorcher - from the shop literally around the corner. and I'll remember that too.

As long as there's a bookshelf, there's the memories that go with it.