In our home there are stacks of books everywhere. This is in spite of the fact that we have a large amount of space set aside for book shelves. Our shelves are more than full and we’re running out of storage space in outbuildings for books. It’s just that we both love to read and we tend to have a number of different projects happening at the same time.

For me, the stacks are remainders of past projects still to be put away, current projects, and upcoming projects.

I spend a lot of time on the couch and so there are book piles associated with the couch. On the blanket chest in front of the couch, besides other books, there is a starter stack of books for a current project:

W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk.
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.
There are also printouts – issues of the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society’s The Freedmen’s Record, deeds from Beaufort County South Carolina deed books for the sale of land in 1873 where a freedmen’s school was located, and so forth.

On the back of the couch is another stack, different focus:

Will Ousler, editor, As Tough As They Come. (1951 paperback – stories by Hammett, Cain and others. My favorite story is Steve Fisher’s Goodbye Hannah.)
N.K. Sanders, Prehistoric Art in Europe (1985, part of The Pelican History of Art).
Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (In a binder below the stack I have a printouts of Eric Hofstader’s “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt” (1955) and “Pseudo-Conservatism Revisited: A Postscript” (1962). Hofstader’s insightful analysis of what decades later has become current Republican Party policy.)
Bessinger and Smith, A Concordance to Beowulf.
Bonnie Young, A Walk Through the Cloisters (1979 Metropolitan Museum of Art guidebook).

Corner of my desk in another part of the house:

Stephanie Leary, WordPress for Web Designers.
Vera Caspary, Laura (Feminist Press Edition, I also have stashed away somewhere the original 1947 hardcover edition – a great noir film was made based on the novel).
Raymond Chandler, Killer in the Rain.
Raymond Chandler, Trouble Is My Business.
Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot (1939, this is a post-war edition).
Ian Lancashire, Using TACT with Electronic Texts: A Guide to Text-Analysis Computing Tools.
G.C. Macaulay, The English Works of John Gower, volume II (Early English Text Society edition).
Paul Studer and E.G.R. Waters, editors, Historical French Reader, Medieval Period.
Lacey Beck, Polygamy Preferred (1935, 1942 – The Woodford Press 1952 edition).
Theodore H. White, The View from the Fortieth Floor (1960).
Hindley, Langley, and Levy, Old French Dictionary.

And of course, since no stack should be unadorned, there are 2 sets of tie rod ends for the Honda ATV on the stack of books on the corner of the desk. Work to do that is not bookish. On the floor leaning against the end of the desk are two more tall stacks of books. Of course.