October is Arts and Humanities Month nationally and in Little Rock. Americans for the Arts has identified a different arts topic to be posted for each day in the month. Today’s topic is “On My Bookshelf.”

I love books.  I have thousands. I have not read them all, but I’ve read most of them.

These are from my grandfather Alvin Moses Carter’s set of encyclopedias. They were in his house for decades. Now they are in my office at work, where they sit near his steamer trunk. He died three years before I was born, but I feel connected to him when I see these items every day.

Also in my office are some books on cultural policy and history.  I’ve had the opportunity to meet Frohnmayer, Alexander,and Florida and discuss their books with them.

At home, I have books everywhere. I once tried to group them by subject and put in alphabetical order, but there were just too many, and they have to fit in a variety of spaces. These paper backs are on shelves that were built in my apartment when a doorway was filled in. Two of these books served as inspiration for Broadway musicals in 1949, each with heroines from Little Rock.

These two books face forward on one of my bookshelves (hiding some reference books).  Little Rock native Ben Piazza’s book is a fictionalized account of his childhood. He wrote it while appearing in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway. The other book is an oral history of Angels in America and is one of the best books I have read about theatre and history in a long time.