Whenever I'm invited to somebody's house for the first time, I'll take a close look at their bookshelves. What they keep on their shelves, in my eyes, is a reflection(反映) of their personal tastes and interests. The books on a bookshelf tell the story of a life.

My own shelves are a kind of road map through my life, telling a chronological tale. First up come my favorite childhood reads, like Water ship Down and His Dark Materials. The collection then moves on to teenage things I read in school — Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale and A Clockwork Orange. Finally, we come out of full-time education and enter the real world, and this part is a reflection of my professional( 职业的) life, from the first exciting days of their work experience to the present.

If you pointed to any book on my shelves, I could name the year I got it, where I was working, and probably where I was living at the time.

▲ It is an easy way to get to know about his hopes, dreams and interests. And a big part of that story is how we arrange our books, and get on with them. It's such a personal thing, different from each other. Some want to be with their books in every room, others have them on shelves, behind glass or simply lining their floors. Each home has a story to tell through the way they live with their books.

It's often said that what we read says something about who we are. The way we fill our bookshelves might also send a message about ourselves. From the pile of books on your bedside table to your well-organized shelves, whether we notice it or not, our book collections are telling a story before a single page has been turned.