I live in an apartment that has been used to house foreign teachers for some time. There were at least four different people who lived in this place at one time or another. And each of them seems to have left different types of things here. Some of it was fairly innocuous, some of it was just garbage, and some of it was highly personal. Like books.

A person's choice of books or music is almost like a relief map of their personality. Certain assumptions can (and will) be made about them based on their preferences. If there's nothing but romance novels on the shelf, it's safe to guess that it probably wasn't a football loving guy. And if it's all military history and investment books, it's probably not the property of a dreamy young woman. Of course, if more than one person has left things, it's a little harder to guess what kind of person left which stuff.

For example:

There were a couple of Kurt Vonnegut books left here. Well, a lot of people like Vonnegut, so that doesn't narrow anything down very much. And a couple of Heinlein books. Inexplicably, a lot of people also like Heinlein, but they usually tend to be guys, so that doesn't narrow it down much.

[Theory 1: At least one guy lived here]

There were also some cookbooks. A lot of people like to cook. Or think they're going to learn to cook. Since I haven't seen anything like a food stain on any of the cookbooks, I tend to think that they belonged to someone in that second category.

There was also a couple of Agatha Christie books. And a couple of spy novels

More specifically, there were three John Gardner books. Including "On Becoming A Novelist" and "The Art Of Fiction." So there was one person here who was probably an English major at school. An English major who was planning on becoming a writer. An English major who was probably planning on getting a novel out of their experiences in Japan.

[Theory 2: One guy and one English Major]

There were also a couple of well reviewed, recently published novels. Novels that were mostly about young, resilient women dealing with a man's world that they had to break the rules in.

[One guy and one female English major]

But there were also a couple of magazines, all from fall 1997 or spring 1998. Two Newsweeks, one Atlantic monthly, and a Maclean's.

[One of them was probably a Canadian]

Two issues of Shape magazine.

[So the female English major was the Canadian...]

Two Victoria's Secret catalogs and a copy of Cheri ("Nipple Hickey Lesbos Leave their mark"?!)

[...or not.]


And on and on it goes. Who left the copy of The Basketball Diaries? Who wrote notes about all the words they had to look up in The God Of Small Things on the inside of the front cover and explanations of what they thought were important thematic points in the margins? Was it the same person who left a handwritten note in a copy of Memnoch The Devil describing (what I can only consider) a profoundly crappy idea for another vampire-coming-of-age story. I guess I'll never know. And in a way, that's probably best. I don't really want to know whose life and dreams filled up this apartment before I moved in. And I really don't want to know what kind of person chooses such shitty books to schlep across the Pacific ocean.

Come on, four Agatha Christie books?