On The Shelf with Chiki Sarkar, founder and publisher, Juggernaut Books

While her publishing house Juggernaut Books is known for pushing the envelope with non-fiction titles in the Indian market, Chiki says her shelves contain more fiction titles. She studied modern history and English at the University of Oxford, so an affinity for fiction seems natural. Some of her oldest fiction books were acquired during childhood and her teen years, like her copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince, Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, and Collette’s The Shackle. As a young editor in London in her early twenties, she would often buy classic Penguins at Hay-on-Wye, the famed Welsh ‘town of books’, known for the Hay festival and quaint secondhand bookshops. She treasures the Everyman Library Classics set from the UK which she received when she joined Random House India in 2006 as the Founding Editor. Another set of books close to her heart is the US edition of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, because of their unique jacket designs.

On having Fun with Colour and Arranging Books in no Particular Order

Much like the quirky bookshelves she highlights on her Instagram grid, Chiki’s own shelves are colourful. She says if you’re using plywood to custom-make shelves then use it as an opportunity to add colour to your space. Her shelves are a warm teal that softens under lamp light, but looks quite striking when sunlight from her garden pours in through the large bay windows.

Chiki’s love for colour extends to her books too: she keeps all dustjackets, and likes placing all her books vertically with their spines facing outwards. Books that are part of a collection or within a common series are placed together, but other than those basic ones there are no rules. She shares the shelves with her husband Alex Travelli, so they are home to a blended library. “When we moved into our new home, I was in such a hurry to unpack that I just arranged the books in any old order, so there is no organisation to our shelves, much to my husband’s upset!”

On the Oldest and Newest Books on her Shelf

Chiki says, "The oldest would be the classics I read as a teen—I think the copy of War And Peace I read at 13, so I would have bought that then. Alex might have a few books he read as a 5-year-old. As for the newest, we buy books all the time, so there will be a number of books that were published this very month!”

Images courtesy, Chiki Sarkar