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What do Harvard students keep on their bookshelves? In this photo essay, Crimson photographers visit students across campus, asking them what they choose to store — or display — on their shelves and why.

Coby Y. Garcia ’25

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“My bookshelf has a lot of small things that I have gotten during my travels,” Coby Y. Garcia ’25 said.

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The Currier House resident highlighted his international shot glass collection.

“I have shot glasses from Egypt — one from Egypt, one from Indiana, one from Paris. I went as a tourist to Texas,” he said.

Garcia said that his favorite item is a Buc-ee's stuffed animal from a memorable trip to Texas to visit a friend who lives there. He said that the stuffed animal reminds him of the uniqueness of his friends.

S. Max Fan ’26

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S. Max Fan ’26, an English and Mathematics concentrator at the College, has no shortage of reading material on his bookshelf.

“I stupidly thought that I’d want a bunch of books to read while I was here,” he said. “So I came here in my first suitcase with sort of probably half a shelf of books, which is more than any person really needs.”

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As an English concentrator, Fan has to read about three books a week, meaning his book collection has only grown. His shelf contains many academic works, from his favorite book, Langdon Hammer’s “James Merrill: Life and Art,” to resources used in his work at the Radcliffe Institute, like Judith Arcana’s “Grace Paley’s Life Stories.”

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But not all of his books are heavy literature. Sitting among the historical monographs, poetry, and Shakespeare, there are also guides for goat owners and an illustrated children’s book set in Boston.

“It’s really funny as a gift, I think, to give somebody a book that’s entirely sincere about raising milk goats in this modern world,” he said.

Yena L. Im ’27

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DeWolfe resident Yena L. Im ’27 covers the top of her bookshelf with bouquets of dried flowers.

“Whenever I get flowers, I dry them so that I can keep them forever because I don’t like throwing them away when they die,” she said.

Some of the flowers are kept in old bottles of juice and kombucha, two of her favorite drinks.

Further down on the bookshelf are stacks of books, which Im explained are all for her Social Studies 10a and 10b classes.

“A lot of reading for social studies,” she noted.

Max C. Surprenant ’26

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“I really enjoy collecting books,” said Max C. Surprenant ’26. “I have a larger collection at home, and I feel like every semester I choose to bring in some that I have read and I like to reread, and others that I hope to get to over the course of the semester.”

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Despite his extensive book collection, the Winthrop House resident says his favorite items on the shelf are his radio and CD player.

“My family has always collected CDs, and so it sort of reminds me of the bookshelves I have at home that are full of a lot of CDs that are from my parents’ collections that they had in college,” he said. “So I feel like I’m kind of continuing that tradition.”

Surprenant said that he likes how the older technology stops his tendency of switching quickly between music on his phone.

“You kind of just pay a little bit more attention to what you’ve chosen,” he explained.

Irati Evworo Diez ’25-26

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For Irati Evworo Diez ’25-26, her bookshelf is a “portable home” that has moved around with her over the years.

“My sense of home has become really associated to the objects I own, rather than the places I’ve lived,” she said. “And so this bookshelf is super representative of that.”

Her bookshelf’s most recent addition is a plaster hand — a mold of her own. Im said it was made by one of her friends at the Carpenter Center.

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Diez said that her porcelain tea set — which she’s had since she was five — is one of her favorite things in the world.

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Perhaps her most prized possession, however, is her copy of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”

“This is my favorite book of all time,” she said. “In Hum 10, when we got asked what object would be saved from a fire in our house, I said my copy of ‘War and Peace’ that I stole from my high school library.”