I know. I know. You think this is going to be an article about eyes, because of that quotation: “the eyes are the windows to the soul,” attributed to everyone from the bible to Cicero, to Leonardo da Vinci, to the French poet Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, to Shakespeare.

But it’s not.

It’s about … I’ll give you two seconds to guess, and then I’ll tell you.

Okay. According to me and my own particular desire to decipher the inner working of someone I’ve just met – i.e., what makes them tick – eyes can deceptive. Body language experts tell us that:

Two arched eyebrows signify interest and curiosity.

A single arched eyebrow indicates surprise.

A wink (no surprise here) is flirtatious.

Eyes looking to the upper right, upper left, straight ahead, and … blah, blah, blah … mean sincerity, deceptiveness, cunning, this, that, and the other thing.

Maybe there’s some truth to some of it, but a clever manipulator knows exactly how to fake forthrightness, interest, compassion, curiosity, etc., and could easily feign such eye movement.

So, for me, the windows to the soul are not eyes. They are, of course, bookshelves.

Or, at least they used to be.

My first experiences studying bookshelves were as a babysitter, and it was quite a surprise to me to realize that some parents, who lived in nice homes, had nice jobs, drove nice cars, and even belonged to fancy country clubs, had no bookshelves at all. Maybe a closet shelf for cookbooks in the kitchen. And in the den, an end table with a shelf a TV guide. But …

Nothing like the floor-to-ceiling walls of books in my parents’ living room, which eagerly received every Book of the Month Club selection, as well as classic like The Count of Monte Cristo, Ivanhoe, The Wandering Jew, A Tale of Two Cities, and Crime and Punishment. All my father’s favorite novels from his childhood.

So, the lack of a bookshelf in a home was almost as good as titles on a shelf to indicate what was (or wasn’t) going on between a grownup’s earlobes … when they weren’t working, playing tennis, or gossiping with friends.

Sometimes – not at a babysitting job but at sleepovers at the house of girlfriends – we discovered books we’d heard about but were too young to take out of a library, like Payton Place, The Valley of the Dolls, or The Carpetbaggers. But after reading the “good parts,” they got boring pretty fast. Because, frankly, Wuthering Heights. Rebecca, and The Count of Monte Cristo (adultery, betrayal, drugs, false-imprisonment, poisoners, treason, insanity, murder … they have it all) were much sexier.

My next excursion into reading a person’s soul off his bookshelf didn’t occur until I moved to New York City, got my own apartment, and started dating: adult males who also had their own apartment AND their own bookshelves.

Before I get to that, though, I should probably tell you what (ages 20 to 32) was on my bookshelf. But first, I’ll describe my apartment. It was a five-flight walkup, railroad tenement, with a bathtub in the kitchen, a toilet with an overhead pull chain tank, and a gas-fired heating element in the kitchen. No heat in the other rooms.

Most of my furniture, as well as that of my friends (we were very picturesque and had Big Dreams) was retrieved from sidewalks (giant wood spools for electric cables left behind by Con Ed workers made great coffee tables) or hand-me-downs from family. My bookshelf was six cinderblocks with four shelves extended between them. On those shelves (if memory serves) were paperbacks of every mystery that Agatha Christie wrote, the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, a bunch of short stories by William Saroyan, everything O. Henry ever wrote, The Chicago Manual of Style, a Webster’s Dictionary, a Roget’s Thesaurus, a Bartlett’s Book of Quotations, and heaven knows what else. Probably some Superman and Spiderman comics books.

Deciphering my soul, my interests, my ambitions, my proclivities, my … essence … wouldn’t have been all that hard based on such an unsubtle collection. And it would have come as a surprise to no one that I was a romantic, that I became a mystery writer, that I married a law enforcement officer, and that I love words.

As to the apartments of the men I almost dated, dated, or visited as friends, I honestly wish I could remember. That I don’t is probably a clue as to why I didn’t marry any of them.

And this is where it gets tricky. The me who grew up and entered the dating world had actual bookshelves with books on them to perceive, study, and evaluate. Nowadays, however, with so many people reading books on digital devices that never see a paper, a page, or a bookshelf, the souls of those who are reading them remain tight-lipped. Homes with no bookshelves reveal nothing. Humans with no bookshelves reveal nothing.

So … what is one to do? Where will we find the secrets to the souls of future friends? Or lovers? Or potential mates? Steal their phones, open their “digital libraries,” and … and … and …

Problematical, isn’t it? And pathetic.

The only solution I can come up with is pretty much the same as what I felt when I was a teen, babysitting for grownups and evaluating their houses. If they had no bookshelf, even if I liked them, and even if, in their current incarnations, they are reading digital books, still … THEY DO NOT HAVE BOOKSHELVES.

And since books on a bookshelf are windows to the soul … well. That really tells you all you have to know. Doesn’t it?

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2026. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com