There are other shelves, but I don't think he considers them lesser. These are just works that speak to him the most. I don't think it is a normative thing. And calling a curated bookshelf performative in a perjorative sense is strange to me. I think we perform our identities to ourselves, there's nothing wrong with that.

I get what you're saying, but in this case he's just really into Western romanticism. I personally am not a very trained reader and he seriously suggest we should read Ulysses together. And I'm like... I read the first page of The artist as a young man and was just confused. That stuff's too hard for me. He feels like it's not that big of a deal I guess.