Time to Read

We are a reading family. Just look at what's piled on my nightstand.



Here's the floor next to Roger's side of the bed.



This is Caroline's nightstand.



I was thinking about this recently when I visited my friend Ann's house. Now, Ann is a lovely woman. Her house is organized, immaculate, beautifully decorated. And there are almost no books around. She was showing me something in her room recently, and I was taken aback by the neatly pressed and bright white linen lace pieces draped over each nightstand... Each table had an artful arrangement of lamp, or clock, or lovely knick-knack. They looked model-home gorgeous.....but so odd, without a book to be seen.

I had a boyfriend in law school who invited me to visit his home and meet his family in Utah. I remember that it took me a while to figure out what seemed weird and cold about the house...and then it dawned on me that there wasn't a single piece of reading material visible. No books or magazines anywhere. They did have a tv in the dining room, which was a bizarre revelation to me.

And that makes me think of my aunt, who is a wonderful funny and creative woman. But she doesn't read books. Period. She loves looking at magazines, but she just doesn't like to read. And she has horrid insomnia. I can't even imagine how long and dull an insomnia-awake night would feel if I couldn't read.

Books are warm and comforting to me, and an absolute essential in our home. We have a lot of bookshelves and we still need more.

Caroline has a shelf full of books in her room and she mightily resists my trying to weed out the younger-age picture books, because she still loves to read them.



We have shelves in our room (possibly to be converted to become built-ins with window seats someday) and they're always bulging.



And of course, I need my quilting books and law books and other books in my office.



This doesn't even show you the books arranged on the coffee table in the living room and the shelf in the downstairs hall and the area in the family room where we are planning a big set of shelves built in along one whole wall. (I'm too lazy to take the camera downstairs at the moment...)

Books are part of what make a house a home to me. We couldn't live without them around here.