Archive | August, 2008

The Library

1 Aug

It took a lot longer than I intended to complete my “library but its done!  

Many weeks ago, I dedicated a day to visiting to Ikea with my wonderful handymen . We returned with boxes full of bookshelves which they spent several hours putting together for me. They are gorgeous. (The shelves, not the handymen). Even more gorgeous is the sight of them filled with my beloved books.

It’s my own little slice of heaven, complete with a comfy reading chair courtesy of the Ikea As-Is department. I often find myself just standing and looking at the library in admiration. I’ve always had this vision of a big light-filled room lined with white floor to ceiling bookshelves all filled with books.  While the library is not quite as huge as the one of my imaginings, its still beautiful.

This is the first time in my life that I’ve had all my books in one location and in easy view. As I set about arranging them I swung back and forth between thinking “Oh my goodness, I have a LOT of books” and “Oh, I don’t have as many books as I thought.” The jury is still out on my final conclusion.

As I organized the books I made some interesting observations:

  1. My favorite writers of fiction/literature are Alice Walker, Yvonne Vera, Amy Tan, Paulo Coehlo and Chinua Achebe. (based on # of books)
  2. My favorite non-fiction writers are Marianne Williamson (no surprise there), Osho (big surprise there – or maybe not) and Neale Donald Walsch.
  3. A LOT of my books are Oprah’s Book Club picks (absolutely no surprise there).
  4. I love African literature (makes sense).
  5. I love women writers (makes sense).
  6. I have a lot of half-read books.
  7. I have even more unread books  (40+ to be exact).
  8. I have WAY more books of the romance genre than I realized. (Hmmm, I wonder where I got all those unrealistic expectations of relationships which plagued my twenties?).
  9. As far as I’m concerned, the line between fiction and non-fiction is very fuzzy. Example: If I love a work of fiction so much that it’s characters are real to me, doesn’t it belong in the non-fiction section? And which section does a Million Little Pieces belong in? Fiction? Memoir? More importantly, what’s the difference anyway?
  10. Finally, and most shockingly I believe that if I had to choose between only being able to buy shoes OR books for the rest of my life, I would have to say farewell to the shoes! Shocking but true.

If you’re interested in seeing exactly what fills the shelves of the library, check out my online library. This is a digital representation of my reading life. You can see what books I am currently reading, have read and want to read. I am still working on getting all the books I own into the library, but I’ve got well over 500 books in it currently.

I leave you with this:

“One of the questions that haunts me – it’s a question for philosophers and brain science- is, if you’ve forgotten a book, is that the same as never having read it?
Tom Stoppard

One last thought. Have you noticed that almost everything I write about is about books in one way or another?

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