Member-only story
Do You Have a Library?
Where’s your happy place?
My dream house — or even my current house, remodeled by someone with far more money than I have — includes a library. A real library, defined as a separate room or nook or designated space, solely for book storage and comfortable reading.
My dream library
My library will have a fireplace for atmosphere and cozy warmth; overstuffed, oversized chairs in which I can lose myself while reading; lots of natural light as well as different lighting options; a tin ceiling with a cool design; a coffeemaker or electric tea kettle; my laptop and desktop computer; a desk . . . and books. Everywhere, books.
Hardcover and softcover. Old and new. Uniform sets and mismatched thrift-store finds. Fiction and non-fiction. Children’s and adult.
I don’t need them to look pretty; I only need to know that I’ve read them and I like them. At one point we had twenty-one sets of bookshelves in our house, tall and short — a total of seventy-five shelves — and they were jam-packed full. I also currently have a couple of large boxes of books in the attic that we’re saving for the maybe-someday grandkids and have given away boxes full over the years.
Though I’ve sifted and donated in recent years to keep only those books I can’t bear to part with and that…
