The library and thoughts about snuggling up with a good book.

I want to tell you something: I’m very slow to trust a new book from a book store. It looks too shiny and new and not loved...you know what I mean? I turn it over in my hand and stare at the cover image, I read the jacket excerpt, I read a review or two about it on my iphone and I always read page 100 daring it to be everything it promises to be. I can’t help it. I can’t. I think it’s a genetic flaw because the second hand books...the second hand books are like sad little orphans needing saving and just even the look of the yellowed pages makes me snatch them up in my hot little hands and declare them to be mine forever.Either way, new or used, I always mean for them to end up here in the library, but they usually end up all over the house. Actually, books to be used for art and beautiful old books to photograph are in my studio book shelves, on the desks and tables, in the steamer trunks and generally all over the place up there. Current reads are in my bedroom, on end tables, on my bed, under my bed, under my pillows...ok, no idea how that happened.And I reread my favorites...all the time. Do you do that? I usually write “V” and a date on the first page to keep track of the rereads. And I spend my time here cuddled under saved blankets and quilts like this wild handmade granny square blanket saved from a garage sale.This room has a door so no one has to know you’re in here. This room has the only TV in the house but no one ever watches it. (That reminds me, why am I paying for the cable anyway?) This room is half way in the basement so the cats, and occasionally our neighbourhood family of raccoons, come knocking on the windows. This room has shelves full of Terry Pratchetts and Agatha Christies (I really have to stop trying to save every Agatha Christie book I come across) and Diane Ackermans, Carol Shields, Nick Bantocks, Naomi Wolfs...just a wonderfully eclectic collection of books...even the occasional guilty pleasure, like Katie Fford.I love having my lunch here when I'm at home. But now lunch is over and I must put down this good book and finish up the rest of my work for today and also be the good housewife and put in a load of laundry...(Morgan's such a poser)