I Dream of Libraries

When I was a kid, I used to have this idea of what my house would look like "when I grow up". I considered two floors but decided on one; thought about wardrobes and was taken by the idea of a walk in; spent hours agonising over where it would be situated, and eventually landed on a deserted island somewhere near Barbados (which may have been partly a result of my desire for all the locals to have accents a la Cool Runnings).

But nothing took up more of my dream time than the huge room which (in my head at least) took up about 50% of the floorspace of that house. I wanted a library. Not a stupid "study" which had 3 or 4 bookshelves in it, no, I wanted a huge room, roughly the size of the ballroom in the Sound of Music (yes, I was strongly influenced by movies as a child, want to make something of it?)

My library would have built in bookshelves, all of which were made of some variety of dark wood, and be carved with all manner of centuries old Gothic style wood markings. And what was on those shelves..oh, you have no idea. Books, in their hundreds, just piled on top of each other. Not just my personal favourites, of which there would be multiple copies (think 4 or 5 different versions of the Princess Bride - disappointingly, so far in real life I've only managed to collect 2.), but also books that have been on my "must read list" - some have been on that list since I was in high school and still show no signs of actually being read (Suite Francaise, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, just generally pretentious sounding books now that I think about it.)

Since I'm still living with my parents, this library continues to exist, even now, only in my mind, BUT I have been collecting it's essential building blocks for years now. I've been cleaning out the garage (in this weird tradition I have of putting all my things in order when embarking on any new [and in this case, academic] adventure), and so far the books that I own have been put neatly into about 4 large cardboard boxes, and that's not including the 20-30 that reside in various places in my room, or under the coffee tables, or on my sister's "study desk" (inverted commas because she tends to study everywhere BUT this desk), or, and this is the worst one, and what prompted this cleaning surge...In my mother's unused pantry cupboard. How did it get there? Go figure. I can only assume that I was attempting to read and bake at the same time and I somehow put it down there along with whatever baking utensils I was using.

This is a very long ramble, prompted by the fact that I have finally (!!) decided to re-decorate my bedroom, after roughly 5 years with minimal changes (and even those are usually along the lines of "oh i might this johnny for that one, there my goodness what a difference that make" etc.)

I'm getting rid of all my posters, and repainting the room pink, with a darker pink ceiling, and getting rid of the desk + dresser (since I hardly ever use them, and dont really need the space). And I'm replacing this furniture with... yes. bookshelves. Well, one or two for now, and they'll be those awesome ceiling to floor kinds. I might even get them built so they're perfect for the dimensions of my room. And then I will finally have the perfect place to store my books.

It might not quite be a library, but it's a start.