After much searching online, I discovered that the closest thing I could find to the LED light I mentioned a few days ago is the one pictured here which, apparently, you can get for about $2 from Amazon.com.

I got mine for $4.98 at Half Price books, but if you’re doing an Amazon order anyway, tossing in one or two of these might not be a bad idea. (Ordering JUST a light would be a waste of shipping costs.)

This is the light that’s working for me, at the moment. As with any such thing, your mileage may vary.

I have to ask, though, what’s your ideal booklight? What do you use now?

I’ve seen those cute little LED clip-on lights at Borders and Barnes and Nobel and resisted buying them, but last weekend we were at Half Price Books and they had them for $5 so I bought one with the intent of testing it for reading in bed.

Now, you wouldn’t think light for reading in bed would be a problem if you saw our bed, because it has a lightbridge that casts illumination down on us from above the headboard, but the problem is that if you’re holding a book and reclining in the bed as well, a shadow is cast on the book. We do have an overhead light, but that’s too bright, especially if I’m awake and Fuzzy is asleep, which often happens when he’s working a more normal schedule than the vampire hours he’s been keeping since his return from San Jose, and while I often joke that our back neighbor’s outdoor lighting is bright enough to read by, the light is blocked if the wind blows the trees the wrong way, and gone if they remember to actually flip the light switch (which is a rare, but possible occurrence). Hence the LED.

I have to say it’s impressive. Light enough for a paperback. Completely bendy. Has a clip wide enough to stick on the screen of my laptop so I can see my control keys if I’m computing in the dark, and they claim the battery will last three years. Also, the light is bright without being harsh, which is great for working with text.

So, I spent about $5, and I’m tickled to death by the light, and I suspect many of my family will find similar gadgets in their Christmas stockings or Hanukkah stashes this year.

Writing about having to throw out a piece of luggage on my main blog the other day has me thinking about literary luggage. Yes, another list, but as I’m a little muzzy-headed I’m not committing to a number.

1. Jane in A Dangerous Dress has her luggage stolen (she thinks) early in the novel, and is mortified because her grandmother’s dress is in it.
2. Anne in Anne of Green Gables arrives on-scene with a very old carpetbag, with one handle that is partly broken. She manages to find romance even in that.
3. Speaking of carpetbags, we can’t forget The Importance of Being Earnest and a plot twist involving one, or rather, a valise, as well as a lost baby.
4. Hemingway’s Suitcase is a novel that doesn’t just feature a suitcase, but a stolen suitcase that contained everything Hemingway had written up to 1923, which is found by an author decades later in Los Angeles.
5. And finally, another carpetbag – one owned by a Miss Mary Poppins – that must have been somehow multidimensional, because it held simply everything.

A blog-buddy of mine posted an entry, recently, in which she stated that she’s not having a good relationship with books right now. I know what she means – I go through stages where I’m just not in the mood to read anything, and when I try I end up wanting to fling the book away from me and spend a week in a Hawaii bed and breakfast doing nothing but sunbathe, swim, and sleep. No books, no computer….well…no books.

Except of course that travel makes me want to read. I don’t know what it is. We went to France a few years ago at Christmas, and what I remember most (other than the gay potters who adopted me) are the long evenings in the 2nd floor lounge, curled up near the radiator, reading and sipping tea. I’d brought seven novels with me, intended for my mother to bring home with her. Instead, I re-read all of them while we were there, handing each to her as I finished.

One of those books was a favorite of mine, Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks. I reviewed it here a while ago, I think, but I can’t be bothered to look up the link at the moment. Reading about bread making in a funky house in France is the height of literary romanticism.

Although Hawaii would be warmer…

When I wrote about what I wanted to do with our library the other day, I neglected to talk about where I wanted to get the shelving we need. Now, please understand, I have no problem with discount furniture, especially for things like shelves and tables – stuff you don’t sleep in – because furniture is expensive, and shelving especially so, I think because it uses more wood.

My dream library has built-ins, rather than free-standing shelves. A good friend of the family had a shelving-and-entertainment console built when she and her husband moved into their “retirement” home, and I fell in love with it. It was sturdy enough for Fuzzy’s big gaming books (which I still think should be in his office) and pretty enough to be, well, nice to look at. It also had lighting built in, which is great for highlighting nick-knacks, as well as for discerning titles.

I figure, as long as I’m planning the dream library, I should be specific.

Writing about cabinet hardware on my main blog has me super-aware of the fact that our house is filled with stacks of books, not because we’re making a decorating statement by making piles of paperbacks or covering the floors in acres of hardcovers, but because we still haven’t bought enough shelving.

We want the library to be more functional, but we can’t commit to actually doing something about it.

Well, no more!
I’m declaring open warfare on the Stacks, and by the end of January 2008, we will have a library that isn’t an embarrassment.

I want it to be a sunny open space. I want a faux mantle and an electric fire on the one short wall, and shelves floor to ceiling around the rest of the room, leaving space for the couch and coffee table. I want throw pillows. I like the fact that the room is carpeted, but in truth I’d rather have it have the same cherry laminate as the rest of the house, with a lovely area rug.

And plants. Even if they’re plastic. I want plants.

NO TV. Maybe a small computer desk large enough for a laptop. Definitely some kind of music machine (radio/cd player). And I want all the junk cables that Fuzzy refuses to part with out of the closet so that guests could actually store stuff in there, if needed.

Or at least…

No More Stacks.

We went shopping on Saturday night, not for diamond rings, but for books and coffee, and while I went in looking only for a pair of Vampire Romance novels by Carol Gleason, I left disappointed – they’d just returned them to their distributor (I’ve since grabbed them from Amazon) – and a little excited, because even though I didn’t have the books I went to find, there was a buy-two-get-one-free sale on mystery novel, and I do love a good mystery.

I also bought Keith R. A. DeCandido’s Q & A, which is both poignant and hilarious. I’ve put off posting his interview until I finish it so look for it on Tuesday.

Reviews of these titles will come eventually. I post about every book I read, but sometimes it takes me a while to catch up.

It was a cool wet day today, so the dogs and I raced around the house playing fetch and dog-tag, and other indoor games between bits of my job, but when I went out to check the mail, I saw one of the neighbors’ teenagers chatting with her young man. He was driving a vintage ragtop – in the rain (!) and was snapping a tonneau cover onto it, because apparently it’s okay to drive in the rain, but not to park…

What does this have to do with books, you may wonder? Well, both young folks are college students – I’ve met them on brief occasions, and they’re both well-spoken and polite, as well as reasonably intelligent, which is why, I had to laugh when the young man unsnapped only one section of the cover to retrieve a book.

The image of him, sweatshirt clad, trying not to lean on the car, but fishing blindly for his books, made me smile.

If only I’d had a camera…

I’ve been thinking a lot about our library lately. Not the library around the corner, which has a reading porch, rocking chairs and free (if not particularly good) coffee, but the fourth upstairs bedroom in our home that was clearly designed to be a second living area (the closet is a token space, but technically its presence makes the room a legal bedroom) and that we’ve designated our library.

Right now, it doesn’t feel very libraryish. Oh, our old couch is there, and shelves of books, but it’s also got boxes and bags left over from Christmas, and piles of miscellaneous stuff we’ve never quite found room for, and I swear it’s all illuminated by one of the most hideous light fixtures ever seen in a real house.

I originally wanted the big L-shaped space as my office, because it doesn’t have a real closet, and it does have huge floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the side street, while all the other upstairs bedrooms have “normal” windows, and yeah, it’s still carpeted, but I kind of like having carpet under my bare feet while I work.

I’ve tried many times to convince Fuzzy that he should let me move my things into this room, and he keeps reminding me that we agreed on the rooms we have because they’re about the same size.

To which I say, “who cares?” I work from home. He doesn’t. He has a couch in his office, I don’t.

Meanwhile, the most beautiful room upstairs has become the junk room.

And it bothers me.