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.

Every generation has one. The Book Aunt. The person you can always count on to send you fascinating things to read at Christmas and your birthday, with the corners of the dust covers cut off so that you can’t see the price, and a warm message scrawled in peacock blue ink on the inside cover.

For me, the book aunt is my mother’s younger sister, Patti. For our nephews and nieces the book aunt is…me. And I’m cool with that. Fuzzy’s family is big on reading, though they’ve never really had much exposure to the classics, and my step-brother’s kids are becoming readers as well.

But books seem anticlimactic when compared with iPods and jewelrey and pictures of dead presidents, so I’m wondering if I should do theme boxes… like, when I give my young nephew a copy of The Jungle Book I could throw in some animal print bedding, a copy of the movie, and a box of animal crackers. (As an aside, I love animal crackers.)

Or when we gift a young niece with Black Beauty maybe we could include a horse figurine, a charm for her bracelet, and perhaps donate to her riding lesson fund.

I like theme boxes. I like small presents wrapped with great love. I like making reading something more than words on a page.

This idea has potential.

October evenings make me cook more, because it’s actually cool enough to use the oven. Also, I just re-read Julie Powell’s book about cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a book I’ve drooled over while visiting others, but have yet to acquire a copy of.

Tonight, as I made midwestern food for Fuzzy, who works scary hours and never remembers to eat lunch, I thought about other October evenings, when we were first married and lived in South Dakota, and we would use one of our evenings off work to go to Barnes and Noble, me in my favorite leather bomber jacket, he in an ancient North Face jacket that has long since been destroyed. We’d browse through our favorite sections, then meet up and exchange smooches in the science fiction aisle, wash, rinse, repeat.

Afterward, we’d share a table in the little cafe, and I’d have a mocha, and he’d have hot chocolate or hot cider, and we’d share the peach tart they used to sell.

We don’t often linger in the cafe after bookshopping any more.
In fact, lately, our bookstore visits have been surgical strikes rather than literary sojourns.

But we still exchange smooches in the science fiction aisle.

You are all invited to come hang out at CafeWriting.com where we’ve scribbled six prompts on a digital napkin.

Participate! Tell your friends!

(Direct link to October Project)