Snapshots of a Modest Life

A Room Without a View

I've decided that should I have the opportunity to build my own house that there will be a library. It doesn't have to be large and ostentatious, just a room for books. And it will have dark and light hard wood floors in a checkered pattern like The Shop Around the Corner in "You've Got Mail". I just finished watching that movie, and I have to say, I love it. It's just so cute. And having missed my chick-flick fix at the Student Life Building with "The Notebook," I had to watch something that was equally cute and sappy.

My library will have big books and small books, hard cover and soft, and a big leather reading chair that hugs you when you sit in it and a matching ottoman. It will smell like books and old paper. Maybe I'll have a desk in there too. The lamps will all be soft light, none of that blinding fluorescent stuff. It will be friendly and welcoming. I would love to have a fireplace too; one that burns wood, not gas. I would spend hours upon hours sitting there reading from my a large stack of books to read, slowly whittling away at the pile, replenishing it daily. My books to read section will grow and grow until my library will consist of more books I haven't read than books I have.

There will be a substantial children's book section, and a large beanbag in the corner where kids from the neighborhood can come and read whenever they want. Eventually they will graduate from Amelia Bedilia, Ramona and the beanbag chair to Jane Eyre, Jack Ryan and the leather reading chair. It will be a safe place to sit and think and write and do whatever your imagination can think up, as long as you don't destroy my books. And there will be a card catalogue.